The trip was even rougher this time.
It felt like she was being rolled through a tube full of boulders and she could do nothing but squeeze her eyes tightly shut, blocking out the endlessly undulating liquid blue walls and wait for it to be over. And then suddenly it was, and she was crashing hard to the same tile floor she had just left, landing into a stack of the same metal boxes she had just jumped off and sending them flying across the room.
A quick glance around showed the room was arranged different from the one she had just left, she had traveled through universes again. She certainly felt battered enough to have crossed into some other world.
The cuffs had stayed with her, still weighing down her arms and giving off the ever-present heat, and she started looking around for something to get them off with. Something she could make into a lock pick would be best, but she would take some sort of bolt cutters or blunt object if that failed.
She found a box of paper clips and sat down on one of the overturned boxes to try and pick the cuffs off, but her hands were shaking badly enough that she couldn't get it work. She fiddled around with the clips for a while, but only really succeeded in leaving a lot of scratches on the metal.
A hand landed on her shoulder, and without even looking she knew who it was. Only a speedster generated that crackle of electricity upon arrival, and Zoom was the only speedster in this universe. "They took my gift," she held up her wrists, voice thick with tears she refused to let fall, "I couldn't, I'm sorry."
He crouched down next to her, and she was starting to become concerned. Zoom was never gentle for this long unless he was very pleased or very angry and saving the retribution for later. And she couldn't have pleased him. "It's alright," he said, "you're safe now."
Killer Frost looked up from the cuffs that she had only managed to scratch, because he wasn't using the double-tone that he always had outside his rooms, no matter how secluded the location. And this was STAR Labs, he shouldn't even be here, not when Harrison Wells would do anything to catch him.
It wasn't Zoom, and yet it was. The man in front of her was dressed in red, but the half-mask over his face didn't stop her from recognizing him. She would know that face anywhere. He was gaping right back at her, and then, so hesitantly, as though he was afraid she would break: "Caitlin?"
She stared back, not quite sure what to make of that. She had been Caitlin once, a lifetime ago, but no one knew that name anymore, Zoom never used it and the police, who were almost the only other people to address her, didn't bother using names when they called for her to put her hands up and surrender peacefully.
"Caitlin," Flash repeated, and then he scooped her up, an arm under her knees and the other curved around her back, and they were moving.
"What?" Cisco jumped when Flash skidded to a halt in what looked like a lab, if the equipment she could see through the glass wall was anything to judge by, "dude, what's happening?"
Flash was making a beeline for a medical table as he spoke. "It's Caitlin," he said, laying her down on it. She fastened a hand around her arm when he started to move back, and he stayed close without a hint of hesitation. His free hand came up to sweep his mask off, revealing Zoom's familiar features, though she had never seen them arranged into such a worried expression before.
"I just got off the phone with Caitlin, like five minutes ago," Cisco replied, "she's picking up Chinese."
"Then explain this," Flash stepped sideways a little in clear invitation, and Cisco moved up to join him at her bedside.
"Whoa," the engineer said, "that's freaky."
"Can you get these off me?" Killer Frost asked him, holding out the arm not latched onto Flash.
He took the appendage and examined the cuff carefully. "I don't know," he said, "this is serious. I think," he left the sentence hanging and scampered across the lab, returning with a magnifying glass. "Yeah, something's wired to the locks," he said, "opening them without the key could-" he reeled back again, stopping several feet away, pointing back at the cuff. "Is that a bomb? Are we all going to explode?"
"Just get them off me," she said.
"Okay, one scan coming right up," Cisco turned on his heel and headed to a corner of the lab.
"It's going to be okay," Flash soothed her, "we'll get these off you. I won't let anything happen to you."
"You promise?" she questioned him, as Cisco wheeled over a complicated-looking machine hooked up to several sensors, and the grip on her hand tightened.
"Yes," said the speedster, "I promise."
Cisco hooked several of the leads to her arms, then ran what looked like an airport metal detector over the cuffs. Several button clicks and a great deal of typing later, an image of the cuffs and her arms popped up on screen.
