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saiilorstars · 2 years

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Ch.30: The Round Up

Pairing: Barry Allen x OFC

Current Masterlist | Previous Story

Pronunciation of OC: Bell-en. The last syllable has an emphasis so it’s not pronounced like ‘Helen’ would be.

Taglist: @ocappreciationtag @arrthurpendragon @anotherunreadblog @maaaaarveeeeel @stareyedplanet @foxesandmagic

[If you’d like to be part of this OC’s taglist, let me know!

It was a dark night when Earth 2's metahumans would decide to attack right in the open. Maybe it was their strong belief that they wouldn't be caught, or maybe that it would simply be more fun to mess around together under the dark night. Either way, it didn't work. All around, there were reports that the Flash had returned and was cleaning up the city from the new dangerous metahumans.

But now it was the other way around.

The Azalea was missing.

The news was quick to report that Zoom had taken the Azalea right in front of the CCPD. It seemed to the city like they could never have all of its protectors together but it would have one additional member ready to help again.

Black Orchid swooped down on a pair of metas throwing a park bench into a fountain — God knew what type of fun they could be having from doing that — and swiftly knocked them down with a thick vine. For good measure, she wrapped the pair up like cocoons, leaving behind only their faces free. She stormed over to them and placed a foot over one of their bodies. "Where's Datura?" she demanded. The two metahumans exchanged glances with each other before both bursting into laughter. Black Orchid made a show to press her shoe deeper into the meta's body, forcing that obnoxious laughter to cease. "I didn't make a joke. I asked a damn question so answer it. Where's Datura?"

"No idea!" the other metahuman finally answered. "She's been M.I.A. ever since she brought us over to this world."

"And Poison Ivy?"

"Who knows!"

Black Orchid removed her foot just as a gust of wind struck behind her. She turned sideways to meet Barry's gaze. Without saying anything, she shook her head. Barry's jaw clenched. He didn't waste another moment there. He sped the two metas out of the scene to their new home in the pipeline.

~ 0 ~

'Some people are calling it the metapocalypse, the days when Central City was overrun by an army with powers beyond imagination. But in these dark times, we must never forget our own strength, our own power to fight back. That it is only in the blackest of nights that we can truly see the light... and know for sure we are not alone. We are never... ever... alone.'

Nina's eyes fervently finished reading the day's newspaper and lowered said paper to see Iris on her bedside. "Love the title, hate the reality."

Iris took the criticism (although not meant for her) with a small shrug. "A lot of our articles this week has to do with that unfortunately."

"Wonder why," Nina pushed herself to sit upright on the bed. She was still under watch for her stab wound but was making normal progress in her condition.

"That and the missing people and the obituaries," Iris added with a sigh, her shoulders slumping. She'd been tasked with some of those fatal stories and it was killing her to write about the innocent dying at the hands of Zoom's metahumans.

"Is that what they still think happened to Belén? That she's just missing?"

Iris nodded silently. "Yeah." During these times, the story wasn't so drastic. And that was sad. Despite the conflicts that Belén was having with CC Pictures, the latter still cared for her safe return.

Their silence was brokered by the sound of Barry and Shivhan returning from their latest metahuman hunt. Neither Iris nor Nina needed to ask them anything to know how successful their mission went.

"You should be resting," Barry said to Nina after catching her trying to shift from her bed.

Nina scoffed. "Cut the crap, I'm the doctor here. I know what I should and shouldn't do."

"No need to argue here," Shivhan told the two with a cautious air in her voice, "We're all on the same side."

The tension between Barry and Nina stemmed from their own individual guilt about Belén's capture. If Barry hadn't been in the Speed Force, he wouldn't have let Zoom take Belén and in turn if Nina had been 'stronger', she would've put up more of a fight. Both guilts — as each of the others stated — were completely misplaced. Shivhan had her own guilt to handle. It was a terrible situation to come out of the Green because the Green itself commanded her to return and help Belén. The whole reason she'd even been in the Green for such a long time was to help protect the people Belén wanted to look after. Shivhan never imagined that it would be this moment that Datura would choose to make her play.

"I have looked everywhere and I just...I can't," Barry felt ashamed that he was letting Belén and Caitlin down. He said, he promised, he would find them and yet here he was empty handed.

"There has to be something we're not seeing," Nina said after a moment. "You don't just hide two grown women in a city like this."

"Well, maybe that's it then," Iris said, earning herself several looks. "We can't account for Zoom because we don't really know him but we know Belén. Datura is Belén therefore we can assume that she thinks like Belén."

"No she doesn't," Barry snapped, utterly offended on behalf of Belén. Datura was far from being Belén. His Bells didn't think murder — she didn't think about hurting people.

"Hold on, Iris may be onto something there," Shivhan rested a hand on Barry's arm. "Fundamentally, their core is the same. Little stuff can be the same. What's Belén's thought-process like? Like...is she complicated?"

Barry sent her a flat stare. "Far from it. She likes things plain and simple. She likes mysteries but she doesn't like a whole elaborate plan. But she likes tricks, so…" he paused a moment, "She has to be hiding them under our noses. The last place I would ever think of." It actually worked for both doppelgangers when Barry got to more thinking. Belén like things simple and Datura liked playing harsh games. Wherever she was keeping Belén, it had to be somewhere close to Belén but still supply Datura with a smug victory. A pleasurable victory knowing she was hanging Belén right in front of them.

Barry felt his body tremble. He absolutely despised Datura.

~ 0 ~

Datura took a sharp intake of breath after smelling alcohol. She nearly busted heads with Caitlin who had swabbed a damp cotton under her nose.

"Where the hell am I!?" the dark-brunette blinked rapidly.

Caitlin slowly helped her up to her feet. "You're here, in Mercury Labs. Don't you remember?"

Datura scrunched her face when the alcohol became too much. She shook her head and looked around, seeing no Belén in the room. "The doppelganger!? Where is she!?" she frantically began to search under tables and around them.

Caitlin was having trouble figuring out what was going on. "You can't...you can't remember, can you?"

Datura stopped and sideways glanced at the woman. "WHERE. IS SHE!?" Caitlin flinched when the woman stalked up to her. "WHERE!?"

"P-Poison Ivy took her! Remember!?" Caitlin managed to answer between the shakes. "I-I don't know where because you said it was a secret!"

Datura let Caitlin go and thought for a second. "I think...I think I don't remember."

"You don't….?"

"I-I know where Poison Ivy took her, but I...I can't remember asking her to," Datura ran her hands through her hair, obviously frustrated with herself. "Why can't I remember? Why…?"

Caitlin actually felt sorry for her. "Um, it's...it's part of your condition. You're beginning to have blackouts due to the other...uh…"

"People in my head?" Datura tapped her temple.

"Yeah…" Caitlin nervously bit on her lip. "It's your DNA's way of coping with all the alterations it has to go through. By removing you - the host - it creates a temporary space for other powers to take control."

"How pathetic am I," Datura shook her head. She leaned against the table to take a breath.

"In extreme cases you'll start to pass out."

"Oh, great."

Caitlin walked over with a cup of water in hand. Datura eyed the gesture suspiciously, like there was poison in it. Caitlin chuckled. "It's the water you gave me earlier so unless you poisoned it for me…"

Datura snatched the cup from her and took a swig of it. She could see Caitlin staring at her with so much caution, concern...

She wasn't used to that anymore.

"I think I'm hitting a break through," Caitlin decided to change topics. She returned to her table and hoped Datura would do the same. "I had an idea from Belén. When she first started using her powers, she had the same blackout episodes you're having now. We managed to help Belén without so much of chemical interference, but…" she stopped when she realized Datura wasn't listening.

She supposed it was just better to finish up.

~ 0 ~

A tall brunette dressed in all black leather confidently walked up to Mercury Labs. She scanned the area and saw it was mostly empty...on the outside. She knew just who was in that building and she couldn't wait to take it down along with a birdy or two.

She emitted an incredibly strong sonic wail. The building began to immediately shake as if an earthquake was striking. For kicks, she added in a second sonic cry and watched how easily the building began to crumble.

~0~

Caitlin fell back against the table opposite to her workspace and banged her head in the process. Everything was shaking. "What's happening!?"

Datura was closer to the door but was still struggling to stay on her feet. "Siren bitch!" she cried out.

"We're going to die!" Caitlin used the table to bring herself up. "The work! It's being destroyed!"

Datura could see that for herself. The work table was almost empty of viable tools. Liquids had been thrown around and beakers shattered. Caitlin yelped and slipped to the side again. She rubbed at her head but saw a piece of the ceiling was crackling, getting ready to drop. Caitlin screwed her eyes shut and waited for her last breath to come to an end.

