Like most nights spent at a crime scene, the night began with a text from Joe.
The scent of tomatoes and fresh herbs simmering on the stove had filled Laura's apartment when the text came through, an additional pot of water boiling on the stove in preparation for the pasta waiting on the counter. It had been a while since Laura had been able to set aside a decent amount of time for herself, and since the chaos that had become a part of her daily routine had finally seemed to calm down, she'd practically pounced on the chance for some alone time.
One of the things that relaxed Laura the most was cooking, whether for herself or for other people, and cooking Italian in particular. There were many pleasant memories attached to the scent of fresh tomato sauce and the taste of perfectly cooked pasta, that cooking had transformed into a form of meditation on her most stressful days.
Unfortunately, like most things in her life, there was hardly a chance of it going as planned, as she discovered the moment her phone dinged loudly from where it sat safely away from the stove. For a good minute, Laura stared at the phone, weighing the pros and cons of not answering it. Hesitating a moment before unlocking it, Laura let out a frustrated groan when she saw who the message was from – and what it said.
Need you down at the morgue, NOW – JW
How urgent? – LS
Captain and the mayor are on the move – JW
Got it; I'm on my way – LS
ETA? – JW
Be there in 10 – LS
Make it 5 – JW
Joe hadn't been kidding about how urgent the situation was, Laura decided grimly as she stepped off the bus and into the rain. It looked like the entire block around the morgue had been cordoned off, which she supposed was a good thing, but at the front entrance was, a swarm of reporters and cameramen had gathered, all of them doing their damn best to get the scoop on the latest murder. There was a line of officers in front of the yellow tape, and a few by the door, probably meant to keep the horde of ravenous jackals at bay; the one who caught her eye was kind enough to lift the tape and open the door for her after checking her identification.
Inside the morgue, however, was even more of a madhouse. The uniforms were swarming every inch of the place, all of them so preoccupied that it took more than a few cleared throats and some rather passive aggressive taps on the shoulder to gather some sense of where she was meant to be. Luckily, Joe was waiting for her right outside the door of the primary crime scene, his face being what one might find underneath the dictionary definition of 'irritated'.
"Glad you're finally here," Joe grumbled under his breath as he led her into the room where the body was, "the mayor and the captain want this worked out as soon as possible, so all of your other cases are on the backburner for now."
"That sounds a bit extreme; who's the victim?"
"The coroner."
"…you're not serious."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"Right, sorry – it's just sounds like the punchline of a bad joke or something. Jesus, what's with all of this water?" Laura wondered aloud as she followed Joe across the room to the body, just barely avoiding stepping into a sizeable puddle and soaking the hem of her jeans in the process.
"Your guess is as good as mine – none of the sprinklers have been turned on, so it might have had something to do with the killer."
"We'll know soon enough, I guess," Laura sighed, strapping on a pair of latex gloves as she crouched down beside the body to start her work, "just give me a shout when Barry gets here, okay?"
"Will do."
A dead body was nothing new to Laura. Of course, it wasn't as if she were completely fine with the fact that her entire job seemed to revolve around the dead and the worst that humanity had to offer. It just so happened that she was very, very skilled at burying unpleasant feelings deep down inside of herself to prevent them from becoming a nuisance. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be the case today. The sheer sense of revulsion as she stared into the lifeless eyes of the city coroner lasted only a second before she could shut it down. Even though she'd worked many cases in the past several months, before working with the CCPD Laura had only ever really seen one dead body, and while over twenty years had passed since that day, the chill that spread through her every time she saw a corpse had never faded.
It took Laura several minutes to go through the initial stages of evidence collection – brushing out the coroner's hair, scraping underneath his fingernails, checking for any residue in the mouth and ears – but just as she was about move on, her partner arrived in the only fashion he knew how. She winced as Barry's tendency to leap without looking caused him to collide with Captain Singh, spilling his coffee all over them both, and handed him a tissue packet from her jacket as he knelt by her side. Once he was relatively clean, they turned their attention to the body.
"So, I already checked for any bullet wounds and head wounds – from what I can tell, he was neither shot nor hit on the head, nor was he stabbed. However, there is some blood spatter on his lips," Laura indicated with her gloved finger as Barry got his kit set up, "so he likely sustained some sort of blunt force trauma which caused a severe pulmonary contusion."
"You think he might have been beaten to death?"
"There's only one way to find out."