"Okay," Cisco pointed to the scan, where the cuffs were rotating slowly, showing an internal network of wires, hooked up to several small clusters of circuits, "the good news is that this is not a bomb."
"And the bad news?" Flash prompted.
"The bad news is whoever put this on her did not want it to come off," replied the engineer, "it's not a bomb now, but I cut the wrong wire and it turns into one. It looks like it was designed to pump out some serious heat, and if I cut the release of that, it's an inferno in a bottle."
Killer Frost pulled her hands into her chest, suddenly acutely aware of the scratches on the locks. How close had she come to blowing herself up? And how badly had the other Cisco wanted to keep her powerless, that these couldn't come off? "Can you get them off?" she asked him.
"Given some time, yeah," he agreed, "just let me spend some time with the specs and I'll get these babies singing to whatever tune I want them to play."
She sat up, sliding sideways to swing her legs over the side. Flash had zipped off to look at something on the screen, though he was still hovering at the edges of the room. She didn't mind that. If he didn't move at superspeed, she could almost pretend he was Zoom, and if he stayed close, it would be easy to kill him once she had her powers returned to her.
"So what now?" she asked.
A streak of red and gold crossed the room past her, stopping at an assortment of shining medical tools laid out on a table, then returned to lay several of them on the edge of her bed.
"Hold out your hand," he said and she did. He took her wrist, turning her arm over, and swabbed the inside of her arm with something. There was a sting in the area as he put a needle in and she forced herself not to flinch. "Sorry," he said, then gave a quiet laugh. "Reminds me of when I woke up and the first thing you wanted was a blood sample."
She nodded absently, watching the vial fill quickly with her blood, and he bandaged the area, instructing her to apply pressure.
Once the vial of red liquid was safely sitting on the table, he swept her up again, the same way he had carried her before, and the room rushed by as he crossed into another.
It was barely two heartbeats later before he laid her down, so gently, as though she was something precious and fragile. She only realized that this wasn't another medical bed when he was standing back up. "I'm sorry," he said, and then he was on the other side of a door that was closed on her.
"Umm, dude?" Cisco's voice rose in a question from somewhere out of sight, growing clearer as she moved toward the door, "What are you doing?"
"She's not Caitlin," Flash's shoulders had dropped, his voice defeated, "it just looks like her."
Killer Frost pounded on the door, desperation rising as the memory of the cell resurfaced. She forced it down, taking one breath, then another. Desperation would not help her here. "Flash," she said, spreading her fingers on the glass, "you promised to get these off me."
He mirrored the gesture. "We'll do that once we know who you are."
And then he moved off to do something with the vial of blood he had taken, leaving her standing there, still powerless, trading one cage for a larger one.
She wound up sitting on the floor with her back to the door and her legs stretched out in front of her, half-dozing. If nothing else, being locked in the cell for however long it had been had taught her how to wait.
"I was looking at the cuffs that were on her," Cisco's voice said, pulling her back from where she had been balanced at the brink of sleep, "and they were exactly what I would have made."
"So someone with engineering abilities tried to take away her powers," said a female voice.
"That's the thing though," Cisco interjected, "it wasn't just 'someone good', or 'someone with engineering skills', it was me. I know how I wire things, and that was my wiring. I made those cuffs."
"What are you saying?" that was Flash.
"I'm saying I made it, but I know this me didn't," said the engineer.
"This you?" the woman echoed.
"Think about it," Cisco urged, "she looks exactly like you, Caitlin, well, except for the hair, and her DNA is a perfect match. Unless you have an identical twin hidden away somewhere, or the particle accelerator exploding made another copy of you, she has to be from another universe."
"It does seem to fit," Flash put in, "When I found her, she acted like she was expected. She was talking about how she hadn't been able to do something, it was like she was reporting back to someone."
"Hold on," said the woman, Caitlin, Cisco had said her name was, and Cisco shushed her as Killer Frost shifted against the door. When Caitlin continued, it was at a volume that she had to crane to hear, "we're talking about another universe. I know we've seen some crazy things, but other universes?"
"Hey," that was Cisco again, and from the tone she imagined him with his hands up, "personally, I think time travel ranks above other universes on the craziness scale."