Datura groaned from her spot and thrust a hand forwards, firing a white streak of energy that stopped the falling ceiling chunk in its spot. "I didn't take you for a damsel in distress!" Caitlin didn't say anything, her shock of being saved by the very woman who was threatening to murder others was too much. "Gravitational pull is always tricky with these powers. It's why I don't use it so much." Suddenly, a flicker of red crossed Datura's eyes. "He's coming," she announced. "We gotta go!"

And so they went.

~0~

Outside, Barry and Shivhan had gotten everyone out in time, including Dr. McGee who'd come to a very close end.

"Thank you, Mr. Allen," the woman kindly said despite the spectacle. Barry did a double-take upon hearing his name but McGee merely smiled. "I'm not stupid."

From a distance, the culprit who stared everything strode away with the biggest smirk. "Boom."

~ 0 ~

"Why is she here!?"

"Because Black Siren happened!"

"What—"

"She killed me, Ivy! She basically just killed me! My cure - the ingredients we had were destroyed when the building came down!"

There was silence after that for all of a minute before someone started to grunt. Caitlin could neither see nor breath at this point. She'd been gagged and blinded with the same strips of cloth. Her hands and ankles were bound together as well, keeping her on the ground, or at least a hard floor.

Datura had saved her alright, but the moment they were out of Mercury Labs, she knocked Caitlin out and brought her to their other hiding place. Caitlin assumed the still body she could feel next to her was Belén's.

"Not now, Caity," Datura had moved over and pulled the gag out of Caitlin's mouth. "I'm a little bit busy drowning in my sorrows."

Poison Ivy was thoughtful in her spot. "You couldn't save anything from the cure?"

"No!" Datura snapped but quickly calmed. "No... it's all gone."

"There has to be something else, maybe you didn't look—"

"Of course I couldn't!" Datura was back to shouting. "The frickin building collapsed! The Flash and Black Orchid were coming and I wasn't gonna risk being caught."

"Okay, then I'll go check right now," Poison Ivy devised the plan and pointed at Datura to stay put. "You look after those two and don't forget to apply the sleeping draught on your dearest doppelganger. We're all out of meta-dampeners so you better make sure she stays down."

Datura nodded for her to get going. She didn't look spirited enough to argue for a better plan. When she was alone, she closed her eyes and did her best to hold herself together.

Caitlin swore she heard small sniffles somewhere along that silence.

~0~

McGee stood in the middle of the cortex subjected to various troubled looks from the rest of the team. It really did come as a surprise that she knew Barry and what STAR Labs actually did.

"Is there anyone who doesn't know about you guys?" Shivhan's question wasn't made at the most prudent time but she was very curious to know of the answer. She liked to think that if Belén had been around, she would've answered with something sarcastic. She would brighten up the mood as usual.

"So how did you know?" Barry finally asked McGee, if not simply to know the answer.

McGee offered a little smile of comfort. "Come on, Barry, I'm a scientist. We're paid to be perceptive. And you're always a little too well informed when things go pear-shaped in this city." She took in notice of the newcomers of the group — Shivhan, Henry, Veronica and Nina in the group. "But I don't believe we've ever met before. Dr. Christina McGee."

Henry shook hands with her first. "Doctor Henry Allen. I'm Barry's father."

"Veronica Green," went Veronica but slightly quieter. As of late, she wasn't much of a talker.

"Oh, David's ex-wife," McGee easily recalled.

"Doctor Nina Clarke, friend of Belén's," Nina said afterwards.

"You're not our friend, then?" Cisco mocked a pout.

"Children," Nina rolled her eyes. "That's what happens when I'm the eldest meta in the room."

"Not by that much," Shivhan sent her a sarcastic look before shifting gazes back on McGee. "Shivhan Jang."

"And where's Miss Palayta? I must say I'm a little biased saying that she's my favorite." Her smile only lasted a minute before she noticed how the others were squirming. Nobody could match Veronica's and Barry's faces, though. She was missing something big. "Have I—"

"Belén is gone for the moment," Barry struggled to put into words. "She and Dr. Caitlin Snow are under Zoom's metahumans' hands."

"Oh, oh, I'm so sorry," McGee said, both to him and Veronica.

"We're going to find her," Veronica stated, although it sounded like it was just a reminder for her. And perhaps it was. Everything already looked terrible when she remembered how she lost her older children. Even more so, things between her and Belén were finally getting better and now she was gone.

"Dr. McGee did you happen to see who it was that caused your building to collapse?" Shivhan asked after waiting for Barry to do so. He spaced out a lot lately too. They needed to start this investigation in order to get closer to Belén and Caitlin.

"I didn't see anything. It happened so fast," McGee admitted with guilt. She wished she could have had a better answer for them. "Plus, to be quite honest with you, the last couple of days have been a bit fuzzy."

"Fuzzy how?"

McGee seemed troubled by the idea but she went on to answer however she could. "A couple days ago there were these...women, they just entered the place, but...but somehow it felt alright. Like...like they were supposed to be there. It was okay."

Hardly anyone understood her. Barry, however, studied her expressions carefully, recognizing some of the...feelings. "Dr. McGee, these women, was one of the particularly special?" he formulated his question carefully.

As he suspected, McGee answered without hesitation, like it was a fact. "Oh yes. She had wild red hair and beautiful eyes."

"Yeah," Barry agreed with a mutter. "When I fought Poison Ivy she used this...this weird controlling trick on me. It makes you physically love her or something."

"Yeah, Bells wasn't too happy about that," Cisco smirked only to receive an elbow on his side courtesy of Nina.

"So if the same trick was used..." Iris started, "...does that mean that...?"

"They've been keeping Belén and Caitlin in Mercury Labs this whole time," Nina said.

"Right under our noses!" Veronica exclaimed with a deep frown. She expected Barry to say something along those lines as well, share her anger, but for some reason he was silent. He was thinking. "What's wrong?" Veronica asked him.

Barry cocked his head to the side. "I get why Datura would want to be there — she's probably using Caitlin to finish up the cure — but it doesn't make sense to keep Belén there too. It doesn't have that...thing that would make it smug."

"Well, even if they were there, they can't be anymore," Henry gestured towards McGree. "The building's been destroyed."

"So there has to be a secondary location," Barry said with all the certainty in the world. "That's where Datura is getting her smug victory from. I'm sure of it."

"Do you think we can get street cameras to see if we can catch Datura leaving the building?" Shivhan looked to Cisco for the answer.

"Maybe!"

"In the meantime, Mercury Labs does have a Crash-Survivable Memory Unit," McGee said, "Perhaps we can use it start somewhere."

Henry shook his head. There were simply too much he didn't understand around this group. "I'm sorry, a what?"

"Virtually a black box for buildings. It will have stored all the security footage right up until the building collapsed."

"You know..." Shivhan folded her arms over her chest, "Mercury Labs just happened to be destroyed when Datura was working on her cure?" Her expression willed the others to see what she was hinting at.

"You don't think Zoom did this...do we?" Iris thought it would be the stupidest decision Zoom would do considering what Datura was. "Would he really jeopardize his precious siphoner?"

Barry suddenly remembered Datura's words from the last time he saw her.

"And you didn't tell Zoom?"

"I'm mad with him."

Datura never said why she was upset with Zoom. Barry never even considered it actually being true. But if it was true...

"If Zoom has a problem with her he won't think twice of disposing her," he said. This could be their opportunity to seize Datura and make her see reason, even if it was under lies. He wasn't opposed to that anymore, not when Datura had shown she wasn't willing to change.

"There may be one more possibility," McGee spoke up with a very different idea. "A few months ago, I saw Harrison Wells running out of my facility. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm certain it was him. Is there any way he could have anything to do with this?"

The man himself appeared to answer the question, with a steaming mug of coffee in hand. "A few months ago? Sure. Now? No."

McGee seemed ready to pass out.

"Yeah, there are a few more things that we could catch you up on, Dr. McGee," Barry cleared his throat. Truth be told, there was a lot they would need to run by her.

~0~

Caitlin couldn't help the flinch her body gave when cold gloves touched her. "What's going on!?" she quickly demanded.

"It's time to go, Caity," Datura said and it took Caitlin another minute to realize Datura was taking off the binds from her wrists and ankles.

"Wh-where?"

"You to STAR Labs I imagine, and me…" Datura pulled her up. "Off to die I guess."

"Wait, what—"

"Don't you dare take the blind off your face until I say so."

Caitlin felt herself be pushed forwards. "No! What about Belén!?" Belén!"