The sight that greeted them as they pulled up the coroner's smock and shirt was not a pretty one. Several bruises, all of them a sickly purple, littered his torso, all of them clearly round and about the size of a tennis ball. It was obvious what the cause of death had been – the only problem was what he had been killed with. There were very few things that could have left such a unique mark, unless their killer had either beaten his victim with the narrow end of a baseball bat or a miniature battering ram. Laura was still racking her brain for possible answers when Barry's voice interrupted her train of thought.
"Laura, take a look at this."
Laura obliged, carefully avoiding touching the body any further as she went to Barry's side. He was staring intently at a shard of something held in his tweezers, and it was only when her partner passed it to her for a closer look that Laura realized what it was.
"You have got to be joking."
"What's going on? Do you two have something?" Joe stood over the both of them, and after sharing a quick look both of them rose to their feet.
"Well, judging by the bruises found on the deceased's torso and this shard of ice," Laura explained as she held out the tweezers for Joe to take a closer look at, "our victim was most likely killed by an object made out of ice, about the size of a tennis ball."
"And, seeing as murders have been committed with weirder weapons, there's a possibility that the coroner was killed by, well, hail."
"Hail? In here?" Joe's expression of confusion had turned into one of disbelief, and Laura supposed that in any other situation, she and Barry might have been feeling the same thing. "You think this was Snart?"
"No, the cold gun isn't built to create solid objects like this; this wasn't him."
"Then who?"
Laura didn't have an answer for Joe, and neither, for once it seemed, did Barry. However, as they stood there, trying to wrap their heads around the situation, all three of their attentions turned to Eddie as he came up to them, holding out what looked like a recording device. The older man looked somewhat shaken, and more than a little worried, which did absolutely nothing to settle the growing uneasiness in the pit of Laura's stomach about the entire situation.
"Joe, there's…there's something you need to hear."
It was quiet in the Pipeline.
The cavernous space that ran underneath the hollowed-out shell of S.T.A.R. Labs might have seemed eerie to some. In the time since the explosion, more than the city's fair share of news reporters had descended into the bowels of the building, only to find themselves incapable of remaining there for long among the ruins of the once promising particle accelerator. There were even some who had asked for it be destroyed, or at least condemned, considering the harm that had resulted from that catastrophic night.
However, as she sat in a secluded corner of the space, far removed from the world around her, Laura thought not of what the particle accelerator had done to the people in her city. No, in fact, her mind had become increasingly focused on Mark Mardon, and the murder he had committed.
Although Laura had never met either Clyde or Mark Mardon, there was much to learn from the history the police department had compiled on the brothers over the years. The living Mardon brother was the eldest, having spent built up an impressive criminal career with his brother, though there was little information about their childhood. From what she'd learned about their career choices, Laura had come to the conclusion that the Mardons had spent a good portion of their young life in foster homes. However, what was most interesting about the pair of brothers was not their history, but their abilities.
According to her teammates, Clyde's abilities had been a result of his proximity to the storm on the night of the incident, and had granted him the ability to manipulate certain aspects of the weather. It only made sense, then, that Mark had acquired a similar set of metahuman abilities, considering that the two of them had been in the same place that night. Still, where Clyde's powers had been rather specific, his brother's powers appeared to have a wider range – which made him all the more dangerous. And dangerous men were not to be taken lightly.
"Laura? Am I interrupting something?"
Laura was fairly certain that if she had not already heard the telltale whir of Dr. Wells' wheelchair approaching, she might have experienced a slight heart attack. However, as her former employer had yet to find a way to silence his movements, Laura was prepared for him and opened her eyes just in time to see him come into view. He looked slightly amused, which Laura supposed was due to the fact that she was sitting in cross-legged in the dark with her eyes closed, but there were no signs of maliciousness in the smile he tried to hide as he pulled up in front of her.
"Not really. I just needed a moment to think – you know how antsy Cisco gets when he's on an engineering binge."
"Indeed. Well, it's certainly not the first place I would have thought of, but I suppose we all have our methods. Would I be correct if I were to say that your thoughts were preoccupied with Mr. Mardon?"
"Yeah," Laura muttered under her breath as she climbed to her feet, doing her best to stretch out the muscles that had gone stiff in the meantime, "you could say that. I mean, I don't doubt that whatever MacGuffin Cisco's going to come up with is going to work, it's just…"
"Yes?"
"…I'm not sure it's going to be enough."
"May I ask why?"
Underneath Dr. Wells' unwavering gaze, Laura suddenly felt as if she were a specimen, lying prone under a microscope for his inspection. She wondered briefly if she had made the right choice talking to him about this, instead of her friends, but there wasn't much point in stopping a conversation that had already started.
"John Dawson."
