Spoilers: Orion references characters, events, and themes from all episodes of The Flash through 02x22 Invincible, all comics featuring Zoom/Hunter Zolomon, and various comics released under the New 52.
Warning: Orion contains adult content, graphic descriptions of violence, and dark material that exceed canon-typical levels. Please mind the M rating. This version of Orion has been adapted to fit the restricted ratings requirement. The original version is rated at NC-17/MA, which remains available on AO3 (username dracox_serdriel) as well as LiveJournal and Tumblr (username dracox-serdriel).
Chapter Summary: Caitlin and Hunter argue as she attempt to unravel his story.
Orion
Chapter Twelve: Suspended Blossom Cluster
Not one thing had gone to plan.
Hunter couldn't pinpoint his miscalculation. Had he misjudged her sense of justice? Had he not shown her enough of the MTU's sins? Or had he overplayed his hand, raising her suspicions by showing her too much horror?
"I will never trust you."
She had uttered those exact words when he first brought her to Earth-2, and his mistrustful side wanted him to believe that it was the truth, that there was no way to win her allegiance. So far, he'd been able to ignore it.
After beating her fists against his chest in a bout of passion he had feared he'd never again witness, Caitlin had fallen into him, her face next to his chest and the rest of her body slouched against him. He was holding her up, one arm wrapped around the middle of her back to support her.
That was when he'd uttered the words he had sworn he wouldn't say: "Caitlin, when we were together, I didn't know I was Zoom."
Several minutes had passed since he'd spoken with no response from her. She hadn't moved, either. If anything, she collapsed even further into him. He couldn't bring himself to regret his misstep, not when it led to her in his arms again, even if only for a little while.
Suddenly, she pushed against his chest, wrenching herself out of his arms. He wanted to surge ahead and envelop her once more, but then he saw her. Her face was twisted in misery. Her red, puffy eyes a stark contrast to the pallor of her forehead and her tear-stained cheeks.
You did that. You're the reason.
He hesitated.
A dull ringing sounded in her ears, as if her brain felt the need to fill the silence.
She didn't know which was worse, the fact that he was still lying or the fact that that his lies were so transparent and feeble. He wasn't even trying anymore.
And why would he? It's not like he has to. You're his prisoner. You'll always be his prisoner. You should've let him die in that clearing.
Fury shot through her, renewing her failed strength enough to pull away from him and put distance between them. She'd been so foolish thinking there were worse things on Earth-2 than Zoom. There was nothing worse than him.
He stepped closer, "Cait - "
"Don't call me that!" she cut him off.
"Caitlin," he continued. "You need to know - "
"You were a monster long before you became Zoom," she interrupted him again. "How many people did you murder as a serial killer?"
"That's not - it's not what you're thinking," he stumbled.
"Do you know what happens when someone you trust turns out to be the creature trying to kill you and everyone you care about?" she asked, hating herself for revealing yet another weakness to him. "You lose faith in yourself. You question how he tricked you - why he wasted so much time making you feel special, making you feel like he cared. And when you can't answer those questions... you immerse yourself in any information you can find. Anything that might make you understand..."
"Caitlin," he said weakly. "None of that was a trick - "
She interrupted him, plowing ahead full speed. "I've ready every article about your murders. Before they identified you, the newspapers called you the Ogre because of the ugliness - the brutality - of the crimes. You bludgeoned a retired doctor so badly they had to identify him with DNA. You pulverized an orderly's spine. You broke a twelve-year-old's neck - "
"No, I didn't!" he shouted, blue lightning rippling across his body. "I killed the man who murdered him. I never laid a finger on that boy. Had I arrived a few minutes earlier, I could've saved him."
"Saved him?" she repeated. "You expect me to believe that you beat that boy's father to death to save him?"
He took a long, deep breath, and his lightning relented.
"I didn't do it to save the boy," he replied. "He was already dead when I - by the time I got there, so I wasn't saving anybody when I - "
"Murdered his father," she completed.
"He got what he deserved," he said darkly. "It's not what you think. I started all that because I felt broken, and lashing out at the injustices of the world - the ones that everybody saw but nobody did anything about - that was the only thing keeping me together. I wasn't a serial killer. I was a vigilante."
She scoffed. "Not one article called the Ogre a vigilante. Not even the tabloids or the conspiracy blogs."
"Because the people I went after had the power and connections to cover up their crimes," he replied. "The boy... his name was Charlie Song. His father, William Song, beat him and his mother for over a decade, but his brother was the chief of police. Anyone who went after him was stonewalled, discredited, or thrown into prison on trumpted up charges. Before I came along, he was untouchable."
Caitlin thought of Oliver Queen and his constant battle to save Star City. Joe West had always been suspicious of him, insisting that the Arrow wasn't a hero because of all the people he'd killed.