"Oh she's still knocked out. Truth is I ended up liking you more than myself, ha. The irony," Datura gave a small laugh. "I'll let her sleep it off while Black Siren destroys the rest of the city."

"But what's happening? What are you going to do?"

"Pay my last enemy a visit. If I have to die, so does she. Just do me a favor, if Siren bitch does get me, I want to be buried in my world. Now go before I change my mind!" Datura ignored Caitlin's shouts to be returned to Belén's side or to at least let Belén go as well.

~0~

Barry didn't waste a second searching through the pieces of the leftover Mercury Labs. He was soon back with the group holding a rectangular black box in his arms. "Is this it!?"

"That's the one," McGee confirmed.

Barry handed the box to Cisco who carefully put it down for a second. "All right, great. Dad, Dr. McGee, Cisco, why don't you guys crack this open, see what you can find?"

"Sure thing," Cisco gave the box a pat.

"And we'll—" Barry then gestured the others in the room, "—go see what kind of metahuman powers can take down a building like that and how to stop it. Not you though, you need to go lay back down," he purposely said louder for Nina.

"I will never humor you," the woman calmly responded, even smiling for his sake.

"Guys!?" they heard a familiar shout to them. It was hard to believe it was real but when the same voice called again, they accepted it.

They ran out of the cortex, except for Nina and Dr. McGee, to meet Caitlin halfway.

"Caitlin!" Barry reached her first and hugged her.

"How are you here!?" Cisco took his turn next. "I mean, not that we're upset or anything but...how!?" Caitlin mustered a smile at them through clear tired eyes.

"Caitlin, is Belén…?" Barry had little hope for that question to but even when Caitlin gave a sad shake of her head, it still crushed him. She was still out there somewhere, waiting for them — for him — to find her.

"She only let me go," Caitlin said with the reasonable guilt that would haunt her from the situation. "I'm really sorry."

"No, no, it's not your fault," Barry was quick to say. He gently took her by the arms and made her look at him. "None of us are responsible for what Datura chooses to do."

"But I think I am," Caitlin bit her lower lip, chewed on it more like it. "She said...she said that she liked me more than Belén. She chose to let me go."

"Like an echo of your friendship with Bells," Cisco said behind them. "Funny how those work."

"Caitlin, please," Veronica moved forwards, "Where did she take you after Mercury Labs?"

"I-I don't know. She kept me blind for the entire time—"

"But anything you managed to see?" Veronica pushed for a better answer. "You felt?"

"I don't—"

"Something you heard at least!?"

"I'm really sorry—"

"Don't tell me you're sorry!" Veronica exclaimed in frustration. "I just want my daughter back!"

"Veronica," Joe pulled her back. She had to remember that Caitlin had gone through a lot of things as well. Veronica waved a hand at the group and slowly moved for the cortex again.

"We should get you checked out," Barry gently moved Caitlin with him and glanced at his father to see if he was up for the task.

"I'm sorry for not paying better attention," she said as Iris helped her move with Henry.

Barry nodded at her. Of course he understood her. "It's okay. It's not your fault."

Caitlin would try to think he was right but just as she was about to go into the cortex, she remembered something. "Barry..." She reached back for the speedster who was quick (naturally) to come up to her. "There was a-a scent in the air."

Barry would take what he could get. "What kind of scent?"

"Like...like wet dirt…" Caitlin tried to think some more. She didn't spend a lot of time in that place and the little time she had was spent in a haze wondering what was Datura's next play against them. "Yeah, I think it was wet dirt. And...damp too. I'm sorry, I'm not helping much am I?"

"No, you did great!" Barry exclaimed, more than happy about having these clues. Wet dirt wasn't something so common so it would have to narrow down the places Datura was keeping Belén.

~0~

Caitlin sat through her check up with a strong, yet clearly tired, face. It'd been countless sleepless nights after all.

"She's in shock. A little...dehydrated and malnourished, but I think she'll be fine," Henry gave her a small woman after realizing the check up.

"I am okay," Caitlin reassured with a nod. "I mean…I was better when I was with Datura and Poison Ivy."

"So they make good babysitters," Cisco mumbled and earned himself a strange, sharp look from Caitlin.

"You don't know what's happened," the brunette said.

"How did you escape?" Iris was the one to ask. She'd been waiting for someone to ask the million dollar question but since no one did she would do it.

Caitlin gave a light shrug of her shoulders. "It was Datura. She...she just let me go."

"No way," Shivhan snorted. "Datura would never do something like that."

Caitlin understood why they would think it — she would think the same thing if she was in their spot — but she assured them it's what happened.

"Why would she do that?" Barry asked her. Datura never made a decision without purpose. Was this a trap somehow?

Caitlin lowered her head, for some reason finding it difficult to answer. She wasn't sure what the hell she was doing but to be fair she was really tired. Her mind raced with everything she'd lived through as of late. It was complex going through and making sense of it.

And Barry saw it. "You've been through a lot. You should get some rest." Their questions weren't doing Caitlin well.

Caitlin felt like it was the best thing she could do for them and herself right now. Maybe after some rest she would remember more things.

Almost as soon as they were gone, an alarm went off from the computers. Cisco ran over to the desk first and brought up a tab for everyone to see. "Oh no…" he muttered and raised his gaze to the others.

"What is it?" Barry emerged from the side room with a face ready to go. No one needed to answer him. The great big lightning symbole carved of fire across the CCPD was answer enough.

"Barry, don't do it," Henry barely got the words out when Barry sped out.

He didn't hesitate to go right into the precinct, to where his old lab still (miraculously) stood.

Hunter stood across the lab, staring at the board still holding the case of Barry's mother. "You know, I never saw the crime photos of my mother's murder. Well, I guess I didn't need to. I had a ringside seat while you got whisked away. Too delicate, I suppose. Not just a hologram after all, are you, Flash?"

Just looking at him made Barry's blood boil with anger. "Interesting. I know you didn't call me up here just to banter. Let's finish this. Right now."

But Hunter merely smiled at him as if it were just a game. "Actually, I did. I called you up here to tell you you can't keep running from one meta to the next. Around and around, like a dog chasing its tail."

"I'll do whatever it takes to stop you."

"If only that were good enough. 'Cause here's the thing. I know you. I know what's holding you back. You and me... we're really just the same person."

Barry didn't even try to hide his incredibility. "Right. You keep saying that, but it's not gonna make it true."

"You'll see," Hunter wagged a finger at him. "We are. Same tragic background. Same reason for running. Same desire to be the fastest, to be the best. The difference? You think your anger is dirty somehow. You want to be seen as pure, the hero. Doesn't it get exhausting?" he rushed to face Barry. "Doesn't it get exhausting, Barry! It was exhausting playing Jay, believe me."

"I'm not pretending," Barry made the promise.

There was a distant rumbling and when Barry looked out the window he saw one building shaking on its own.

Hunter smiled once again. "Now if it were me, I'd let that building tumble without a second thought. But you, you'll never let that happen, will you? That's why I'm gonna beat you, Barry. Because you always have to be the hero. You always have to save people. You'll make the pit stops to save the building...survivors...maybe a girlfriend in between those…? Or Caitlin?"

It took Barry by surprise that Hunter didn't seem to know Caitlin wasn't even in his clutches anymore. He had trusted Datura and...the woman had betrayed him. She really is mad at him, Barry thought. And that could work for him. For the moment, Barry followed Hunter's game and sped out to help the people in the crashing building.

~ 0 ~

"Zoom doesn't know that his favorite meta betrayed him?" Cisco laughed. "I'm gonna love to see his face when that happens."

"Do we really?" Nina asked from her bed, her eyes flickering from the two men to Caitlin. "I mean, we watched the man kill himself so imagine what's gonna happen when he realizes she let Caitlin go."

Barry leaned back against the doorway of the side room, pretty grim looking. "Yeah. But my main priority is getting Belén out before Zoom figures it all out."

"You have to get them both out," Caitlin finally spoke up. She'd napped for about an hour or so and it did do her body good...but it wouldn't take away her worry.

"Caitlin, these women kidnapped you too," Cisco gave her friend a sharp look. "Even if the conditions were better it was still kidnapping."

"You didn't see what I saw," Caitlin sighed. She leaned back on her chair and nervously bit her lip. "They had me working on a cure and...I saw how Datura worsened."

"So we're supposed to feel sorry for her now?" Nina raised an eyebrow. "Try again."

Caitlin understood it was difficult for the others to accept what she now thought, but she couldn't give up. "She's been having black outs and...she nearly attacked Poison Ivy at one point. I was so close to getting the cure when Mercury Labs was taken down. She could have left me, but...she didn't. She saved me."