"Ah." He breathed out, a quick nod of his head telling her that he at least somewhat understood her concerns. Laura felt as if a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders as he continued to speak. "Yes, I can see how our encounters with Mr. Dawson might raise some concerns about Mark Mardon."
"It's not just that. Grief and loss can change you, but it's impossible to become a completely different person. Before he lost his mother, John was. Well, good. When he was going after those men, they were the only people who needed to suffer. It wasn't about vengeance – it was about justice, about getting the truth out there. But the Mardon brothers weren't good people, not even close. I mean, the coroner wasn't attached to Clyde's death in any way, and Mardon bludgeoned him to death."
"Dr. Wells," Laura sighed deeply, pausing for a moment to gather her thoughts, "as long as Joe eventually suffers for Clyde's death, Mardon won't care who gets hurt in the process. And I think it's only going to get worse."
The police department seemed to have taken on the air of a mausoleum when Laura and Cisco finally made their way inside later that afternoon. After she had unloaded her concerns on to the rather gracious Dr. Wells, Laura had received a text from Barry with news that Mardon had ambushed him and Joe while they were away from the station. Thankfully, neither of them had been hurt in the attack, but the news had put all of them at S.T.A.R. on edge until Cisco was finished. As they stepped into the lobby, Laura felt a rush of relief at the sight of Joe waiting for them by the front desk, which was only slightly diminished by the frustrated expression on his face.
"Hey, we heard what happened. Are you okay?"
"Relax, I'm fine."
As much the older man prided himself on his detective work, there were times when Joe West wore his emotions on his sleeve. At that moment, it was clear to Laura that something besides Mardon's threats to his life was bothering him. Any other time, Laura might have been willing to take Joe aside and talk to him at length about it; it wasn't as if she hadn't had to pull information from people before. However, there were more important things that required their attention, so when Cisco called them over from the table in the center of the room, she decided that it was best to let the subject drop. The case they'd brought along with them from S.T.A.R. was open, and Joe and Laura gathered around as Cisco gingerly lifted the thin, metallic device inside to display it to them.
"So, how exactly does this thing work?"
"Long story short, it's pretty much like a lightning rod." Cisco explained as he placed it into Joe's waiting hands. "The unbound particles in the air allow Mardon to manipulate weather, so by using the wand to attract those particles, our 'Weather Wizard' won't have much to work with."
"Good job, Cisco. Oh, before I forget – Laura, Captain Singh wanted to talk to you about the lab results from the evidence you and Barry collected at the morgue."
"Thanks, Joe." Laura nodded before she turned to Cisco, who had already begun to unpack the rest of his equipment. "Hey, are we still on for Friday night?"
"Definitely." He replied with a smile, which might have been enough for her had it not been painfully obvious that his mind was elsewhere. For a moment, she lingered a few feet from his side, watching as he turned to talk to Joe, and briefly, Laura felt the urge to, for once, not remain quiet about what was bothering her.
Then, she turned on her heel, and without a single look back, walked straight into the bullpen.
As crowded as the bullpen normally was, it now seemed that the room was bursting at the seams with uniforms and detectives. Laura nearly snapped at one officer who stepped in front of her, before reining in her anger and letting them pass. Luckily, the captain's door was cracked open, and Laura took a few seconds to calm down before knocking briefly and poking her head inside. Captain Singh was sitting at his desk, surrounded by piles of paperwork, and Laura felt a pang of sympathy when she caught a glimpse of the rings of exhaustion lining his eyes.
"Sanders, thank God. Close the door behind you, will you?"
Laura obliged, careful to make as little noise as possible so as not to disturb him any further, and when the lock finally clicked shut, she stepped forward.
"Joe said you wanted to see me, sir?"
"Yeah – not sure if you've heard, but the mayor's holding a press conference at city hall tomorrow night, and I don't need to tell you how excited the press gets about these damn metahuman cases. They also love it when we trip over our words, so we need to be prepared for anything they'll spring on us."
"Okay," Laura nodded, finally understanding what the captain was asking for, "I can make a summary of all the lab results to go along with the investigation files, if that'll help."
"Great. And make sure those bloodhounds will be able to understand it; last time I got Allen to do this for me, I swear..."
"I'll get right on it, sir." She assured Singh, knowing exactly where that conversation was heading, but just as she turned to leave, a violent crashing noise from beyond the door caught her attention. Her heart pounding, Laura swung the door open, the captain already on his feet, only to come to an abrupt halt when she saw Joe lying prone in the middle of the floor, the doors in pieces where he had apparently crashed through them. On the other side of the barrier, however, stood the single person Laura had not been expecting to see – or rather, hoping not to see – his entire being radiating malice towards the detective who lay helpless before him.