Oliver Queen isn't Hunter Zolomon. Oliver helps people. Hunter only helps himself.
"After Charlie Song's... I got there too late, and, seeing him minutes after his death... that's when I started falling apart. I wasn't in my right mind," he continued. "I didn't understand that until the SpeedForce healed me. It put me back together, cleared my head."
"Not clear enough!" she shot back. "You're a homicidal maniac who - by your own admission - traveled back in time to torment yourself."
"Not me, Caitlin," he replied. "A future version of me. After he pulled me off Earth-1 through that portal, he took his cowl off. I thought it was a trick, that he'd somehow managed to steal Chameleon's abilities. But he knew things - my memories - things only I ever knew. First he made me remember... and then he showed me what would happen to Earth-2 if the Cause failed, what would happen to you, and then, last of all, he showed me what would eventually happen to me if I didn't go through with his plan. He made me watch as he wasted away and died. I came up with my own plan for the Cause to prevail, and another to save you... but I couldn't come up with a way to save myself. So I ran back in time and used his plan."
Caitlin's mind raced as she searched for a thread to pull, a way to unravel everything he'd just said. But his story was so insane and so impossible that the most treacherous part of her brain thought it could be the truth. Or, part of it, anyway.
Don't trust him.
"You're a monster," was all she could reply.
"Maybe I am," he replied. "But I'm not the monster you think I am. I'm the monster that the Cause needs me to be. You don't have to believe me. In time, you'll see for yourself, if you haven't already. But I know - I don't have any proof, but I know - you make me better. If you joined the Cause - became a real part of our mission - we could stop what's coming before it becomes World War IV and tears the planet apart. You can save millions of lives."
There it was. He knew exactly how to manipulate her, didn't he?
This isn't about the Cause. This is about the baby.
"What else did you see in the future?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"What?" he asked, thrown by the abrupt change in topic.
He faltered, uncertainty painted across the contours of his face. "Caitlin - "
"You don't need me," she interrupted. "The Cause doesn't need me. I'm not metahuman. I don't have powers. So why am I here? Don't tell me it's for stitching up injuries because Earth-2 has thousands of doctors capable of that much. What else did you see in the future, Hunter?"
He balked at the sound of his name, his eyes comically wide and his jaw, slack. He took a moment to school his features.
"The Cause doesn't need another metahuman or another person with powers," he said. "We need allies who aren't like us, who aren't afraid of powered people, who see the humanity in metahumans - "
"Those that have humanity."
"There aren't many humans like you," he said. "They're all afraid of metahumans - "
"Because Zoom terrorized the entire planet!"
"Their fear predates Zoom!" he retorted. "Powered people were feared and experimented on long before the particle accelerator exploded!"
"And then a murderous Speedster came along and validated their fears," she responded.
He made a sound that was something between a hiss and a mirthless laugh as he turned away. She could tell he was losing control. Part of her - the rational part, or what was left of it - dreaded what he might do when his patience finally ran out. But another part of her wanted - no needed - to witness the mask of Jay Garrick fall away and reveal the monster underneath, the true face of Hunter Zolomon. She could endure anything, anything, if it meant she could look at him and see anything other than the man she loved.
It was stupid and reckless to push him. She knew that, but she couldn't bring herself to care.
"What else did you see in the future?" she repeated, practically shouting.
"What are you asking me?" he asked as he turned back to her. The tension in his voice was palpable. "Are you asking me to recount the details of end-stage Velocity Sickness? To describe the wasteland that Earth-2 becomes? Iterate over the MTU's war crimes? List their systematic persecution and torture of metahumans?"
Caitlin stared at his face, but for the life of her, all she could see was Jay.
Jay is Hunter, and Hunter is Zoom.
Something inside her snapped like a dam giving way to pressure. What was he playing at? He knew about the baby, there was no other explanation.
He must've taken her silence as contempt, for he closed in on her and continued, "What is it you think I've seen? And why does it make you so angry?"
"You don't know?" she countered. "Then why did you order everyone at the Comet to hide my test results from me?"
Her words had a profound affect on him. The tension in his features fell away, replaced first by confusion, then concern.
"Test results," he repeated, his voice so low that it was almost inaudible.
Her stomach twisted uncomfortably as she considered the possibility that he hadn't known about the pregnancy.
It's all an act. Don't trust him.
None of this - abducting her and bringing her to Earth-2, keeping her as his own personal prisoner, trying to recruit her to the Cause - made any sense if he didn't know about the baby. Why else would he bother with a nobody like her?
Because he's a monster. He doesn't need a reason.
A blur of blue lightning surrounded her, followed by the sensation of her feet leaving the ground as she was whisked away.
What did you just do?
Hunter was used to anger, hatred, rage, fear, and fury. He had learned how to live with them, how to fuel himself with them. But what he was feeling now was entirely novel, equal parts dread and elation with an invigorating sense of expectation, the likes of which he had only experienced before a promising fight.
