I'm really sorry about the cliffhangers. (I'm not.)
Additional warning for this chapter: nonconsensual drug use.
"Caitlin?"
The voice penetrated her consciousness like a blinking light through fog—barely, but enough to be recognizable. She sucked in another shuddering breath and willed the voice away.
"Leave me alone."
The air would not reach her lungs; she tried to catalogue the tightness as a doctor might, but she couldn't find that part of herself. Pieces of her soul, of her identity, were scattered throughout the building, blown apart by the explosion. She clung tighter to the front of her shirt, the only thing she could find purchase in.
"Hey, hey, it's okay. You're safe. I'm right here. Cait. You're having a panic attack."
A warm hand rested on her back, rubbing slow circles in an attempt to ease her breathing. The musky scent of Cisco's cologne wafted toward her, grounding her. Another breath stuttered.
"Easy. Easy."
With Cisco's solidity beside her, she struggled through another painful inhale—fearing suffocation or death, fearing what awaited her if neither of those came.
Gradually, the room came back into focus, the STAR logo on the wall taking shape before her eyes. The force of the particle accelerator explosion one week prior had knocked the R off-center, skewing it sideways.
"I couldn't find you anywhere," Cisco said. "I was worried something had happened. You weren't answering any of my calls."
Without guilt, Caitlin looked up at her phone, which she'd shoved halfway across the room shortly after collapsing to the floor.
"I didn't want you to see this," she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
"See what?"
"Weakness."
"Cait." Cisco repositioned himself on the floor, removing his hand from her back and sliding on his knees in front of her. "This isn't something any of us are supposed to be strong for, okay? Hey. Eyes on me." He waited patiently for her to look up, to look him in the eyes. "You don't have to be alone in this."
"But I am alone." Caitlin's voice wavered and broke even as she said it. "Everything is broken. Ronnie is…" She bit her lip to stifle a sob, still unable to say the word a week after it had become a reality. "I'm more alone than I've ever been in my life. And I'm terrified of what comes next."
Cisco reached forward, took one of her trembling hands. "Cait, you're not alone. I'm right here. No, look at me." She did again, and saw the same grief, the same uncertainty, but also a burgeoning determination in his eyes. "I'm not going to leave. And whatever the future holds, we can get through it, right? Together."
The words stewed in her consciousness. The sensation of smoke and of dying still lingered in her periphery whenever she opened her eyes. She didn't believe the words, not yet, and wouldn't for a long while, she knew.
But she allowed herself to relent somewhat under the pressure of Cisco's resolve, his hope still too strong after all this time to go unheeded. She softened, squeezed his hand back.
The change didn't go unnoticed. Cisco managed a tight smile. "That's it. Come on, let's get you something to eat."
She pressed her fingers tighter into his hand as he helped her to her feet—an anchor amidst the storm, amidst the raging world that still threatened to topple her. He pulled her forward gently, and she followed.
When she opened her eyes, the room careened around her.
Don't panic, Caitlin. Don't panic. You're not going to be helping anyone by panicking.
The funny thing was, telling herself not to panic did nothing to actually prevent her from panicking. Her fingers had gone numb, and, while the evidence was pointing convincingly toward it, she knew it wasn't from the tightened zip-ties.
Don't panic.
She tensed her muscles and scrunched her eyes shut against a swoop of breathlessness, of nausea, but to no avail. The chill traveled from the pit of her stomach up through her throat, and she gagged over the side of her chair. With nothing in her stomach and no genuine sickness, nothing came up, but she dry-heaved until tears sprang to her eyes. Even after she was done, she allowed the tears to fall, unable to control herself with the intense trembling in her limbs. She had sometimes had concerns that Barry would literally run himself to pieces; now, she felt the same way, as if she might shake herself apart.
Don't panic.
Barry's empty chair, and now Cisco's empty chair, captured her attention. The longer she looked at them, the shorter her breaths became, and the more she began to shiver. The warehouse was cold, but sweat gathered at the base of her neck. As much as she didn't want to imagine what was happening to Barry and Cisco, she couldn't help it. She hated imagining Jason with his knife, with his tire iron, with something worse, but at least in those scenarios her friends were still alive.
For how long, was the question. If they died, at least she wouldn't be far behind. With the explosion of STAR labs, plus the unreasonably long time they'd been imprisoned, Caitlin was doubtful anyone would find them in time.
All alone in the warehouse, listening to the echoes of those empty chairs, she allowed the hot tears to slip down her face. The metal chair pressed hard against her spine, and her body shrieked in pain with every breath. Somehow the quiet, the solitude, amplified everything.
She'd gotten used to solitude, in a way. Once upon a time she thought she was done with solitude, when a ring had been on her finger and eternity in her future, but since then she'd gotten used to a productive kind of solitude. A solitude of an empty apartment at night, of independence.
This kind of solitude was different. This one was painful, constricting, depressing. The more the warehouse creaked, the more she was aware of how vast it was, and how little space she occupied within it now that the comfort of her friends was gone.
Though she had the impression she'd been unconscious a while, she was still exhausted, so she allowed herself to drift in and out of uneasy sleep. Her dreams were plagued by an inescapable chill, the kind that threaded its way through her bloodstream. Dreams she couldn't wake up from. Dreams that relinquished their hold whenever they chose, thrusting her back harshly into reality intermittently. Each time she woke, she was forced to re-discover the pain and the fear all over again. She didn't know what was worse: the dreams or the warehouse.
Finally, after what felt like hours, Caitlin awoke to footfalls, each one increasing in volume. She had come to recognize the intense boot stomps of Jason, but these weren't them. The woman with the frizzy hair—which had only gotten unrulier after the night's events—approached Caitlin with arms crossed protectively over her chest. If Caitlin wasn't mistaken, the bags beneath her eyes had deepened since their last interaction.
