Summary: Zoom created his own downfall when he turned Paco Ramon into Reverb. Revenge is a long game, but Reverb's willing to wait for it. Kill for it. Die for it.
Notes: For the Hartmon Bingo Generic Card prompt G2 - Villain Cisco
I've got this headcanon that Cisco's childhood nickname was Paco, which his mother will still call him sometimes. (Ties back into the comics.) But this version of Cisco/Reverb never gave up that childhood nickname. Don't know why, it just fit for some reason while I was writing this.
Also, to be clear, this isn't a happy story. There's character death and lots of hurt with zero comfort. Read at your own risk.
Reverb
Zoom's hand slid into Paco's chest and he thinks that finally he can go home...
Reverb's eyes opened, hand reflexively patting his chest over his heart. Funny how, for all the times he'd seen himself die, it was somehow still beating.
"That's not what I was looking for," he muttered petulantly. "Show me how he dies." But Reverb's powers remain quiescent in the wake of the vision he's already witnessed.
Hopefully that's not a sign that Zoom won't die.
At least one good thing comes out of this. Reverb can avoid his own death for another week.
Paco had gone outside on his balcony, to clear his head and maybe recite to himself the words he'd planned one last time when the sewer cover on the street below popped off, flying high in the air and landing on one of the cars parked on the street. Some sort of smoke or gas billowed out and he started coughing, hurrying back inside so he could breathe and maybe call emergency services to report what was likely some kind of gas leak or fire under the street.
Hartley's arms immediately went around Paco's shoulders, rubbing his back and easing his breathing and then... a teasing hand groped a little too low. Found the ring box in Paco's pocket.
"Is... is this what I think it is?" Hartley asked, opening the little black box to see the ring nestled inside.
"I had a speech planned," Paco lamented, still coughing, but breathing easier curled up against Hartley's side.
"Save it for when you can talk without your lungs rebelling," Hartley teased, kissing Paco's cheek. "Also, yes. A thousand times yes."
"Love you," Paco murmured, handing Hartley his phone and giving the smoke filled street outside their balcony a pointed look.
Laughing, Hartley called the non-emergency police line and reported what looked like the results of maybe a cherry bomb going off under the street.
In the morning the local news reported a nearby psychiatric hospital had burned down. Neither of them paid attention, too busy celebrating their engagement.
"You've got to eat," Dante tells him, pushing the sandwich closer to his little brother. "He wouldn't want you to fall apart like this, Paco."
"He doesn't want anything anymore, he's fucking dead," the younger Ramon snarled. In a fit of rage, he destroyed the table - and the sandwich and the plate it was on - with a blast from his powers. There was something satisfying about the splintered destruction for all that he'd have to clean it up himself. "And don't call me Paco." Paco was dead now. Dead with his fiance. "Reverb's all that's left."
It was a wonder, really, that Dante put up with him at all after that.
The visions came first. Terrifying nightmares of a speedster called Zoom. Paco thought it was stress messing with him until the breaking news of Zoom's debut attack against the police.
Shaking in Hartley's arms, Paco vowed to use his visions to stop Zoom. Somehow.
He offered his help to the other speedster that showed up. Flash. The hero. The fraud.
Not that he knew the last bit until it was too late.
Sometimes Reverb could almost see the whole web of potential futures stretched out before him. Alternate timelines interwoven and affecting each other, yet separate.
Places that could never be now. Events that never were. He'd watch, tormenting himself, with the weddings that he'd never have. The honeymoons that never happen. The children they'd never raise.
He'd watch other Pacos who wore smiles that Reverb no longer knew how to fake. Each one lived out happily ever afters with their versions of Hartley. Whole lifetimes beyond Reverb's reach.
The only thing that could bring them back together now was death. And Reverb had to postpone his at least until Zoom was dead. Only then could Paco be allowed to rest with the beloved he'd failed.
"You're going to use your powers for me," Zoom told Paco. "You'll be my first lieutenant. Or I'll do this to everyone you love."
There was a hand in Hartley's chest, terror on his face as he struggled to breathe. As the life left his body.