"What are we going to do about her?" that was the woman, "she can't just stay in the treadmill room, but we've seen no reason to put her in the pipeline."
"Someone put those cuffs on her for a reason, and we still don't know what that is," Cisco said, "as far as I can tell, the amount of heat these babies are generating is enough to cook your dinner on, but she's okay, so we can cross normal human off the list of things she is."
"We can't let her out," that was Flash, "not until we know who she is and why she's here. But we also can't put her in the pipeline without a reason."
"How about freaky appearing skills?" volunteered Cisco, "if she can teleport like Peek-a-boo and change like Everyman, she could be stealing their powers."
"It could be Everyman all over again," Caitlin added.
"Have you tried asking her?" this was a new voice, female, but different from the one who had spoken thus far. There was a long and guilty pause on the other side of the door, then someone sighed. "I'll go do it."
Another new voice spoke up, this one male. "No, I'll go," he volunteered.
"I'm pregnant, Eddie," said the woman, "not made of glass. It's still my job to ask questions."
"But we still don't know what her powers are," Flash jumped in, "and we don't know how it could affect the baby."
The newcomer sighed. "Then we ask," it wasn't a question, and she scooted just far enough away from the door that she didn't fall when it opened a few seconds later.
A blonde man with a badge clipped to his hip let himself into the room, and Killer Frost stared up at him as he settled himself on the edge of the treadmill. He looked familiar, and it wasn't difficult to remember where she had seen him before, in addition to doing her interrogation the first day, he had done several lunch runs in the other universe. "Thawne," she greeted.
"Yes," he said, sounding surprised, "I am. Who are you?"
"My name is Killer Frost," she told him.
"Hello Miss Frost," he said, "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
This was different from the usual approach police took, more friendly than what she was accustomed to. She eyed him suspiciously, but nodded her consent.
Thawne leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "How did you get into STAR Labs?" he asked.
"From another universe," she said, and she meant the words to be a snap but they sounded more tired.
His eyebrows went up a fraction at the words, but other than that he showed no signs of surprise. He opened his mouth once, closed it, opened it again, and looked no less like a dying fish for the pause. "Another-?" he cast a desperate glance at the door, but whatever reinforcements he was hoping for where nowhere to be found and he returned his attention to her.
"Is that where you got the cuffs?" he asked, tone gentling to one he might use on a frightened animal, or a trauma victim.
"It is," she felt safe admitting that much, at least. "They're meant to keep me powerless," Killer Frost picked up a wrist and turned it over. For having been banged against walls, traveled between universes, picked at, and having the possibility of turning into a bomb, they were in fairly good shape, "My captors in the last universe were frightened of me, of what I could do."
All technically true, but he would not arrive at the exact sequence of events she had been through. Another of Zoom's tricks, whenever possible, don't lie.
"What can you do?" Thawne asked, hands still hanging loose. He was starting to trust her. Good.
"I pull in heat from the things around me," she explained, "I can direct that to make ice, snow, and frost. I'd show you, but..." she trailed off, spreading both hands with a shrug.
"We'd have to get them off first," Thawne surmised, "one last question." She nodded, and he continued, "why did they lock you up?"
She hesitated before answering, sorting through the events of the last universe. The short answer was she'd tried to kill the Flash, but that answer would get her thrown back in the pipeline with no hope of escaping again. They were frightened was also correct, but she had a feeling he wanted more than that for an answer. Zoom she refused to reveal, when he came, he wouldn't want them to be prepared for him.
"I-" she fixed her gaze to her hands, clenched together in her lap, "I nearly killed people before I got my powers under control." Which was true in her first universe, before Zoom had taken her under his wing. "I did kill a few trying to control them."
"But you have them under control?" he pried.
She nodded. There was silence from the detective, and Killer Frost hardly dared to move. If he didn't like her answer, there was nothing she could do to stop them from bundling her up and flinging her back into the pipeline. She was outnumbered, and without her powers she didn't stand a chance.
He stood, took a few steps closer, and then a hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed. She dared a look up, and found . "We'll get those off you," he said, and offered a hand up.