"Caitlin, you can't be serious," Nina waited for the others to tell Caitlin how wrong this all was...but Caitlin snapped.

"She knew I couldn't make the cure anymore and she still took me! Look," Caitlin took in a deep breath to begin again, "I'm not saying she's a changed person or that she deserves the sun and rainbows, but she's accepting she's going to die. She betrayed this horrible monster by letting me go. I'm just supposed to forget that?"

"Caitlin, isn't there a chance Zoom was just gonna kill her anyways?" Cisco's gaze averted the sure scolding glare Caitlin would give.

"Barry, help me out," Caitlin shifted to see the speedster. "You wanted to help her. Belén said that you wanted to see if there was still some human decency inside Datura —well, there might be."

Yeah, he did want to see that before. That was before things got worse. "Right now, I really just want to get my Belén," he responded.

"And the way to get to her is to get through Datura first," Caitlin stood up from her chair. "I'm gonna work on that cure right now but we need to bring her in."

"I'm all for bringing her in," Nina jumped in at the chance then added, much to Caitlin's dismay, "...straight to the pipeline. And maybe throwing her ginger friend in wouldn't hurt either."

"Guys," Caitlin tried being rationale. "She's a villain, yeah, but it's like Barry's been saying, she doesn't deserve to die like this. And when Zoom figures out she let me go, he's going to slaughter her. That is gonna be on us." She parted with a definitive face and walked out of the room.

Nina pushed herself up on the bed and began to say how crazy they were acting. "She's a villain. Ask yourselves if this woman didn't have Belén's face would you be cutting her all this slack?"

"Okay, but the point is she does," Barry rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes for a second. "I tried to look past it but I couldn't. I can't punch her, I can't kick her, I can't hurt her. It's literally beyond me."

"Barry, you're a forensics for God's sake! I can't believe we're-"

"Woah…" Cisco had rocked on his feet all of a sudden.

It took little less than a second for the others to realize he was vibing.

"Cisco, what did you see?" Barry asked immediately after Cisco had returned to the present. "Is it Belén?"

"No…" Cisco looked dead confused. "I just...saw a bunch of dead birds…"

"I hate being the oldest one here," Nina mumbled and shook her head at them.

"I have to go talk to Wally," Barry announced, figuring a break would do them well. "Cisco, look into the wet dirt lists again?"

"Definitely, Shivhan was already going through some of them before," Cisco nodded and set straight to work.

~ 0 ~

"Getting ready to smash another building?"

A brunette's darkened lips smirked. Her black leather screeched as she turned sideways to meet her opponent. "How could you possibly think it was my fault?"

"Just a hunch," Datura mimicked her tone. "You basically killed me," she said in a much darker voice.

"Did I?" Black Siren's eyebrows raised up with pure innocence.

"My time might be up but I'm taking you to hell with me."

"Is that now?" Black Siren released a small chuckle. "In your condition?"

"Honey, my condition never stopped me from killing. If I took metas stronger than you, what chances do you have?" Datura's eyes glowered blue with frost. "You're as dead as a dog," Killer Frost spoke through her and started firing ice blasts.

Black Siren jumped to the side and consecutively two more times before retaliating with her deadly sonic scream. Datura was thrown backwards, her head smacking against the road's cement. Blood trickled down from the side of her forehead.

"You really want to push your death date earlier?" Black Siren smirked at the scene. "I'm all happy for it too."

She's going to kill us. Get her! Move out of the way and let us do it! Datura clutched her head and yelped. Voices were overlapping in her head and rising. "Stop it!"

"The great siphoner gone mad?" Black Siren laughed, making the mistake of distraction.

Datura shot bands of electricity towards the woman and successfully hit her. She pushed herself up, revealing golden eyes. "What's the matter?" her voice overlapped with another. "Cat got your tongue?

Black Siren growled moved to stand up. Datura brought her arms back, allowing electricity to surround her hands, and thrust it forwards. The hit never reached Black Siren because of Barry crossing between it. The electricity didn't seem to affect him like it would have to the other woman.

"Did I just charge you up instead?" Datura's lips turned downwards into a scowl. "No matter, I'm sure a little Frost will bring you down."

Barry winced as the last surge of electricity left his body. He shook his head and hoped he was good to go now. Soon as he took sight of his vicinity, he came across...Laurel Lance?

"Laurel…?" he said without thinking.

Black Siren took the recognition with some curiosity. "Laurel Lance is dead. On this Earth, anyways. Poor Black Canary." She raised her gloved hand and wiggled her fingers. "Bye-bye, birdy."

"You knew the doppelganger," Datura rolled her eyes. "Figures."

"And you...know each other?" Barry assumed from their battle that called him in (and away from Wally). He noticed the drying blood on Datura's face.

"You can say that," Black Siren smirked across at the woman.

"This fight doesn't include you, so go," Datura waved a hand at Barry. "I'm just here to close business. For good."

"Bel…"

Datura raised a finger. "Call me that, I dare you." She pulled out a familiar looking pink flower from her jacket. "Does this Azalea ring a bell?" she laughed shortly. "Oh, double pun. I definitely didn't plan for that!" She threw the flower at him. "You can keep it. There's plenty more where that one came from."

Barry pursed his lips and made himself calm. If he angered her, there went his chance at finding Belén. "I know what you did with Caitlin. You let her go on your own…"

Datura's cold demeanor slipped off as soon as he spoke the words. Black Siren, on the other hand, seemed delighted with the news.

"You let the famous Caitlin Snow go?" she laughed and put her hands together.

Barry realized his mistake all too late. Datura was fear-riddened at the prospect.

"I'm gonna enjoy Zoom killing you," Black Siren sucked in a breath and used her sonic wail on her.

Barry clapped his hands over his ears but it wasn't enough to block out the horrible pitch. Datura didn't have the same luck since the attack was for her. She groaned on the ground and rolled over with hands over ears but it wouldn't work.

Barry mustered his will and used his speed to knock Black Siren down. "My bad, was that too loud?" the woman smirked easily jumped back to her feet and strode up to him. "Perhaps we should quiet things down a bit." She threw in a punch followed by a second one, easily putting Barry down. "You know, the sad thing is, I think Zoom's actually afraid of you. And I didn't think that he feared anything." She thrust her boot and hit him straight on the chest. "And you, you're hardly worth the chills. How many metas did he send to try and kill you? Well, it's too bad. He should have just sent me because that way, you would have already been—" Tires screeched as a car knocked her out of the way.

Wally open the passenger's door and motioned Barry to go in. "Hurry up!"

Barry glanced over to see Datura already making her escape, and it looked like she would get away with it. He got in with Wally and let the younger man drive them away.

~0~

Caitlin swabbed away the dry blood from Barry's ear and told him he would be alright in the end.

"What?" Barry still heard a mild ringing in his ears and solicited a smile from Caitlin.

"Why do so many villains that we go against use sound as a weapon?" Cisco muttered.

"So Wally just drove on up into the thick of it?" Joe did good in keeping his anger more or less simmering. "Must have been some conversation you two had, seeing as though he did literally the opposite of what we wanted."

"This I can hear," Barry mumbled to Caitlin but Joe snapped at him.

"It's not funny. I'm in no laughing mood!"

"Look, Joe, I tried. I told you I would try, right? I... Wally's a determined kid."

Joe agree there, just not exactly the way Barry thought. "Yeah, determined to get himself killed."

"Or determined to help people. And be glad, or you know, I would not be standing here right now."

"Well, he was lucky tonight. I don't want to see the day when he isn't!" Joe finished with that and stormed out.

"So who was this lady meta anyways?" Nina inquired, much more interested in the new case than a man who clearly knew what he was doing.

"No idea," Barry shrugged in his seat. "She was fighting Datura when I got there. The two seemed ready to kill each other."

"That mysterious meta does have the ability," Cisco informed them just in case the hadn't realized it yet. "She was just reaching the 200 belps when you got there."

"Siren…" Caitlin mumbled, her mind slowly beginning to turn the wheels. "Black Siren? That had to be her! Datura and Poison Ivy were talking about her. She's the one who brought down Mercury Labs."

"Yeah and she's the one who's going to tell Zoom you're not kidnapped anymore," Barry still felt incredibly guilty on that part. "We've got to find Datura first."

"Good luck with that," Cisco started back to the desk. "Shivhan didn't find any place with what Caitlin told us."

"That's because damp and wet dirt isn't much to go by on," Nina sighed.

Barry stayed silent as he thought about the case. Datura was Belén, in some form, so she had the same mindset. She would give him the answer to his face without actually saying it.