Mark Mardon.
Almost entirely in unison, every armed officer in that room raised their weapons at Mardon, but as she stood there, rooted to the spot, Laura could already feel the air in the room changing. There was barely enough time for her to yell out a warning as thunder rumbled outside, and she only caught a glimpse of Mardon's face before the force of a small storm shattered the remaining doors, throwing the entire room into chaos.
In the middle of the storm, Mardon seemed almost removed from reality, the glee on his face terrifying to look at in the darkness. However, as Laura watched, Mardon raised his hand towards the sky, and suddenly, the darkness was lit up with the harsh white light of lightning as it crashed through the window. Time seemed to slow as the lightning flew towards Mardon's hands, and Laura felt her heart stop when she realized who exactly Mardon wanted as his target.
She could feel Captain Singh step out from behind her, and before she realized what she was doing, Laura was pushing past him. Her feet moved on their own accord, carrying her across the room, and the last thing Laura heard as she threw herself into the path of the lightning was someone screaming her name.
The first thing Laura noticed when she opened her eyes was how empty the world had become.
She blinked several times, wondering if that might help to clear her vision. When the unusual grey stillness remained, she huffed out a sigh and turned to look around her. She stood, or rather floated, in what appeared to be an endless void of grey, with no end, beginning, or middle in sight.
It was quite calming, to be honest. Here, it was easy to forget.
However, as Laura's mind began to drift, her eyes caught sight of a figure in the distance.
"Hey!"
It was odd, how her voice did not echo as she called to the stranger, but she couldn't really be bothered to wonder why that was the case. The figure did not move, either, and Laura pondered calling out again before a streak of lightning shot through the grey-
-and then she was standing in the bullpen
"What the fuck?" Laura breathed. The last time she remembered being in the bullpen – how long ago had that been? – it looked as if the world had been ending. Now, it was nearly empty, debris and desks scattered everywhere, although the sky outside the windows was still dark. The strangest thing to Laura, however, was how the entire world appeared to have been washed grey.
"I don't give a damn about what the press wants – they're not getting a damn thing from me!" Laura nearly jumped out of her skin at the bark, and turned around just in time to see Captain Singh march into the bullpen. He looked haggard as he shouted into his phone, and she wondered what might have happened to make him look that way. She took a step towards him, opening her mouth to call out to him, and was shocked when he walked right past her and into his office, slamming the door behind him without even a second glance. Something was off, and Laura strode up to the door, lifting her hand to knock on the door.
"Captai-"
Only to have her hand pass right through it.
Shit.
For a good minute, Laura stared at the door, which appeared to have swallowed half of her arm. Still staring, she took a step forward, and let out a shuddering gasp as she passed through what should have been solid wood and glass into Captain Singh's office.
"Oh, God. Oh God, oh God, oh God…" It was safe to say that something was very not right, Laura thought frantically as she stepped into the room. Captain Singh sat at his desk, and by the way he no longer seemed to be shouting into his phone, he was talking to a different person. Still not yet fully hyperventilating, Laura cautiously made her way over to the other side of the captain's desk. He remained utterly unaware of her presence in the room, and as Laura reached out to touch his shoulder, her stomach doing something unspeakable when it passed through him as well.
Her mind whirling, Laura wrenched her arm away from Captain Singh, stumbling back a few feet – only to find herself elsewhere.
"What the fuck is going on?" Laura shouted, to no one in particular, when she realized she was standing in a hospital room. Trying to get the beating of her heart under control, she did a slow scan of the room, only to stop when she saw that she was not alone. Whoever was in the bed did not appear to be awake, but it was difficult to see who they were from where she stood, underneath the mask and all the tubing.
As her panic subsided, Laura felt strangely compelled to see who this person was, and slowly began to approach the bed. As she did so, however, she became aware of a dull ache in the center of her chest, which only grew stronger with every step she took. By the time Laura reached the side of the bed, she was gasping in pain, and tears blurred her vision so much that she could not see who was lying before her. As the ache suddenly spiked, Laura forced herself to take a step back, and for just a second, she could see herself, pale and lifeless, lying on the bed.
Mardon – the lightning – oh, god, not again, not again, not again-
All of a sudden, the panic from earlier returned with a vengeance, and Laura blindly scrambled towards the door, only to pull up short when it opened, and a familiar face stepped inside.
"Barry?"
Her partner looked just as bad as Captain Singh had, maybe even worse, and he passed right through her as he made his way up to the bed. Laura hesitated a moment, tempted to leave the room and, well, go somewhere else. However, there was something about the way Barry looked as he stood at her bedside, his gaze never moving from her, that persuaded her to stay.