Paco didn't know if he screamed or not. Just that he sank to his knees sobbing as Zoom dropped Hartley's lifeless body to the floor.
"Your parents. Your brothers. Think of them, Paco, before you tell me 'no' a second time." Zoom laughed. "I'll be back tomorrow for your answer."
When Zoom comes back, Reverb tells him yes.
It's a long game Reverb plays. He vibes a man with regenerative healing powers, the very thing Zoom needs to survive the velocity drug ravaging his system.
So Reverb kills that meta. Blows a hole in his chest so that the visions he saw of that meta - Thawne something or other - healing Zoom would never come true.
He should probably feel something. Guilt. Standing over that corpse he should feel shame. This wasn't the first time he'd killed since becoming Reverb. But it was the first time he'd killed without Zoom ordering him to do it.
He'd killed this man to assure Zoom's death. All Reverb feels is satisfaction.
"We should go to Atlantis for our honeymoon," Hartley says, lounging on the couch and admiring the ring on his finger with a lazy smile that makes Paco's chest go all gooey inside to watch. "Always wanted to visit Atlantis."
"We could do the Atlantis Cruise," Paco offered. They'd talked about doing it before, but the cruise was expensive and neither had felt they could justify the expense for a vacation. But for a honeymoon? They could definitely justify the expense for that, right?
"Sounds perfect," Hartley said, springing up. "Let's go to dinner, celebrate deciding on our honeymoon plans."
Paco would do anything Hartley asked of him, so of course he agreed to dinner. Only some mugger goes after them on the way back home. Put's a bruise on Hartley's cheek and points a gun at them, demanding their wallets.
There's this rage in his chest that Paco's never felt before. Never thought himself capable of such hatred. But he hates this mugger for frightening Hartley. So when Paco raises his hands, vibrations pour forth, knocking the mugger into the nearby wall and dropping him unconscious to the ground.
They call the police on the mugger and then run home before they get caught.
"You're a hero," Hartley says, coaxing Paco into bed. "My hero."
"A hero," Paco echoes uncertainly. He remembers that anger he'd felt and isn't so sure hero is quite the right word.
Maybe, in another timeline, Zoom might've found a cure. But in this one he grows weak and can't maintain his healing powers. The bursts of strength and speed velocity gives him grow shorter with every use but, like an addict, Zoom always takes another hit.
But unlike an addict, Zoom would actually die without his magic formula.
Eventually Reverb's powers show him where Zoom keeps his lab. So he breaches in, late one night, just hours before Zoom would show up for his next hit of velocity.
He watches later over a hidden camera, satisfaction written on Reverb's hateful smirk, as Zoom screams in rage over his trashed lab. Not a drop of velocity left. Nothing left to make a new batch with either.
His speed giving out, Zoom has to go to STAR Labs disguised as the Flash to ask for help.
But Reverb's prepared for this eventuality too. Evidence of Zoom's dual identity, his former life as Hunter Zolomon... all of it, sent to the cops and to Wells.
Wells, of course, gets an additional note. This is the monster you created. This is the monster you enabled.
Harrison Wells steps down as CEO of STAR Labs in the wake of the media blitz over the reveal that Zoom and the Flash were one and the same. Zoom's in prison, withering away to nothing and Reverb thinks he ought to feel satisfaction.
The people responsible for Hartley's death are suffering for it. Reverb feels nothing.
The visions never really change. Always a vibrating hand in his chest and his last thought being that he's finally free. Paco can finally go home to his Hartley.
After Zoom's defeated, locked in jail, the visions stop. And Reverb realizes he'll never get that release now.
He breaches into Iron Heights and kills Zoom in a fit of incoherent screaming rage. Too intent on crushing Zoom's corpse down into an unrecognizable pile of flesh and cracked bones, he doesn't hear the entreaties to stop. To deescalate. To surrender.
He doesn't hear the gunfire or feel the bullet in his back, through his heart.
But when Reverb collapses, rage spent... maybe Paco gets his rest after all.