Datura pulled out a familiar looking pink flower from her jacket. "Does this Azalea ring a bell?" she laughed shortly. "Oh, double pun. I definitely didn't plan for that!" She threw the flower at him. "You can keep it. There's plenty more where that one came from."

"Barry?" Caitlin called to him three times before he actually realized. "What is it?"

Barry got up from his stool with a bit of a jump. He was definitely thinking of something now. "She had an azalea with her! She can't make those…"

Even though Caitlin wasn't following, she helped him with another bit. "Belén can't either. She's been under sleeping droughts since she was taken."

"So she had to grab one!"

"Well it's not like those are commonly grown," Nina began to see where Barry was getting at and turned to Cisco.

"I know!" Cisco was already on the computer with a new mission.

"Damp smell? Wet dirt? That's a flower shop," Barry rushed over to Cisco. "How many are there in the city with those flowers?

"Just ten!"

"And I know which one to start with," Barry said with newfound hope. "Tell Shivhan to head over!"

"The closest one is—"

"I know, Cisco. It's Bells' favorite place!" Barry sped out but soon called to Cisco again to ask for the following locations of the other shops just in case the first one struck out.

~0~

Arriving at the shop, Barry figured it was closed down. The door was shut and the insides were covered up. Perfect hiding place for a while. Poison Ivy had to have taken control of the owners.

"Hey," Shivhan appeared behind him. She was already looking at the building for a way inside. "You think this is where they are?"

"I'm sure of it," Barry muttered. "Datura's hiding her in plain sight with an extra punch just for them.

"Alright, how do you want to play it?"

Barry vibrated the lock off the door and pulled it open. He heard Shivhan's quiet 'I guess like that'. He wasn't there to waste time with plans. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He carefully walked inside and took immediate observation of the area.

"Dude, do you see anything?" Cisco called from the comms.

"Nothing yet," Barry replied quietly and moved further inside. "But it definitely smells damp...and dirt…"

Shivhan noticed how unattended the remaining flowers were. Some of them were already dead and others well on their way. "For a botanical metahuman, this is a travesty. They don't care about the plants — they must be spiraling."

Barry stopped when he spotted something leathery green poking out from behind a display table. Not wasting a moment, he sped to the spot. Shivhan was quick to follow. Barry's heart jolted upon meeting Belén's unconscious body on the ground. "Belén!" he turned the woman over and gently peeled the duct tape off her mouth. "I found her, guys!" he informed the others.

"And yet, you won't be taking her anywhere."

Barry rolled his eyes when he heard Poison Ivy drawling behind. Shivhan did the same and while Barry tended to Belén, she turned around to face the ginger.

"Seriously, we're not in the mood!"

The ginger smirked. "I have never heard that one before."

"How about instead of this pointless standoff you help us find Datura?" Barry stood back up. "Because we know she's missing. Don't even deny it. She let Caitlin go and now Zoom knows."

And just like as if he was seeing Datura, the same fear filled Poison Ivy.

"Ooh, now we're getting somewhere," Shivhan smirked. "If you value your partner's life then I suggest you back the hell up. We're the only people who can help you now."

"How about I kill you three and just hope Zoom forgives us with your corpses as gifts?" Poison Ivy's eyes narrowed down. "I like that idea a lot more."

Shivhan balled her fists as dark tendrils of vines wrapped around her. Before Poison Ivy attacked, Shivhan fired thorn-riddened roses her way. Poison Ivy brought up a shield to protect herself but Shivhan disbanded into vines to re-appear behind the woman and clock her. "That was for Belén. And just because Belén is nice enough to allow your friend to still get a cure doesn't mean it's on the table full-time. Every last metauman from Earth 2 is about to be rounded up."

Barry took the binds from Belén's wrists and ankles. She took in a breath like she always did when she was close to waking up. "No..." she started shaking her head, albeit loopy.

"It's me Bells," Barry whispered, not wanting to scare her. "We're taking you home."

~0~

Because Caitlin already had a good information set on Belén's state, there was no surprise when she told the others her recovery was as easy as pie. "She's coming out of the effects already," Caitlin was happy to finish with. "She'll just be a little, uh... loopy...with the drought's effects."

"But she will be fine, right?" Veronica was right beside Belén's bed. She hadn't left her daughter's side since they'd returned with her.

"Yeah," Caitlin nodded then excused herself to continue working.

"Mmm…" Belén took in another breath and turned her head. Her eyes slowly opened and met her mother's worried gaze. "I'm so...tired…" she announced with a raspy voice.

Veronica chuckled. "It's okay, you're going to be okay."

"Mhm," Belén glanced at her other side and smiled at Barry. "Hi…"

Barry returned the smile. He reached for her hand over her stomach and gave it a grip. "How do you feel now?"

Belén took in another breath. "I feel like a bus hit me. And I'm hungry."

Barry laughed shortly. "I promise when we go home I'll be your personal chef."

This time it was Belén who laughed. "May God help the kitchen."

Even if he thought he had progressed finely in his cooking skills, Barry laughed with her. He was just happy to finally have her back with him.

"Datura...where is she?"

"Doesn't matter where she is!" Veronica muttered.

"Except it does," Barry gave her a straight look. Veronica refused to meet his gaze so Barry tried with Belén instead. "She's probably hiding. Zoom knows that she let Caitlin go."

Belén's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Hm, leave it to Caitlin to bring my heart out."

Barry shared a chuckle with her but Veronica was ready to burst. "This is not funny! Neither of you should feel any sympathy for this woman!"

"Believe me Ms. Green, I've tried my best but you haven't seen her face. It's the same as Belén's and no matter how hard I try, I can't against her. I can't fight her, I can't hurt her...and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to."

"We have to find her, Mom," Belén took in a small breath. "Zoom doesn't get to kill whoever he chooses."

"But Belén-"

"And she let Caitlin go out of her own will? Mom," Belén fixated her best 'cmon' expression. That alone meant something. Caitlin mentioned it to her as soon as Belén was lucid enough to realize Caitlin was in STAR Labs and not imprisoned.

Veronica released a sigh. "Alright. But I don't want her anywhere near you. And I certainly don't want to look at her face," she pushed herself up from her chair. "You might be right about the face thing…"

"Mm, believe me," Barry hummed. He gave Belén's hand a gentle grip and had to tell her he needed to go for a bit. "Wells said he could bring down all Earth 2 metas in one go so…"

"You can't pass up that opportunity," Belén smiled. "Bring them down once and for all."

"We will," he promised her. He leaned over and kissed her then stood up.

"I'll stay here," Veronica said for both their sake's. "You—" she laid eyes on her daughter, "—are no longer allowed to be on your own." Belén rolled her eyes but was not quick enough to make a comeback. "Until everything is finished, you have to be with someone."

Barry wouldn't openly agree since Belén would probably scold the hell out of him for it later, but he agreed with Veronica's stance for the time being. Datura had accepted death and a person with nothing to lose was an even more dangerous enemy.

~0~

"Guys, it's the metahuman alert app," Cisco studied the location the computer was giving him. 'Black Siren' was blinking in and out. "It's the high-rise development on the west side. Hundreds of people live there."

"Can we assume the siphoner will be there too?" asked Joe.

"I don't think so," Barry said as he came into the breech room. "If Datura saw our plan she's most likely going to go into hiding."

"Damn psychics," Iris shook her head.

"Ramon, we're up. Let's go," called Harry. "Set that pulse off right now. Allen, you need to start generating that refracting field right now!"

"But Black Siren can take down this building at any point! Wha... all those people, Wells!"

Harry understood the complication but he felt he was looking at the bigger picture. "How many more people are gonna die while we wait?"

Cisco purposely cleared his throat loudly. "I think I just got the worst idea of all time. I'm gonna go find Caitlin."

~ 0 ~

Black Siren was gazing at her newest targets from an abandoned building. "I don't think I've taken down so many buildings at once." She was about to set her own personal record.

"Maybe you're not as powerful as you think," shot a familiar sounding voice.

Black Siren turned sideways to see two incoming metas. It was Reverb and Killer Frost. "What are you two doing here?"

Cisco did his best to produce his finest doppelganger imitation. "Why should you have all the fun?"

Black Siren narrowed her eyes on them. "I thought you two were dead." She lingered a little more on 'Killer Frost'. "Datura siphoned you up like a sucker."

"She didn't finish the job," Caitlin smirked.

"She really is getting more pathetic," Black Siren got smug. "But you two - you're idiots if you think you can pull one over on Zoom. Well, enjoy being dead."

"I told you," Cisco mumbled to Caitlin.

"Give her a chance," Caitlin nudged him.

Black Siren looked from one to another, getting riled up they were acting as if she wasn't there. "What chance?"