She turned her lips up into something resembling a smile and let him pull her to her feet, then followed him into the main room.
"This is Killer Frost," Thawne said when they cleared the doorway, "she has ice powers."
"Hey," Cisco greeted, spinning around in his chair and not even trying to hide the fact he'd been listening in, "Sorry about the whole, locked in a random room thing. We haven't exactly had the best track record with people who have other people's faces. First Everyman, then Dr. Wells."
"Harrison Wells?" she asked, confused now.
Cisco's expression went dark for a second. "You know him?"
She nodded, still waiting for the other shoe to drop. "He runs STAR Labs in my universe. How does he have someone else's face?"
"Harrison Wells in our universe was actually a speedster from the future named Eobard Thawne," that was the Flash, leaning against on of the tables. He had changed out of the red costume and into street clothes, but she recognized the face and the voice, "he called himself Reverse-Flash."
The name was so ludicrously unoriginal she couldn't stop the disbelieving look. "Reverse-Flash?" At least Zoom had been creative.
Cisco snorted. "And good riddance to him, he's serving time in Iron Heights for multiple counts of murder with his shiny new speed suppressors. Last I heard the other inmates don't like him very much. Serves him right."
There was a little more venom and bitterness there than was strictly necessary, but she didn't press the question, as the hugely pregnant woman who had been sitting in the other desk chair stood up and waddled toward her. She spared the detective a brilliantly sweet smile when he slipped an arm around her waist, the gesture familiar and practiced.
"Iris West-Thawne," the woman said, extending a hand.
She hesitated an instant, the habit of touching no one but Zoom unless she wished to harm them kicking in, but then she took the woman's hand. "Killer Frost," she replied.
"You've met my husband Eddie," Iris continued, "this is Barry Allen" she gestured to the Flash, "Caitlin Snow went to check one of the test results, and this is Cisco Ramon."
"So uh, Killer Frost," Cisco swiveled around once in the chair, leveling a pen at her for emphasis when he faced her again. "Is that the name you had before your powers, or is it open for suggestions? 'Cause I'm not seeing anybody giving their child Killer as a first name."
"That is my name," she shot back, "and I'm not changing it."
Cisco deflated and spun back to face forward. His head snapped up, and he glanced over his shoulder at her, then back to the brunette woman over by the medical equipment, "Oh that is weird," he told them.
"What?" the woman turned around, and whatever else she had been going to say stopped dead as she and Killer Frost stared at each other. She recognized Caitlin from the voice that had been talking earlier, but the woman had exactly her face. The hair and the eyes were both brown, but before her powers kicked in and her eyes iced over blue, hers had been the same way. It was like looking through a window into the past.
"Oh," said the woman, "I see now. Maybe I shouldn't touch her. Just in case."
"Probably a good idea," Cisco contributed, "that's generally when universe ending paradoxes result in all the movies."
"Or when you touch a version of yourself from a different point in your time stream," Flash added.
"Speaking of other universes," Thawne cut in quickly, before the conversation could completely degenerate, "how did you get here?"
She had to do a quick review of what had happened to make her wind up here, to check what she could and couldn't tell them. "I'm not sure exactly," she said finally, slightly hesitant, "I came through a breech between the universes, but I don't know where they originated or what caused them or even how many there are."
"Wait a second," Caitlin said, comprehending something, "that means the breech is here, at STAR. That's how you got past the new security."
Killer Frost nodded. Flash pushed himself upright from where he had been leaning against the desk and vanished past her in a stream of lightning. He returned seconds later, skidding to a halt next to her. "Found it," he announced, "same room she was in."
"Across the hall from the movie room?" Cisco asked.
It was so ingrained in her to reach out for Zoom, to ward the chill off, that she didn't realize she had taken the step sideways, starting to lean against Flash until the jolt when she couldn't feel his heat went through her like hitting a physical wall. She stepped backward immediately, and earned a flicker of a confused look from the speedster before he brushed it off.
"Speaking of movies," Barry changed the subject, "since no one is destroying the city tonight-"
"Star Wars," the engineer said instantly, "the new one comes out soon."
"But I almost died yesterday and-" the speedster began, and Cisco interrupted.
