Chapter 153: Confrontations

There were tests, of course. She was grilled on all sorts of old memories, little tidbits about her life with her biological family that she had simultaneously clung to and been repulsed by in equal measure over the years. Memories of a time that Kara would never get back, something she had always resented. But now, they were her lifeline, her saving grace. It was only because of them that Alura had believed her at all.

Her mother had been tearful, once she had been finally convinced. Her composure broke and she wailed in both immeasurable joy and longing. Thanks to the time difference, Kara knew her mother had been mourning her — and her father, by the looks of it — for decades. To have her here and now, alive and breathing, was as much a dream to her as it had been to Kara.

Once the tears ceased, Kal and her were brought to her mother's home; not her childhood home, unfortunately. That particular building had been destroyed during the fall of Krypton. Something that Kara had been both saddened by and grateful for in equal measure. The emotion she was feeling now was already enough to overwhelm the control that had been beaten into her ever since she first arrived to Lian Yu.

"You really do look like your father, Kal-El," Alura commented warmly, giving his cheek a gentle brush. "If only Lara and him were here now; they'd be proud at how much you've grown."

Kal blushed, ducking his head in a gesture of shyness. Kara smiled, and pulled him to her side in a hug. Once they had arrived to her mother's home, they had been given more elaborate clothing in lieu of what they had originally been wearing and then treated to dinner. Despite her joy at being able to wear such clothing again, Kara had to admit she also felt anxious having to wear an ensemble so unsuited to combat. It was only the idea of her mother's disappointed face that stopped her from using her knife to open slits on the side of her dress.

Alura then turned to her daughter. "And you, Kara," she said, eyes shiny, "you've grown up so beautifully. Your father would've have hated it, knowing how many suitors that are sure to pursue you now that you are an adult."

Kara's smile turned melancholic at the mentioning of Zor-El. "He's gone, isn't he?"

"Yes," Alura admitted, sorrowful and with age-old grief. "He sacrificed his life to send up the shield that saved Argo. He's the only reason this city is here today. If we had known it was going to work, we would have never sent either of you away."

Kal swallowed minutely. "I guess you're wondering how we're here then."

"I thought you both dead. All of us — we saw your pod get knocked into the Phantom Zone. It broke us. It was one of the reasons your father, Kara, chose to do what he did. It's only because of Argo and its people that I didn't choose to follow." The older Kryptonian was tearful. "What happened?"

The two younger Kryptonians exchanged a look, and Kara sighed. "We were sleeping in the Phantom Zone for decades," she began explaining, "until one of the prisoners on Fort Rozz, a Coluan, managed to hook the prison to our ship and turn it back on. With it, we were able to leave the Zone and go to our original destination: Earth. We landed on the planet about thirteen years ago and have been staying there ever since."

"Well, that's good to hear. Have you been making lives for yourselves there?"

"Yes, we have," Kara confirmed, smiling. "Good lives. We have friends there — family, really. And…" She paused.

"And?" Alura prompted.

"One of the reasons the Coluan hooked Fort Rozz to our ship was so we could bring it out of the Phantom Zone. That allowed Fort Rozz to land on Earth, and freed many of its prisoners."

The former judge gasped upon hearing that. "Did they hurt you? I know you would've had powers thanks to the yellow sun the planet orbits, but many of the prisoners were Kryptonian as well."

The (secret) assassin shook her head. "They tried, but… let's just say I picked up some skills on Earth that made me much harder to hurt than they realized. I, and my friends, all managed to stop them. It was a trial but we managed."

Alura peered at her thoughtfully, and then it finally dawned at her what Kara was trying to tell her about. "You met your Aunt Astra, didn't you?"

Kara nodded. "Aunt Astra was the leader of the escapees. She saw a lot of the problems that doomed Krypton on Earth, and tried to use Myriad to solve them."

"Oh, Astra…"

"I know, Mom. I stopped her, and she spent some time in prison. But then she helped us with a situation, and the government agency that was holding her allowed her out on the parole, on the caveat that she continue her reform by working for them." Kara took her mother's hands, squeezing them lightly. "We reconciled, and we're a family again. All three of us. And I'm sure once she sees you again as well, we'll be able to mend the bridge between you two as well."