As he transported her to her office on the top floor of the Comet, he stitched together what he knew.
Caitlin accused him of willfully concealing test results from her. Tests from the Comet would be medical in nature. She had also demanded to know what he'd seen in the future, which meant that whatever she thought he was trying to suppress had something to do with her future - their future.
In his experience, medical tests only ever revealed illness, madness, and disorder, and he had his reasons for that particular bias. No doubt that seed of mistrust was the source of his dread, yet he sensed that these tests weren't about something as mundane as an ailment.
He gritted his teeth. Totem had failed to inform him of these latest developments. He'd have to deal with that later.
"Take her to her room," Zoom ordered Blink in his modulated voice. "Make sure she has everything she needs."
He wasted no time getting Caitlin's file, but his hand hesitated on the cover, his mind churning with possibilities. What if his instincts were wrong? What if he was about to find out Caitlin had a horrible disease? A fatal disease?
Then you'll find a way to save her. Like she found a way to save you.
No, Caitlin hadn't seemed worried or afraid when she lobbed accusation after accusation at him, just angry and suspicious of his motives.
He smiled. There was one thing that could garner this kind of reaction from his Caitlin: developing powers. She must think that he'd seen a future version of her with superhuman abilities and that was why he'd brought her to Earth-2.
It shouldn't be possible, given that Caitlin didn't have the metagene, but that hadn't stopped her Earth-2 doppelganger from becoming Killer Frost, who barely deserved to breath air from the same universe as his Caitlin.
What powers would she have? The question alone was enough to make his heart race. Maybe he couldn't answer that particular question with the contents of the file in his hand but that didn't matter. Mental images of his Caitlin leveling a building with lightning cast from her fingertips entered his mind, bringing him an overwhelming kind of joy. He pictured her burning their enemies with a flick of her wrist. Then he imagined her dressed in finery, her deportment regal and refined as she stood at his side, her icy stare a mere prelude to her powers.
Caitlin won't stand with a creature like you. If she is gaining powers of her own, you'd better run because she won't hesitate to turn them on you.
Even his baneful inner voice could not sway him from his glee. He'd longed for her to have a gift of her own. It would bring them closer, make their connection more profound, he was sure of it.
At last, he opened the file, his eyes seeking the confirmation he was now absolutely certain was there. But as he absorbed line after line, he found nothing that suggested burgeoning powers or any indication of even the most minor supernatural abilities. According to her medical tests, his Caitlin was painfully human.
Hunter's elation fizzled into bitter disappointment. Why had he indulged in his fantasies when he could've simply opened the damn file?
A foolish waste of time.
He thought he'd broken this stupid habit. He'd always done this to himself, ever since he was a child. He'd wind himself up with so much excitement and expectation that when things inevitably fell apart, he felt crestfallen twice over, mourning the loss of his ludicrous daydreams.
After his mother died, it became ten times worse, and he fell into an endless cycle of boundless anticipation and crushing depression until his first year in high school, when he finally learned to expect nothing but the worst from everyone and everything.
Yet here you are, doing it again, like some naive child.
He was so consumed with his self-reprimand that he almost missed the last note page in front of him.
Almost.
His jaw clenched as it slowly sunk in. He read the test result over and over again, not comprehending them. He'd always viewed pregnancy as something that happened to other people, not to him, and not to his Caitlin.
When he was very young - before he witnessed his father murdering his mother - he'd believed that everybody grew up, got married, and had children, and he had no reason to think he would deviate from that norm. But in the years between then and now, he'd abandoned the notion of having his own family. Love was a weakness he couldn't afford.
Caitlin isn't a weakness.
Wasn't she? Didn't she distract him from his primary goals? Hadn't he dedicated his best assets for her protection and comfort? Hadn't he nearly died during the siege, all because trying to sway her to the Cause?
She's the only reason you survived.
Caitlin was a valuable asset, that much wasn't in question. Hunter needed her in a way he's never needed anyone else, even before she pulled him back from the brink of death on that operating table. Perhaps that was why he jumped at the idea that Caitlin was developing powers. He had longed for it for a very, very long time. Not only would her work with the Cause be unquestioned, she would be able to defend herself or, at the very least, be able to escape anyone who might do her harm.
But a child? A child would be helpless for years, requiring constant care and protection. And if the baby inherited the metagene... if the baby was metahuman, then it would be as much a target for the MTU as it would be for anybody who desired revenge against Zoom.
Having a baby was too dangerous. Too dangerous for the baby, Caitlin, and himself.
Caitlin won't let you make this decision for her.
Hunter paced the room. He couldn't be a father. He couldn't. He didn't know how.
Caitlin had believed he'd taken her to Earth-2 because of the pregnancy. Did she think he desired the child more than her? Did she think he would toss her aside like some kind of broodmare?