"Not to be insensitive dude, but you almost die at least once a week. It is my turn to pick and I pick Star Wars."
Caitlin was nodding along with a sympathetic expression, and Killer Frost was watching them go back and forth like it was a tennis match, the scene bizarrely normal. She didn't realize she was starting to smile, just a hint of one, until she felt her facial muscles move.
Barry gave up, and vanished in a blur of gold. He reappeared seconds later with a stack of DVD cases that he set on the desk.
"No, you don't watch one," Cisco said, pulling the case out of the stack and shoving it into a random desk drawer, "you watch four-five, then two-three, then you end on six, so the originals become a frame tale for the prequels and you don't have the sequences where Darth Vader is a weirdly adorable little kid."
"Iris?" Barry pleaded, turning around for reinforcement.
The detective's wife raised an eyebrow, the expression at odds with the amused little smile on her face, and heaved herself back to her feet where she'd sat down at one of the desk chairs. "We're going home and my only plans are a bowl of ice cream and going to bed. I'm sleeping for two and she's tired. You're on your own for this one, Bear."
"Killer?" he turned to her, and she couldn't stop the flinch at the name, mind racing back to Zoom and how disappointed he was going to be when he found out she'd left the last one alive. "Hey," he appeared in front of her, wrapped her hands up in his, "What's wrong?"
She froze, as surely as anyone she'd ever used her gift on, gaze fixed on her hands, swallowed up by his. Zoom would never have done anything like that, probably wouldn't have noticed the involuntary reaction. But then, she had never flinched with Zoom, had never disappointed him like this before.
She heard muffled voices and a few small clattering noises as Cisco rooted through the stack.
"We'll be in the movie room," Caitlin said quietly, and footsteps receded down the hall, splitting apart as Iris and Thawne went a different direction.
"He called me Killer," she managed out after a moment. The words felt too close to a betrayal to feel right in her mouth.
"Who?" Barry asked, "your captor?"
It was easy to nod. The other Barry had never called her by any name, but he and Zoom were versions of the same person.
"It's okay," he soothed, "you're safe now, They can't get you. They won't get you."
She turned her hands over in his grasp, looking again at the keyholes on the cuffs. She still felt like she was submerged in warm bathwater, and the sensation was cloying. "I can't defend myself without my gift," she said, and wanted to reel the words back in the second they escaped. She sounded weak, and Zoom would have-
The thought derailed as the speedster spoke again. "I'll protect you until you have your powers back," he promised, green eyes sincere when she looked up to meet them, "And you will get them back."
Inconceivable as it was, she believed him. Zoom would tear him to shreds, but she really believed he would go down fighting. For her.
It took her another moment to regain her composure, but he kept her hand as he lead the way to the movie room, where Cisco and Caitlin had already gotten everything set up. The logo was frozen, projected onto a blank wall, someone had made popcorn and the half of the battered couch that was definitely not STAR Labs issue was waiting for them. She settled between Cisco and Barry, Caitlin on the engineer's other side, and Cisco told the movie to play.
The fanfare rang out, two droids escaped, and she was engrossed.
She fell asleep somewhere around the time Luke and Han were receiving medals, the relief of not being in a cell making her more exhausted than she would have been otherwise. When she woke up again, it was morning, she had the couch to herself and someone had draped a blanket over her.
Leaving the blanket behind, she started wandering. If STAR Labs was laid out the same in every universe, it would be an excellent idea to be able to navigate through here. When she found her way back to the central room, both Barry and the Flash suit were nowhere to be seen and Cisco was seated at the computer, watching something on the screen.
"Oh good, you're awake," Cisco called out when she stepped into the room, "can you watch that half of the cameras and tell Barry if someone sneaks up behind him?"
Her last attempt to kill the Flash without having the use of her powers had gone so spectacularly well, she thought even Zoom would understand if she didn't kill this one yet, not until she had her gift back.
Until then, she should really get them to trust her. She took the chair Cisco indicated, and started helping Flash save the city.