"She's not ready—"

"Excuse me!" the woman shouted at them.

Cisco faked a sigh. "Do you know what I'm capable of doing?"

"Try it, and I'll shatter your entire nervous system without breaking a sweat."

"Wow, you really think you can take on Zoom."

"We can. You don't even know how powerful you are," Cisco played her. "With a single call, you can take down a building. I'd call that impressive. But why... stop... there? Why serve a master when you can be a master, when you can be a god? We... could be gods."

Despite her, Black siren seemed intrigued.

Through the comms. Caitlin heard Shivhan say that Barry was about to begin making his rounds on the city's boundaries. They just had to keep Black Siren out of the loop for a little longer.

"If I were interested in forming an alliance with you two, what's your plan? Exactly?" Black Siren began to circle Cisco and Caitlin.

"We ambush Zoom at CCPD. With our three powers combined, he'll be no match for us," Cisco said with ease. It was the simplest lie he could have come up with.

Black Siren hummed and store away from the two. "Hmm. Well, I like the sound of that."

Caitlin briefly glanced at Cisco. This could possibly end up working. "Great. Then let's go."

Black Siren stopped and spotted a metal tool lying on the ground. "There's just one more thing. Reverb...catch." She had picked up the tool and gently tossed it to Cisco who indeed caught it. "You know, all doppelgangers... they're mirror images of themselves. But you two, you didn't know that, did you?"

Caitlin gulped and began backing away with Cisco. "Reverb is left-handed."

Cisco lost his breath then. "Well, I just... I just happened to... catch it with my right... run!"

He and Caitlin turned and ran for it only to come to a quick dead end.

"Oh, no. What are we gonna do!?" Caitlin whirled around for another escape but only saw Black Siren striding to them.

"Get out of there!" Shivhan yelled at them through the comms.

"I don't think that there's anything you can do." Black Siren opened her mouth to give them her sonic cry when Cisco blasted her with some force of energy that threw her backwards to the ground.

Caitlin's eyes nearly popped out from her head. "What the what!?"

Cisco, who had fallen back from the force, was trying to get back on his feet. "I don't know."

"Well, do it again!" Caitlin urged him and even pulled him up when he was too slow.

Black Siren pushed herself and began going for them again. "There's nothing on this Earth that can stop us!"

But the others had come through. A high pitched screech filled the air and forced Black Siren on her knees as well as every other Earth 2 metahuman. Caitlin and Cisco were relieved to see her go under the effects.

~ 0 ~

Belén had re-gathered her strength from the sleeping droughts. While the others finished putting the Earth 2 metahumans away, Caitlin came to check up on Belén and tell her how things went.

"So...Black Siren is actually Laurel's doppelganger?" Belén repeated with a tired sigh afterwards. She gave a shake of her head. "I really hate the word 'doppelganger' now. It feels like we're in the Vampire Diaries. I feel Damon Salvatore's pain now."

"She's in the pipeline now, but...we decided not tell Sara nor Captain Lance," Caitlin said quietly.

Belén agreed with the notion and began pushing herself up from the bed when she noticed Caitlin's blank face. "You okay Cait?"

The brunette blinked out of the trance she was in and adopted a tiny smile. "Yes, I think I'm just tired."

"My Mom told me you've been working nonstop on the cure…"

Caitlin's gaze lowered and her voice had gone quieter. "I-I'm just doing what you and Barry had already decided to do."

"I know, Caitlin, don't worry," Belén was sure Caitlin must have had some retributions for her decision to work on the cure. She wasn't going to be one of them. "But what I will say is that you need to get some rest. Mom said Datura wasn't among the metahumans Barry put away. She's out there and I doubt she'll be coming for us right now."

"But Poison Ivy is here which means sooner or later she'll come back again and I want to be ready to argue with her." Caitlin passed a hand through her messy hair and sighed. "I know it seems ridiculous—"

"I wasn't going to say—"

"Zoom terrified me but Datura - while her intentions weren't good either - took me away from it," Caitlin came around to face her friend whom she felt needed an explanation. "She risked her life by letting me go."

"And now you wanna return the favor," Belén understood.

"It's more than that too. You saw that she wasn't into this whole thing anymore, chances are she never was. Working for a monster is a terrifying job. I mean...now I see him everywhere…" Caitlin trailed off, swallowing hard. "It's hard. If we can cure her then maybe she has a chance to move forwards."

"I'll help you, Cait, I promise," Belén reached for Caitlin's hand.

~0~

The next day, the precinct had its hands full finishing up the paperwork on every metahuman they had captured last night. Veronica was the first to spot Barry coming in and nudged Joe.

"You've got about 100 cases to go through," Veronica warned the meta.

Barry was not looking forwards to that and it showed. "Yeah…"

"My daughter?"

"Doing just fine," Barry promised. Veronica's condition to let Belén return home was that she needed to be updated every so often. "I think Iris was picking her up to go to work."

"God knows she can use it," Veronica moved to her desk. "Do you think CC Pictures will end that stupid suspension?"

"It did sound promising," Barry said. Now that CC Pictures had firsthand experience with the metahuman apocalypse and those who had helped put them away, they were more inclined on bringing Belén back.

"Joe—" Barry called before Joe moved to return to work as we, "—listen, uh, I've been thinking about Wally some more—"

"Are you gonna talk to him again?" Joe jumped in with a resolution.

Barry shook his head. "No, I'm not."

"Why not?"

"Because he's your son, Joe…"

"I know he's my son—"

"I... look... what I mean is he's got your values," Barry went slow so that Joe would understand him. "He's got your inner drive to help people do what's right. We're supposed to think we're something we're not until we become that thing. That's the path that Wally's on. I'm not gonna stop him from being the hero that he's gonna become. I really don't think you should either."

Joe didn't appear to be mad. He seemed...irritated. "I can't wait till you have kids and they torture you. I'ma laugh in your face."

Barry tried not to laugh there and then. "Alright, gramps."

"Poppa," Joe pointed.

"What?"

"My grandkids are gonna call me 'poppa'."

This time it was Veronica who laughed, earning herself some weird looks. "I'm sorry, but that's not gonna happen." She closed a folder in front of her and leaned her arms on the desk. "I always said my grandchildren would call me 'Nonna' - that's Italian and I'm gonna remind you I was married to an Italian man - and yet what does Axel call me?" Joe couldn't help laugh as he went to take a seat at his desk. "Keep laughing, grandpa." Veronica rolled her eyes and got back to work. "They'll be yours too, just remember that."

Barry slowly got away before the two actually went at it for real. He wanted no part of that.

~ 0 ~

Later that evening, Iris had surprised everyone by hosting a dinner at her house. It was a well deserved event.

"What in the world?" Barry was the last to find out about the dinner. He and his father took in the crowded living room with awe.

"Blame Iris," Joe was quick to say.

Iris made an offended noise from the dining table. "Okay. I just figured that since Henry is officially back for good, we should celebrate. And since Zoom is gone and the city is quiet right now."

"And we got our friends back," Nina smiled at Belén and Caitlin. "It's definitely worth celebrating."

When Henry went to talk with Dr. McGee and Veronica, Barry chose to join Belén and Iris at the table.

"How did work go?" he asked. He had yet to see Belén in that day after all. "Did they...?"

Belén smiled like she hadn't in a long time. "The suspension's been lifted. I'm back full time again."

Barry's face lit up with joy. "Bells, that's great!" He pulled her into a hug, though not a tight one since her body was still healing.

"Mhm," Belén pulled back to reveal a pout that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Except I'm pretty sure some co-workers have started a tally chart of my kidnappings."

Shivhan stopped by to make one comment, "I offered to kick their asses but she said 'noooo'."

"It'd look suspicious!" Belén huffed. Shivhan rolled her eyes and walked on.

Iris put a finger to her cheek when Barry turned a sharp look on her. "I tried to stop them! I gave them a hell of a moral lecture but…"

"Long story short, they're all idiots," Belén shook her head. "All except for Linda of course but she's still not back from Coast City, so…"

"We soldier on without our third musketeer," Iris made a fist in the air.

"I'm fine," Belén laughed in the end and leaned on Barry. He wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her head.

Wally came by with empty plates for the table. Jesse saw him and inched closer, nervous. "So is it true? You saved The Flash's life?"

The other three stayed quiet but couldn't help eavesdrop.

"Oh, I mean, I was just in the right place at the right time," Wally cleared his throat, his gaze shifting everywhere but Jesse.

"Proud of you, Wally. You did good," Joe said, truly meaning it.

"It means a lot to wally: Thanks, dad," Wally smiled.

"I'm proud of you too," Jesse managed to squeak out.