"I'm…I'm so sorry, Laura. I'm going to find Mardon, I promise – he's not going to hurt anyone else, and he's not going to get away with hurting you."
She recognized the guilt in her partner's voice, and as she watched Barry, Laura suddenly yearned for the ability to touch him, if only to hold him and let him know that he was not the reason she was lying in that hospital bed. But all she could do was stand there and listen to his whispered promises, until a nurse knocked on the door to let him know visiting hours were over. Laura stayed in the room for a while after Barry left, staring out the window and listening to the rain fall, before the world changed again.
This time, Laura was a bit more prepared for the change in scenery. It was a bit of a relief to find herself in S.T.A.R. Labs, but that relief was dampened when she saw where she was. The machine that had failed to contain the Reverse Flash in the middle of the room, and Laura shuddered slightly as she remembered the events of that night. Turning, she saw Cisco sitting at his computer, staring at something on the screen with a frown on his face as she typed. Like everyone else she'd seen so far, he looked as if he'd hardly slept, but as she looked more closely, it appeared that he had also been crying.
Oh, Cisco.
"What the – I don't understand, this doesn't make any sense." Cisco grumbled as he rose to his feet, and Laura followed him as he went to fiddle with a large device that stood by the machine. However, she was caught off guard when the machine flickered to life – and brought the Reverse Flash along with it.
"Jesus fucking Christ-" Laura started, getting ready to bolt out of the room, until she realized that Cisco had not moved. He stood there, frozen in place, staring at the trapped speedster, which altogether was quite odd. What was even more odd was the look on his face, and it was only when he started to approach the machine that Laura realized the Reverse Flash was standing stock still behind the force fields. At his computer, Cisco pressed a button, and Laura could not avoid flinching when she heard the familiar grating voice of the speedster begin to speak. However, as he continued to talk, Laura realized that something was wrong – she had heard the Reverse Flash say those things before, word-for-word, in the control room after her escape.
"Oh, I'm not like the Flash at all…"
A recording. A hologram. Anything but the real thing.
The Reverse Flash had never been trapped, but he had wanted them to think he had been. He'd lured everyone with a weapon into the room that night. When the capacitors had malfunctioned and the force fields had fluctuated, he'd trapped Dr. Wells alongside him. He'd beaten Dr. Wells to a pulp as they'd watched on, nearly killed him even, but if the Reverse Flash had never been there in the first place…
"…some would say I'm the reverse."
It made sense, Laura thought bleakly, as she listened to Dr. Wells speak. No, not Dr. Wells – Eobard Thawne, whoever that was. In some sick, twisted way, everything about the mystery of the Reverse Flash made sense, now that she knew the truth.
"Joe was right. You were there that night, fifteen years ago, in Barry's house…you killed Nora Allen."
"That was never my intention, to kill Nora. I was there to kill Barry."
"You goddamn bastard," Laura snarled, completely aware that they could neither hear nor see her. But the rage that had accompanied Wel-Thawne's revelation, the rage of knowing that their greatest enemy had been among them the entire time, was beginning to overwhelm Laura. If she had been able to do so, Laura would have frozen Eobard Thawne where he stood, and taken great delight in shattering what remained of the speedster. However, as she tried to regain control of her anger, Laura noticed that Thawne was starting to circle Cisco, slowly. His slow, careful movements reminded her too much of a predator stalking its prey, and when she caught a look at the expression on Thawne's face, Laura thought he almost looked regretful.
No – no, not him-
"You're smart, Cisco," Thawne spoke, before the arm he raised began to vibrate, and Laura gasped in horror as what he was about to do became perfectly clear, "but you're not that smart."
"No, no, please, not him, not him, please, no, please-" Laura pleaded, the sudden surge of panic driving her to try and lunge into Thawne's path, but she simply passed right through him. Both she and Cisco were crying now, and she wondered, briefly, if this was some sort of punishment, to see the one thing she had never wanted to see happen. Laura shut her eyes, trying to block out the sound of Thawne's voice as she turned away.
Please.
"Because the truth is, I've grown quite fond of you."
Please.
"And in many ways, you've shown me what it's like to have a son."
And as Eobard Thawne plunged his hand towards Cisco's chest, the world changed.
Hey guys, what's up? God, it's been so long since I last posted a chapter that it feels so strange doing this again. I have to admit, this was a tough one to figure out - it was originally going to go very differently, but then I changed my mind and made it even more angsty than it was going to be. Anyways, I hope that you guys like this chapter and if you have any question, comments, or complaints, review are always welcome. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!