It took Cisco a month to figure out how to get the cuffs off her without blowing them all to kingdom come. By the end of that time, she had seen all the Star Wars movies, the entire Back to the Future trilogy, most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the lab had nearly been blown up three times (twice by a metahuman, once by Cisco), they'd saved the city from nefarious meta-humans four times, Iris had had her baby and named Barry godfather, and Cisco had wound up simply recreating the key by making a perfect replica of the cuffs.
And she knew them now. She knew Barry had a heroic streak a mile wide and Caitlin always scolded him for taking dangerous risks, and he would nod and say he wouldn't, until the next time. She knew Cisco kept a stash of candy in his desk and Barry was forever buying more because he'd eaten it and felt bad about it. She knew Barry used to be in love with Iris, still went out to lunch with her every Friday, but Iris was so head-over-heels for Eddie it was impossible to imagine the pair not together. And she knew every time the cuffs got to her, made her feel like she was suffocating, Barry was there to get her through it.
It was almost like vacation, no buildings to break into, no police to run from, no moves in the middle of the night where Zoom could erase all traces they'd been there in sixty seconds; just the occasional meta-human.
But Cisco came running into the lab one Tuesday morning, hair sticking in all directions like he'd just been electrocuted, waving a bit of metal over his head. "I got it!" the engineer announced, "I can unlock the cuffs." And her heart sank a little, she wanted these off, but she didn't want this to end either.
She had started to extend a hand, still desperately eager to get them off and get her gift back, but no sooner had Cisco taken the offered arm when she reached out and stopped him. "Let Barry do it," she said.
The speedster's face reflected the surprise on the engineer's, and she carried on. "I don't know how my powers will react when you undo the cuffs," she explained, "he stands the best chance of getting out safely if they do act up."
Cisco yielded to her logic, explained what Barry had to do, surrendered the key, and they went to the breech room. The key clicked in first one, then the other, and he pulled them off at the same time and let them fall to the floor with twin clangs. "How do you feel?" he asked.
To her surprise, she didn't feel much different than she had a moment ago. She had been expecting to feel a rush of cold, or maybe an explosion of ice, something more dramatic than just the cuffs coming off. Holding up a hand, she called for ice.
Her powers answered, and for the first time in far too long, snowflakes formed at her fingertips, growing thicker by the second until she had a tiny blizzard swarming around her hand and a pile of snow accumulating at her feet. Killer Frost turned to him, really smiling for the first time since before Zoom had set her in an alleyway, and started to reach for him. Halfway there, she stopped, hand suspended as she caught up with that train of thought. She was finally capable of doing what she had been sent here to do, to leave him a frozen corpse on the floor.
He bridged the gap himself, reaching for her, trusting and open. "Kil?" It would be so easy to step into the touch, to slip one of her icicles into his chest. He would never see it coming. This was why she was here, the mission Zoom had given her.
But she had watched his back while they saved the city, she had seen his face when he held his goddaughter for the first time, he had given her a new nickname when she couldn't stand the old one, and she had fallen asleep on his shoulder that first night here. She twisted away from the touch, and the breech writhed overhead. She couldn't kill him, so she couldn't stay here.
She looked up, meeting his eyes, confusion and hurt written across his face. "I'm sorry," she breathed, "I don't want to kill you." And threw out a handful of ice, throwing him backward. Without waiting to see what would happen, she leapt into the air, creating ice under her feet.
The breech opened above her, and through vision turning blue, she found Flash slowly climbing to his feet.
She didn't know whether the pang that went through her was relief or regret, but there was no time to think about it as she smashed into something and the breech whisked her away.
Thanks everybody who's reading, I appreciate all of you. Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Here is the detail about the universe.
This is a world where Iris accidentally got pregnant while Barry was in the coma, and Eddie, being the responsible gentleman in love with her that he is, immediately asked her to marry him. She said yes, on the condition that she wanted her father to walk her down the aisle and her best friend to stand up next to her on her wedding day. She insisted they knock Reverse-Flash unconscious for the entire time-travel incident and no one was willing to argue with the hormonal pregnant lady.
The order Cisco suggested for the Star Wars movies is called machete order, and there's more details and arguments and counter-arguments online if you want to know more. Happy holidays, next chapter should be out in a few days.