Caitlin came out with a pot roast in gloved hands. Nina was beside her trying to advocate her usefulness.

"I was stabbed in the stomach not the head," Nina muttered and set down some empty glasses.

"No," Caitlin laughed at her.

Before everyone could eat, Joe decided to make a special toast. "To family."

Cisco beamed. "That's my kind of toast, short and sweet. Let's eat!" but before he could even put his glass down, he vibed.

The first thing he saw were the dead birds on the ground. He moved his gaze up ahead to find Earth 2's Central City in destruction.

"Cisco?" called Barry, snapping him out of the vibe. "What is it? What'd you see?"

Wally was making odd faces. "What do you mean 'see'?"

Finding no point in hiding anything more, Caitlin answered him with the truth. "Cisco gets visions."

Cisco was trying to make sense of the images he saw. "I don't understand."

"What don't you understand, Cisco?" Belén raised an eyebrow.

"Earth-2 splitting in half. Straight down to the poles," Cisco explained, but even saying it didn't make sense. "Tell me I didn't just vibe the future. Please tell me I did not just see the end of the world!"

A gust of wind hit everyone in the face when Zoom came in. He went directly for Henry. "Our story continues, Flash."

Barry's heart nearly stopped, and it almost did when Zoom took his father away. He followed in suit, ready to go another round. Zoom led him to his old childhood home...right to the same spot where his mother died.

"It's poetic, returning to your childhood home," Hunter held Henry tight.

"Jay. Don't do this. I'm begging you. I'm begging you!" Barry couldn't get closer for fear of his quick moves. "Take me. Kill me!"

Henry nearly lost it at the proposal. "No!"

Hunter almost laughed at the two. "You still won't believe me that you and I are the same. Come on—"

Henry's intuition told him this was truly the end. "Barry, look at me, son—"

"—so I'm gonna have to make you believe me," Hunter said like it was the most logical thing ever.

"Whatever happens you have made me the happiest father—"

Barry didn't know who to listen to. Everything sounded meshed together and his own ears were ringing with the sound of his fast heartbeats.

"This time, you're gonna watch your parent die just like I did," Hunter smirked. "And this is what's gonna make you just like me!"

Henry was able to take a last breath to say his final words, almost. "Your mother and I love—" Zoom shoved his hand through Henry's chest.

Barry screamed and charged forwards, but Zoom was quicker. Again.

#ocappreciation #fd: the flash #the flash #barry allen #barry allen fics #barry allen imagines #the flash fics #the flash imagines #barry allen x oc #the flash x oc #arrowverse ocs #oc: Belén Palayta #oc: Belen Palayta #oc: Datura #fic: rise up

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dankusner · 4 days

Text

Historian helped with JFK assassination probe

OBITUARY

ALFRED GOLDBERG

Alfred Goldberg, a prominent historian of U.S. military affairs who also shared moments as part of history, advising the Warren Commission that probed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and compiling insider accounts from the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, died Sept. 3 at his home in Falls Church, Va. He was 105.

His granddaughter Rachel Goldberg confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.

A chance meeting launched his career.

While serving in the military in England during World War II, he bumped into a well-placed college classmate, who helped arrange a transfer from the mess hall to an assignment as a historian attached to Army Air Forces command within Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s war room.

Soon after the 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy, he entered France to begin a comprehensive history of U.S. air operations in the closing months of the war.

A lifelong historian

Over the next seven decades, Goldberg’s journals, interviews and books formed an indispensable archive tracking the dilemmas and decisions inside the Defense Department — often with privileged access as the chief historian for the defense secretary’s office from 1973 to 2007, spanning seven presidents and more than 10 defense chiefs. Goldberg stayed on in a part-time role until 2013.

From his office in the Pentagon, he could roam the halls and listen in on meetings and study body language as major events unfolded: the end of the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 attacks, and the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His papers, like those of historians in other U.S. agencies, became part of government records.

Goldberg also wrote published works widely regarded as authoritative sweeps of military history, including A History of the United States Air Force, 1907-1957 and The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years .

He described his mission as similar to a journalist or fact finder. His duty, he said, was to fend off attempts by officials to whitewash or embellish events.

There were the related risks of self-censorship, he added.

“It derives from the unconscious absorption through the pores, so to speak, of the ideas, attitudes, predilections, biases, loyalties of the institutional environment,” he told The New York Times for a 1982 story about the challenges of government historians.

“The closer to the throne, the greater the danger.”

Kennedy conspiracies

Goldberg also spent decades as one of the leading voices rejecting the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the November 1963 Kennedy assassination.

He stood firmly behind the 1964 conclusions of the Warren Commission — which he helped edit and write — that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter in a self-hatched plot.

How “such a pathetic little man” changed the course of history was just too implausible for many to believe and encouraged the conspiracy mongers, he said.

“How could this pipsqueak do all this?” Goldberg was quoted as saying in a 2013 book, A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination , by investigative journalist Philip Shenon.

Goldberg — then an Air Force historian — was picked for an adviser spot on the Warren Commission by the panel’s namesake, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.

“I don’t trust all these lawyers I have,” Warren reportedly told Goldberg.

Goldberg was part of many of the more than 550 interviews, taking detailed notes and occasionally asking questions to clarify a time or specific place.

Crowds along Houston Street waited to see Lee Harvey Oswald transferred from city jail to county jail. Goldberg joined a team that followed Oswald’s presumed route to verify the timeline of his movements. (Sixth Floor Museum)

Dallas connection

In Dallas, he joined a team that followed Oswald’s presumed route after the Kennedy shooting.

Goldberg noted the travel times down to the second to help verify the timeline of Oswald’s movements.

Oswald was killed by gunman Jack Ruby two days after the assassination while in police custody.

“The [Warren] Commission believed that it proved Oswald’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the basic requirement in law,” Goldberg wrote in his 1968 book Conspiracy Interpretations of the Assassination of President Kennedy ,

“but in the absence of a court trial this has not been enough for many people. There are some loose ends, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the Report that trouble people and provide some basis for conspiracy hypotheses.”

9/11 efforts

Decades later, when terrorists crashed an American Airlines jetliner into the Pentagon — after planes hit the World Trade Center in Manhattan — Goldberg said he knew instantly that he needed to mobilize a team even though he was then in his early 80s.

He led an effort that included interviews of more than 1,300 military and civilian personnel for recollections and insights of 9/11 in Washington.

“We want to get to people while their memories are still fresh,” said Goldberg, who became the lead author in the Defense Department history “ Pentagon 9/11,” which included previously unpublished photographs of the wreckage and rescue efforts.

“I worked about as hard as I’ve ever worked in my life,” he recounted. Alfred Goldberg was born in Baltimore on Dec. 23, 1918. His parents, who were immigrants from Bessarabia in what is now Moldova, worked in the garment industry. His father was a tailor, and his mother was a seamstress.

He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, in 1938 and began postgraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University. He left in 1942 for Army service, stationed as a mess supervisor in England.

He left active duty in 1946 at the rank of captain and, after the Air Force became a separate military branch in 1947, served as senior historian for the Air Force Historical Division until 1965.

He received a doctoral degree in history from Johns Hopkins in 1950. He retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1978 as a colonel.

From 1965 to 1973, Goldberg was a senior staff member at the Rand research group.

Goldberg’s wife of 61 years, the former Gertrud “Gerta” Kannova, died in 2010. Born in Vienna, she was a courier with underground Jewish groups in Paris during World War II and later served as reviewer of translations at the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Survivors include three children, Paul Goldberg, Alan Goldberg and Marian Goldberg; two granddaughters; and two great-granddaughters.

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girlinthespecialeconomiczone · 8 months

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the box itself is an afterthought, cuban cigar label describes its intended contents and yellowing paper blend cardboard is easy, yields itself to open and close, the opposite of a lock. The real contents, at first glance: a piece of bright green cardstock with "Good Job Y" inscribed in a child's handwriting, a chanel lipstick, several ziplock bags containing a single tooth each, some accompanied by more paper with child's handwriting, an altoids tin sharpied with the words "Mia's Hair," 5-10 loose teeth, skittering across the bottom of the box like rocks in the surf or compact, frightened arachnids. At second glance, several christmas wishlists belonging to child, the chanel lipstick is in fact a travel-size perfume, the altoid tin does contain my hair, two almost identical notes written on separate occasions expressing love for my mother -child handwriting- then what appears to be some kind of personal ad, small pink and rectangular, reading:

"YOUR STORY/ HAS TOUCHED MY HEART / NEVER BEFORE HAVE I MET ANYONE WITH / MORE, TROUBLES THAN YOU HAVE. PLEASE / ACCEPT THIS EXPRESSION OF MY SINCERE/ SYMPATHY.