Alura looked conflicted upon hearing that, but she did seem grateful that her sister was alive and had turned a new leaf. "If that's the case, why isn't she here with you? Knowing Astra, she would've never allowed you to come here without her. You know how protective she was of you, Kara."

The younger woman faltered upon hearing that, while Kal visibly winced. They exchanged another look, and sighed. "That's actually has to do with why we're here, Aunt Alura," the latter answered. "Aunt Astra is in a coma."

That revelation received a horrified gasp. "What? How?"

Kara pulled out her satchel and took out the folded up photo of Reign they had taken with them. "Because of her," she hissed in hatred, sliding the picture to her mother. "Her name is Reign. She attacked our home city on Earth about a week or so ago. I was… indisposed at the time and couldn't fight her, so Aunt Astra fought her instead. From what I understand, it didn't end well."

"Aunt Astra didn't stand a chance against her," Kal commented, lost in the memories. He had been the only one present who had seen the fight, albeit as footage instead of live and in-person. "Reign was clearly Kryptonian, but for whatever reason, she was much stronger than the usual Kryptonian under a yellow sun. Aunt Astra tried her best but the strength difference was too much. She's currently laid up in a bed on Earth; while her injuries have healed, she's yet to wake up."

"We've been reassured she will, but that's not the problem. The problem is Reign. We don't have any information on her. According to Kal, the database in the Fortress of Solitude was able to recognize the symbol on Reign's chest, but the information was locked away, leaving us unable to access it. We weren't able to bypass the security, but then the Fortress detected Argo's signal. We came here hoping to find more information on Reign before she attacked Earth again and killed more people. Hopefully, a way to weaken her." Because it was going to be Kara fighting her next, and they all knew it. She was the only one they knew of who might stand a chance.

Alura didn't say anything. She was too busy staring at the photo of Reign, wide-eyed.

"Mom," Kara continued, taking note of her mother's expression. "Reign isn't the first strange Kryptonian to appear on Earth. There were two more before her, each enhanced with special powers. We think they're connected. And… the information we were trying to access, it was locked under the orders of you and Dad."

Still nothing.

"Do you know what that symbol means?"

And finally, Alura looked up. "You two need to come with me. I'll tell you what it means. And where it came from, too."

Meanwhile, Back in Star City…

Ring!

Oliver glanced up and looked at his cell phone, frowning. He picked it up and audibly groaned when he saw the Caller ID. Mom. He was sorely tempted just to not pick up and let it go to voicemail, but decided it would be better just to bite the bullet now until later. "Mom, I told you—"

"No, honey, that's not why I'm calling."

The young CEO frowned at his mother's voice. It sounded worried. "Mom, is something wrong?"

"It's Thea, Oliver. Do you know where she is? She was supposed to be home last night, but she never arrived. I've already called her friends and none of them have any idea where she is either. The last they saw her, she was getting into her personal car and leaving for the Mansion."

"Have you tried the driver?"

Moira sighed. "I have, but he's not picking up."

That was… strange. "I don't know either, Mom. If she was planning on going anywhere, she didn't tell me."

"I was afraid of that. I'll try calling her phone again. Maybe it just ran out of cha—"

Suddenly, the door to his office burst open. The culprit was his personal assistant. "Mr. Queen, you need to come downstairs now! One of the employees discovered a dead body in the alley next to the building!"

Oliver's eyes widened in horror. "Sorry Mom, I need to hang up. There's an emergency at work." He ended the call before Moira could respond and quickly followed his personal assistant downstairs.

A few minutes later, he found himself in one of the alleys, where the unmistakable stench of death had mixed with the stench of trash. A dumpster had been opened, and just as the PA said, there was a dead body in it. Oliver had taken one look at it, and paled.

It was Thea's usual driver. By the looks of it, he'd been dead for hours, if not an entire day.

"Call the SCPD," he ordered his PA. "Tell them what we found. And tell them that my sister might've been kidnapped as well."

It took about fifteen minutes or so for the police to arrive. Quentin, surprisingly, had been the nearest officer; that had made sense when Oliver saw Laurel with him. He had been in so much shock that he had forgotten his girlfriend had told him she was having breakfast this morning with her father. They had been probably on the way to drop off Laurel at QC so she could visit Oliver before heading onto CNRI for work.