He was incensed by the mere thought of it. She had to know what she meant to him. She must know that nothing was more important to him than her.
She doesn't believe you. You're just the monster who manipulated her into all this.
He needed to talk to her, to tell her that he hadn't known about the child, though he was certain that she wouldn't believe him. But he needed her to trust him on this, if nothing else.
He couldn't rush this. He needed time to gather his thoughts, to choose his words carefully.
He summoned Blink and ordered her to transport him to the mainland. Then he raced to one of his oldest outposts. It was a tiny personal office that hadn't been used in over a year, shuttered in favor of hideouts with better security and more room. He'd only kept this place because it had served him well... not as a working lab but as a place of reflection. He'd been able to soothe his inner demons here when he had no other recourse.
Hunter stored a small stock of three-sided dressing mirrors here. They had been invaluable to him when he was still learning how to treat injuries borne from using his metapowers.
That felt so long ago.
Because it was. For the rest of the world, it's been a year, but with all the reckless time travel, it's been much longer for you.
Yes, it had been some time since he'd been here.
How long? Do you even know?
Unfortunately, not all his memories here were pleasant. More than once he'd lashed out at whatever he could reach, leaving many looking glasses cracked, if not entirely shattered. He quickly identified those that were unmarred from his previous visits, arranging them so they were standing side-by-side.
The end result was him staring at his own image nine times over, each with different angles, different sides of himself. Nine partial truths... nine people he might have been, if things had been different.
The one that concerned him most - the reason he came here - was the reflection in the center mirror. The man in the back of his head, the one that constantly tore him down, the one that never failed to remind him that he was evil, a failure, a monster.
Hunter stared down the face of his self-doubt, ignoring the other reflections: his inner demons, his inner child, his pain, his hope, his fury. They all played their parts well and gotten him this far.
But the naysaying whimp that cowered at the back of his mind... that was something else entirely. Everything Hunter had accomplished had been despite this sliver of quivering weakness.
"When you were screaming your guts out and bleeding to death on that surgical table, I was what kept you alive."
His reflection became someone else, speaking with more than an inner voice, complete with facial expressions that Hunter wasn't making. A separate person. Someone he could crush.
"Caitlin kept me alive!" he retorted. "She saved me, not you."
"She wasn't the one holding you still."
"That's all you've ever done," Hunter replied. "Held me back, slowed me down."
"Someone has to. You need me, now more than ever."
The urge to smash his own incarnation of misery overwhelmed him. It would be so very easy to wreck the offending image, and so satisfying to watch it fall to pieces. But he knew that would do little more than quell his frustrations for a few moments. His inner weakness wouldn't be banished so easily, even if he had the means to do it.
"You're right," Hunter replied. "Caitlin is pregnant, and I'm the only one who can protected her and the baby - our baby."
There was something satisfying about how the his inner weakness cringed at his words, flinching at the truth of his statement.
"But I can't keep them safe without her trust," he continued.
She'll never trust you. You're a monster.
"Who did the gods charge to protect their most dangerous and valuable things on earth?" he replied. "Monsters. Always monsters. What better to protect what matters most than a monster like me?"
"Anyone else. Anything else would be better than you."
"There is nobody else," he said. "And there's no time for debate. Every second we waste leaves Caitlin and the baby in danger. I will earn her trust."
"You won't. You can't. You don't know how."
A smile curled across his lips as memories of his time on Earth-1 with Caitlin flooded him. He'd give anything - do anything - to have that, to be with her.
"But you know how," he replied. "You know how to win her trust. You've done it before, and now, you're going to help me do it again."
"You're a fool if you think I'd do that."
Hunter sensed how drained this fragment of himself was. The words were scathing and defiant, but they lacked their true bite. For the first time, Hunter had the upper hand.
"You've seen the futures," he said. "You know what happens to Caitlin. In all of them."
"Because of you."
"It doesn't matter why," he replied. "Would any reason be enough for you to let Caitlin die?"
There was no response.
"I didn't think so."
He drew himself up to his full height and closed in on the mirror, looking at the part of himself he most wanted to kill. He continued, "Either you help me, or you sentence Caitlin to death."
Hunter felt a surge of power rise within him as his eyes went black. He spoke in his modulated Zoom voice, "So, what's it gonna be?"
Author's Notes: There's less of the overarching plot in this chapter than I would like, but it was becoming a behemoth of a chapter, so I decided to focus it on key elements of the SnowHunter story. It's important for what's about to unfold... In any case, I hope you enjoy this next installment.
Chapter Notes: The title of this chapter, Suspended Blossom Cluster, is a combination of the Hawaiian and Maori names for the star Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion. These are Puana-kau ("Suspended Blossom") and Puanga-rua ("Blossom Cluster") respectively.
