Diana fingers readied on the taut string, one calculated slip and she’d fire a arrow through his throat. The barbarism in that thought left her gaping for a reason to lower her bow. “I want to know who you are and why you’re here.”
“I’m Cisco Ramon. I’m an engineer, and I was checking to make sure the structure was stable, and if anyone needed help.” He lied, Cisco was just wandering about, not truly looking for anything or anyone in particular, just wanting to get out and clear his head. “Now, can we put the bow away please?” His eyes wavered from the woman’s face to her weapon and back to her face.
On a scale of one to Adele, my breakup with Kendra is a solid 25. These past few days have been rough – like, downing-an-entire-jar-of-Nutella-while-binge-watching-Jane-the-Virgin rough. How much do I have to eat until the pain goes away? I thought I had finally found “the one,” but how on Earths could I possibly compete with a reincarnated love that transcends time?
I decided to take a mental health day from S.T.A.R. Labs to wallow, but that’s not to say I wasn’t productive. I baked (and promptly ate) an entire batch of Abuela Ramon’s killer Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink cookies, wrote a love ballad for Kendra on my Vortex AX Synth Keytar, cyber-stalked Carter – aka Hawkman – to make sure he checked out (he’s never even had a parking ticket!), and rolled out the trusty yoga mat for some much-needed zen. I tried not to think about Kendra, but that was next to impossible. I mean, have you seen her? It’ll take loads of time and one of those flashy memory-wipers from Men in Black to get her out of my head.
Barry came by after work to check up on me. Let me tell you, a grown man in Star Wars jammies crying his eyes out to Whitney Houston doesn’t make a pretty picture, but to Barry’s credit, he didn’t flinch. He even brought reinforcements: he sped off to Coast City for a stack of his favorite pizza (pepperoni, black olives, and jalapenos) and he brought along a bottle of Joe’s homemade whiskey – which, I learned after the fact, is 140 proof and should not be guzzled like orange soda. Had I been of rational mind, I would’ve asked Barry to hide my phone. The whiskey had me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside and imbued me with the confidence to call Kendra, leave a message declaring my undying love for her, and play her my Keytar ballad. Even The Flash wasn’t fast enough to stop me, but Barry did, at least, knock the phone out of my hand right before I broke into the rap. His look of horror brought me stone cold sober and those fuzzy feelings were replaced with sheer terror – Frak! What had I done?
I ran to my computer and pulled all the stops on my hacking skillz (which was incredibly challenging as I was, at this point, seeing triple). I located Kendra’s phone signal via GPS (she’d left town with Carter and was out near St. Roch) and Barry sped off to retrieve her phone, erase the incriminating voicemail, and return the device safely to her pocket before she even knew what had happened. Crisis averted. We celebrated with a few more rounds of whiskey before I curled up in the fetal position on the sofa and drifted off to sleep, during which I had the sweetest dream of Kendra flying her way back into my life.
Oh, well. They say it’s better to have loved and lost to an Egyptian hawk-god than to never have loved at all, right?
Oliver’s jaw clenched knowing that nothing he would say would deter the young man. Pulling a arrow from his quiver, he quickly loaded his bow and fired without warning. Knowing he’d barely grazed him, the arrow pierced through the boy’s hoodie and into the nearest wall. Cisco had no where to go. “Are you going to tell what you know, Vibe.”
Cisco heard the rush of air milliseconds before he was pinned to the wall. “Once I tell you, you’ll never look at me the same.” Cisco said, glancing down at the wristbands that he was still wearing. These bands were probably one of the best things he’s ever invented. He reached up and tried pulling the arrow out, but he couldn’t get it to budge. “You didn’t have to shoot at me, Mr. Green Arrow.” He snipped, looking back at the man.
Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. As much as Eobard chafed at the thought of dampening such power, in Cisco’s case it would probably serve to help. Short-term, anyway. The first thing Eobard would work on had to be easing Cisco away from power-dampeners, and convincing him not to suppress his true self. Cisco had an amazing gift, one that was also amazingly useful, and Eobard would not see it go to waste.
Even so, when Cisco held out his arms, putting the responsibility for these wristbands in Eobard’s hands, he was surprised and a little apprehensive. If they worked as they should–and since they were Cisco’s devices, they would work–then he was being handed the on/off key to Vibe’s power. Was it trust or desperation that prompted this decision? Either way, he was essentially handcuffing Cisco’s power, and that was an intimate thought. It was with a touch of reverence that Eobard quickly tapped in a six-digit number.
“Very cool, as you say. You never fail to impress me. Though it is only a temporary solution. Might I suggest the Badlands as a suitably remote and safe location for us to work on controlling your power?” He went with an assumption that he would be with Cisco then, and was rather counting on Cisco not disputing that assertion.