What happened next was a blur of police and CSIs documenting the crime scene. The medical examiner did a preliminary scan of the body before bagging it to bring it to autopsy. Oliver, meanwhile, had been seated on the back of one of the trucks, giving testimony with Laurel supporting him.

"You said Thea might have been kidnapped?" Quentin asked, nearing the end of his inquiry.

Oliver nodded. "My mother called right before the body had been discovered. Thea never got home, and all her friends told her that they didn't know where she was; the last they saw her was getting into her usual car to be driven back to the mansion. Mom called me to see if I knew where she was. I didn't. And now…" The body was of Thea's driver. Oliver's little sister was an heiress of a powerful family. It wasn't hard to make the connection.

The older man reached out, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "We'll find her, Oliver. I promise."

"I know you will." Because if you don't, I certainly will.

An Hour Later, in Central City…

Barry was sorely tempted to delay his confrontation with Eddie once he learned about Thea's possible disappearance. Oliver had to be absolutely going spare, and nobody would blame him. It's for that reason he even considered going directly to Star City and trying to speed up the search by looking for the young woman as the Flash. However, logic prevailed: he wouldn't even know where to begin searching for Thea, and people would ask questions if the Flash suddenly showed up in Star City trying to find a girl who hadn't even been officially reported missing yet. Ultimately, searching for her as himself would just causes problems in the end.

Instead, he had opted to have Gideon run a program that would access Star City's entire CCTV network for images and footage of Thea from the last twenty-four hours. Doing that would have a better chance of determining when and where she had been taken. Once the program had been set up, he had tasked Cisco with watching over it while he made his visit to Eddie.

It was something that simply couldn't wait. If he didn't do it now, he might never do it at all. And besides, he wasn't planning on doing it in a private place like Eddie's house, which would give the other man more room to lash out and attack Barry. No, he was going to do it at a semi-public area, forcing Eddie to keep better control of himself for fear of causing a scene and risking discovery.

Which is how he found himself near Eddie's car in the parking garage next to the Cary Bates Center for Mental Health, waiting for the man to return from his most recent session with Doctor Shelby. One might consider it morally ambiguous to hack into someone's medical records in order to find their next appointment with their therapist, but Barry wasn't someone one would call 'morally upright'. Besides, considering the situation, anyone he told would probably forgive him for it.

When Eddie finally appeared on the scene and saw him, there was mild surprise on his face. They had spoken a few times over the past few days, but Barry had been so busy with the ongoing crises that they hadn't really had the chance to talk or catch up lately. It wasn't really a problem, they were friends but not that close, and yet suddenly Barry was here, deliberately seeking him out. Quite a turnaround.

"Barry?" The older man asked cautiously. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you," Barry said neutrally, pushing himself off from where he had been leaning against the car.

Eddie let out a slight chuckle. "Sure, but why here? Why not over the pho—"

"It's about your parents, Eddie."

The detective froze. Barry observed him carefully, watching his body language closely, and felt his heart drop when he recognized the signs. Tension, fear, sweat — guilt. It was all over the slightly shorter man, and just like that, the last of Barry's doubt left him, leaving behind only disappointment. God, when Iris found out…

Barry closed his eyes. "I didn't want to believe it," he said, almost so quietly that Eddie nearly didn't hear him.

"Barry—"

"You killed them, Eddie. And you killed Ralph when he figured it out."

Eddie looked ready to deny it, but eventually his shoulders slumped and he sighed. "How did you know?"

The speedster shook his head. "Ralph anonymously sent me a flash drive containing all the information for his investigation in the mail before he went to confront you. Which reminds me, don't bother trying to kill me too to cover it up; I've already digitally copied the files to my computer and cloud drives and set up a trigger to send emails with all of what he sent me to the appropriate authorities. If I don't turn it off in twenty-four hours, then the emails will be sent and you will become the number one suspect in my subsequent disappearance and murder."

"Figures you'd be prepared for that," Eddie noted, sounding impressed and bitter all in one.

Barry shrugged. "It's a gift. Now tell me why you did it."

"Which ones?" And it said a lot that there wasn't just one crime to be discussed here. How had things come to this?