"Come back to gloat more?" Caitlin said, her voice raspier than she'd realized. On the huge list of concerns, she hadn't even acknowledged thirst until now.
"Good to see you're awake," the woman said emotionlessly. "Thought you might have died from that knock to the head."
"You could see I was awake," Caitlin said, nodding up to the security camera. "It's been hours, right? If you're going to kill me, why not just do it?"
"We were a little preoccupied." The woman continued striding forward toward Caitlin. The words, and the movement, made Caitlin tense up, her breath hitch. "Jason's not happy, you know. Two surprise metahumans on your team. Unexpected, to say the least. It makes a person wonder what other surprises you're not telling us about."
"If they were surprises, obviously you wouldn't know," Caitlin said, but the snark was cut off at the sight of what the woman was holding. "What are you going to do with that?"
The woman uncrossed her arms and held the full syringe into the light. "Like I said, we don't like surprises. And with two surprise metahumans in our little trio…" She looked up curiously at Caitlin. "You can understand why we might be a bit suspicious of the third."
Caitlin's heart skipped a beat. "I'm not a metahuman."
"I bet that's what the others said, too."
"You never asked," Caitlin said, a touch more fiercely than she'd intended. "Listen, you've put me under just as much stress as the others, and…no powers. You think I would keep those to myself after everything we've been through?"
But even as she said the words, she knew the ground was slipping out from beneath her feet. If she had been in the woman's position—which, strike that, she never would be—she would have held the same suspicions. Like she'd said, two out of the three captives had suddenly displayed hidden powers. There was no reason to believe Caitlin wouldn't do the same, given the chance.
"Good thing you developed this serum," the woman said. She finally reached Caitlin's chair and crouched at her uninjured arm, pushing up the gauzy sleeve just enough to expose the crook at Caitlin's elbow. "Assuming you gave us a workable formula and didn't try anything funny, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, now, should it?"
"It's not tested properly," Caitlin said, starting to struggle now, the desperation rising in her throat. Even if it did work on metahumans, there was no saying what it might do to normal people. There likely wouldn't be catastrophic effects, but there was also no way to be sure. These things required experimentation. Safe, confined testing. She heaved herself sideways, but the woman held her arm in place with one hand as she guided the needle toward Caitlin's skin.
"Please," Caitlin said, almost choking on the word.
The woman met her gaze for an instant. Her eyes had gone curiously dark. "Do you see any other way?" she said.
Before Caitlin could formulate a response, the needle pricked her skin, sank into her arm. She gripped the arms of the chair, scrambling for some kind of purchase, but the plunger of the needle sank. Caitlin began to thrash, more desperate than before, but the damage was done; the cold fluid trickled into her bloodstream.
There was no one to hear her, no one to save her, but still she screamed, because it was instinct, because it was her only method of survival now. She couldn't move and she couldn't dispel the serum from her blood, but she could scream. The fluid bubbled through her, at first tingly and numbing like alcohol, then growing sharp like needle pricks. It made its presence known in every cell in her body, and she felt as if millions of icy bubbles were roiling under her skin.
The woman pulled back with the needle, but Caitlin couldn't process it—she was going to be sick, she was going to—going to burst out of her own skin—
A bang, a shout. Caitlin's own scream trailed off into a moan, and she felt the sweat pooling on her upper lip, at her hairline. The commotion came from behind her, but she couldn't bring herself to swivel her head to look. However, soon that was solved for her as the woman grabbed her and spun her chair roughly around. Another crash. The woman's knife, cool against now-feverish skin, pressed to Caitlin's throat.
"Put them down." The woman's voice was like fear, like heat, like moisture. "Put them down, or I kill her."
"You're surrounded," came a strong, rumbling male voice. "Hands in the air!"
Dark shapes advanced from the dark spaces of the warehouse, but the woman only got closer. "Back off!"
Caitlin's body seized tight, and dizziness engulfed her.
"Drop it!"
"I will kill her!"
Caitlin blinked slowly, heavily, against pain too intense to be real.
An echoing crack. A rush of warm liquid against Caitlin's arm. A shrill cry close to her ear. White noise.
Caitlin opened her eyes.
The shadows descended more quickly, most moving further into the darkness, two jogging off to the side where the woman had been, one landing directly in front of Caitlin. It took Caitlin a few more sluggish seconds to discern that what she was seeing was the face of Joe West.
His lips were moving. Gradually the white noise cleared from her ears enough for her to make out the words. "…lin. Caitlin, look at me. You're going to be okay."
Someone was slicing through the zip-ties. Joe's face was going double. "Joe."
"Do you know where the others are?" Joe said, craning his head to keep her gaze. "Barry and Cisco?"
The drug, the adrenaline crash, the exhaustion, was taking its toll. The tension released from Caitlin's body and she went limp, trying to cling to Joe's voice but failing spectacularly. "I don't know," she murmured, wincing at a tremor that passed through her. "I don't know, I don't know…"
"Shh, Caitlin, it's alright," Joe said. He raised a hand and called into the darkness: "We need a medic over here!" When he turned back to her, even in her exhausted state, she could see the worry lines deepening on his face. However, the image dissolved like rust. The detective's hand rose to her face, cupping her cheek. "Hey, look at me. We've got you. You're safe. Stay with me, okay? Caitlin?"
But the words, as with everything else, disintegrated.
Thanks for reading! We're about halfway now, and I still can't believe the support this fic is getting! For everyone who is wondering, this is a strict Cait POV story, so it'll have to be up to your imaginations for a bit to decide what is happening to the others :)
As always, reviews are the light of my life. See you Wednesday.
Till next time,
Penn