“Aren’t most solutions temporary?” Cisco asked as the code was put in and a tiny green light began to glow, signifiying the tech was working. It was hard to describe the feeling of the tech being activated. His head felt fuzzy, as if there was a barrier between him and reality. The only thing he could compare it to was being misdiagnosed for ADD as a kid and taking Adderall when he didn’t need it. He felt so different, and he didn’t like it.
He took a few steps away from Eobard, closing his eyes and focusing his energy into his hands. He directed his hand at one of the swivel chairs that sat a foot or so from them and attempted sending the energy out. He cracked one of his eyes open to see the chair in the same place. A chuckle escaped his lips and a smile spread across his face. “It worked! It really worked!” Cisco was exstatic, and there was just a small sense of sadness that his powers were gone, but he knew that was temporary.
“The badlands? Do you think that’s really far enough away from the city for what I’m capable of?” Cisco crossed his arms and gave the man a skeptical look. “If you say so, I’m down to do a little training. As long as it doesn’t involve being shot at.”
Eobard stepped awkwardly away from the desk just in time, as whatever remained on it went flying. A much smaller burst of power from Cisco, but still a demonstration that the potential to wreak havoc was still there, contained within the trembling frame of this young man. “I never wanted to hurt you,” Eobard said quietly, watching Cisco check his phone. Whatever he was looking at, it wasn’t good. Likely just more fuel to feed his guilt.
He followed Cisco to the lock box, trailing behind by several feet. Cisco needed the space, and his pace was too fast for the limping, exhausted speedster. “I never meant to hurt you,” he repeated. “But I did, so my intention doesn’t matter. The result is that I broke your trust. And that, I regret. What I’m trying to do now is correct my mistakes. So before you make any decisions here, consider all your options. Now.” He steadied himself against the wall, and nodded at the lock box. “What is it you want to do?”
“I want to put a stop to these powers, until I can get somewhere where I can unleash them without the possibility of hurting anyone.” He said, typing the passcode in quickly and pulling the door open. His face lightened when he saw the set of wristbands he’d made when they had learned of the multitude of metahumans that were scrambled throughout Central City.
“These-” He started, turning to face the man. “Are a pair of power dampening wristbands. They kind of look like watches with a code box and GPS locator. They can be separated or be used as handcuffs for metas. I’m going to use them on myself. I just need you to input a code so I can’t take them off.” Cisco finished, slipping the bands over his hands and sticking his arms out to Eobard. “They use a combination of electrical and low-frequency sound waves that are sent to the wearer’s brain, matching the brain waves and disrupting them. It only targets a certain area of the cerebellum, the part that the majority of the superpower control came from. Cool, huh?”
“No man is good,” she said softly. “Your heart isn’t pure, no man’s heart is.”
“Ouch! If you ask any of my friends, they’ll tell you I have a pretty pure heart.” He said, taking a single step forward. “Now, let’s put down the bow and talk about this.” Cisco pleaded, not wanting to be impaled after all that had happened recently, but knowing he probably deserved it.
Diana pulled back the taut string of her bow, the unwarranted intruder would be reminded who was the most powerful in this situation.
Cisco looked up from his phone to see a woman wielding a bow, arrow pulled back and ready to shoot. He raised his hands in surrender, eyes locked on the arrow pointed at his chest. “Woah, chica! Don’t shoot, I’m a good guy. I swear.”
When Cisco complained about his nightmares, they all should have listened more. Eobard had been so… so self-absorbed and obsessed with the thought that Cisco might pick up on visions from the other timeline–besides his death. The water and the ruin, Caitlin’s wrath and Barry’s absence, Cisco’s unmoving body in a cold room, and every hopeless moment after that, while Eobard worked for a way out. He didn’t want anyone else to see that, ever. Too much exposed of himself, too great a horror to inflict on any other.
Of course, the issue had laid much deeper than nightmares involving his powers. And Cisco’s habit of ignoring the bad things had backfired, just as Eobard had predicted, and yet, he wondered if there was a way they could have prevented this.
“Cisco. Stop and think this through. There is no prison cell on this earth that can contain your power. You shook the foundations of this city. At this point, there is only one thing that can control your power, and that’s you. Please,” and that wasn’t a word Eobard often said, almost as rare as ‘sorry,’ but he used it now. Desperate times and so on. “Let me help you.”
Cisco sighed, knowing the man was right. “Why would you want to help me now, after all you’ve did to hurt me?” Cisco snapped, the anger bubbling within him once more as the darkness emerged. He stood and slammed his hands on his desk, sending his computer and other tech flying.
He brought his hands to his head seconds later and began pacing. He brought out his phone and began looking up the numbers on the injured and fatalities of the earthquake. Thinking of anything that might make him feel guilty rather than angry. With the numbers pulled up, Cisco remembered a piece of tech he’d finished just weeks earlier. “Something needs to be done so this -this darkness can’t break through, and I know just the thing.” He said, crossing the room to his lab’s lock box.
Cisco backup 