"All of them."

Another sigh. "I'm a metahuman, Barry," Eddie explained, and Barry's eyes widened at that, genuinely surprised. "My powers — I still don't know how they work. There are blue flames, and I think they absorb the life forces of people, or something to the effect. I haven't really tried to figure it out."

"Why?"

"Because the first time I used them, I ended up killing my parents," was the confession. "We had an argument that night, a really bad one. I lost my temper and my powers activated and before I knew it both of them were dead. Even though it was an accident, I knew if people found out that my life would be over; so I set the fire to cover up what I did."

"Then Ralph came over a few weeks ago, revealing he had figured out what happened. He tried to convince me to turn myself in, telling me that if he figured it out then someone else might and that I couldn't keep it a secret forever. I didn't want to but he kept pushing and then I lost my temper again—"

"And then you lost control of your powers and ended up accidentally killing Ralph," Barry finished knowingly, already seeing where this was going. "And you tried to cover up that crime by making it seem like it was a mugging gone wrong."

Eddie nodded.

"The mugger?"

"He was already dead when I found him," insisted the newly-revealed metahuman. "Dead from a drug overdose. So all I did was plant the evidence to frame him, and then anonymously paid off the detectives that were in charge of Ralph's case so he would be pinned with the crime and no one would get suspicious. I was hoping that people would eventually forget it."

Barry narrowed his eyes. "Except someone did. The evidence locker — was that you too?"

"I couldn't let Iris investigate the case. So I paid off the detectives to blow up the locker too. Nobody got hurt, so I thought that would be the end of it."

"Eddie, you nearly facilitated the deaths of three more people, including Singh and Iris," Barry made sure to emphasize the name of the woman they both loved. "Not to mention that your actions have allowed dozens of criminals to roam the streets free now that the CCPD no longer has the necessary evidence to bring them to trial. The explosion might not have hurt anyone directly, but it still hurt plenty."

"Yeah, but—"

"But nothing," the other man cut him off. "Eddie, I sympathize, I truly do, but keeping this secret has only caused you to start piling up body after body. You keep going like this, eventually you're going to slip and all of it will come out anyway. Ralph was right — you need to turn yourself in before it gets any worse. For everyone's sake, not just yours."

There was no response. Eddie still looked highly reluctant.

"At least submit yourself to S.T.A.R. Labs so we can help you with controlling your powers," Barry pleaded. "That way, you won't keep accidentally killing people when you lose your temper."

"I—"

Whatever Eddie was going to say was cut off by the sound of clapping. The sound echoed throughout garage, and both men looked around, trying to find the source. To their surprise, it was Eddie's therapist Doctor Shelby, who was watching them with a disappointed expression on his face.

"It's really too bad, Eddie," Shelby said. "You had a good run. But it looks like you're not going to be able to continue without my help. Oh well."

And then he moved.

With red lightning.

Barry's eyes nearly popped wide open upon seeing that, and it was only thanks to instinct that he was able block the incoming attack. Shelby, in turn, adopted a surprised look of his own, before Barry socked him in the face with a speed-empowered punch. The man stumbled backwards, rubbing his jaw, before sharply whirling around to face the younger speedster once again, this time with glee.

"You've finally revealed yourself," Shelby muttered in awe.

"Who the hell are you?" Barry demanded, trying to freak out at the sight of that familiar lightning trail. Behind him, Eddie was standing completely still, watching the entire confrontation in abject shock.

Shelby smirked, and threw something at them. Before Barry could kick it away, electricity erupted from it and struck both himself and Eddie. The two men collapsed to all fours, as the pain increased severalfold.

Finally, it became too much. Barry could no longer keep himself up. He fell onto his stomach, and felt his consciousness begin to fade. Before he was completely gone, he heard Shelby speak one last time.

"It's nice to finally meet you in person, Flash."

You don't know how many years I've been sitting on that last scene and that last reveal. Years and years and we're finally here.

We're moving closer and closer to the big stuff guys. Everything that this arc has been building up to is soon approaching. And once we get there — oh, you're going to love it. Trust me.

As always, feel free to make comments, flames will be ignored and deleted, and don't forget to update the TV Tropes page!