NOW FUCK OFF AND QUIT BOTHERING ME."

then several newspaper clippings, including an obituary for someone with my father's full name, they were born within a few years of each other and he died just a county over.

A dilbert strip about getting catfished by a supermodel.

Then, a headline that reads "Police: Wife ran down husband with vehicle," and goes on about how after he looked at another woman during church service it took her three tries until she "succeeded" to run him over with a car

A Simpsons-themed daily calendar page:

"Apu: Is it me or do your plans always involve some horrible web of lies?

Homer: It's you."

This is less a revelation about the nature of my childhood and moreso laughing @ my mom's freakish way of memorializing it. Maybe I am pretending to not care that my mother wanted to kill my father. What would it have meant for me to uncover these items in a different order? What does it mean that I had to peel back layers of my own corporeal detritus to find my mother's homicidal fantasies? what kind of armament is a baby tooth, a lock of hair?

i spend the day looking at memory boxes, and have the same problem i always have - i forget what belongs to my mom and what belongs to me. we go back and forth, and try to remember the origin of things, smug when we convince each other the thing was actually ours to begin with. i do this with my sister, too, and when i invoke the hypothetical child i might eventually have and want to pass my clothes onto, she says indignantly "i am your child"

later, alone, i go to my mom's memory boxes, again with the problem - i can't remember which necklaces she beaded, i can't decide whether i can take confidently take credit for my precocious aesthetic sensibilities or whether she was picking the beads out, placing them in my hands, placing my hands on the wire, i go through boxes and boxes of jewelry like this, like i might find an answer. i find the murder box instead.

Years ago I wrote a list of things which were "not actually mine but my mother's": dead friends, Mao's little red book, the bedroom closet, beer cans, baby teeth, phone voice, mopping floor on hands and knees, phd program, stalkers. I'm wearing all the jewelry pilfered from my mom's jewelry boxes this last visit home, watching true blood and drinking rum straight out the bottle (not my first choice, it was leftover from a party), and thinking about how in her drinking days, my mom probably also liked to sit herself in front of the tv and cry. Many people don't get to have families. With my mom there is a kind of cannibalistic sameness that actually, while to most people it appears like an ideal "home," is placeless, not actually mine but etc

perhaps this can explain my recent interest in my father's side of things, there is little to no inherent risk that i might find myself collapsed under my fathers particularities and interests, as our relationship is primarily defined by my sense of alienation. Through him and his parents I can construct something of a history, a "why" I am the way I am. Close but not too close, like when someone takes a picture of you you can barely recognize. Me and my mom used to joke that I was born asexually or through divination, a simple reproduction of her

There is of course a long lineage of crazy ass white girls, of bougie white women who choose to be addicts, or bad mothers, or writers, or waitresses, or communists. In 2015, my mom commented a picture of Patty Hearst with an automatic rifle on my facebook profile picture, and I learned who she was. I haven't been in therapy for six months but if I was, I would ask my therapist if she believed my mom wanted me to find the murder box

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orderofserviceforfuneralblog · 2 years

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timestribute-blog1 · 5 years

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Times Tribute is a place where you can tribute your ancestors or Place Obituary Ad in Over Paper. It is a portal which helps us relive the lives of our ancestors and departed loved ones. Times Tribute helps you to advertise Obituary ad in times of India, Obituary ad in Hindustan times, Obituary ad in Dainik Jagaran, Obituary ad in Amar Ujala, Obituary ad in Dainik Bhaskar.

#Obituary ad in times of India #Place obituary ad in over paper #Obituary ad in Hindustan times #Obituary ad in Dainik Jagaran #Obituary ad in Amar Ujala #Obituary ad in Dainik Bhaskar

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sergeant-spoons · 2 years

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38. Breathing In the Last Days of September

Leslie Sheppard

Taglist: @thoughpoppiesblow @chaosklutz @wexhappyxfew @50svibes @tvserie-s-world @adamantiumdragonfly @ask-you-what-sir @whovian45810 @brokennerdalert @holdingforgeneralhugs @claire-bear-1218 @heirsoflilith @itswormtrain @actualtrashpanda @wtrpxrks

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The English papers weren't all too different from their American counterparts.

At least, not since the war broke out.

Sensationalized stories with boastful victories shadowed the ever-tightening war rations, the holdup in funerals in certain areas for lack of adequate coffins, the infighting and fear among politicians behind closed doors every minute of every day. Obituaries did not appear until twelve pages in. They were posted weekly in the Swindon papers and daily in the London. Most were soldiers, some were nurses and other military attachés. Leslie wondered what happened to the old folks who passed away at home or in the hospitals but never made it on a page because of the war. Uncomfortable, she flipped over to the sports section and tried to entertain herself with cricket reports (though she spent most of the time trying to figure out what cricket even was).

"If it isn't a bright, sunshiney day in merry old England," declared Tink as she waltzed halfway into the room, then stopped and stood with her hands in her pockets, rocking back and forth on her heels.

"It is nice," agreed Kiko, sitting on the wide windowsill and doodling leaves and flowers on the back of an empty envelope.

"How are ya likin' Aldbourne so far, Tink?" Leslie asked, half-heartedly reading a wanted ad for a nursemaid in Chelmsford.

"Well, Aldbourne's been swell, except..."

Leslie tipped the paper down, turning her full attention toward her friend.

"Except?"

Tink hesitated, then dipped her head, glum. "Charlie couldn't make it."

The newspaper fell, abandoned, into Leslie's lap as a frown flashed across her features.

"He canceled on you?"

"No, he..." Tink sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, he canceled. But he had a good reason!"

Kiko frowned and took the telegram from Tink's hand.

"And that reason would be..?"

"His brother broke his leg, apparently," Kiko relayed.

Leslie huffed.

"Yeah, right."

"Oh, no, don't..."

Tink couldn't seem to muster her usual defenses of her fiancé. Leslie and Kiko shared a look of concern and Tink shrugged, thumbing at her suspenders.

"I didn't even know he had a brother," she quietly admitted.

Leslie hopped up, slinging the newspaper onto the now-vacated armchair behind her.

"Let's go out!"

She grabbed Tink's hands and spun them both around.

"Just the three of us. We'll make it a girls' day!"

"We can take the bikes," Kiko suggested, "no one'll be using them today."

Mama E kept five bikes parked behind the garage that were free for the mechanics' use if the higher-ranking officers of the 506th didn't get to them first. Leslie hopped in place and grinned at Tink until she received a smile in return.

"Well? Whaddaya say?"

"I say let's do it!"

The three girls shared a cheer and, after snatching up sweaters (Tink) and jean-jackets (Leslie) and borrowed Class A uniform jackets (Kiko's, originally Penkala's), raced out into the mid-morning sunshine. They found the bikes and climbed aboard, and though Leslie would have preferred a motorcycle, she didn't mind the exercise. She would have found herself a sweet ride if they'd been here more than a week; she was looking forward to taking Don out for a ride when they got the chance. Last Autumn, just after she'd received the news about her nephew's birth, was the last time they'd gone out like that. But hush, she ought to focus on her present company. These last days of September had snuck Don into her introspections often enough; it was Kiko and especially Tink who merited her attention now.

They set off through the base, waving to a friend or two as they passed them by. Danny Huff gave a shout and tried to race them on foot, and Tink took up his challenge only to realize they were about to start up a hill. She won regardless, though as soon as Danny had conceded his defeat, she dropped off her bike and splayed out on the grass, panting. Kiko and Leslie came up to her, the former concerned and the latter laughing, and after she declared her legs may never recover, they helped her to her feet and she was just fine.

Continuing on, they scaled several more hills, upon which Kiko (who was unfamiliar with bicycling) dismounted and walked instead. She would not give in until Leslie or Tink noticed her exertion and stepped down first, exclaiming something about the slope and the opportunity to catch their breaths. On a particularly windy road, Leslie reminded her friends that the ride back down to the base would be a fun one as it was mostly downhill. That cheered them, and their spirits were further boosted when they came to the top of the tallest hill yet and discovered a small copse of silver birch trees shivering in the wind. The place made for a perfect place to catch their breaths, so they leaned the bikes up against the birches and sat down in the grass. Tink exclaimed that her legs were itching from the grass and Leslie took off her jacket and offered for it to be sat on. Her friend happily accepted, and Leslie glanced up at the sun's aura, hoping it would warm the day just a tad more.

"Hey, look-" Kiko pointed down the hill. "-it's Easy."

Tink squinted. "How can you tell?"

Leslie stifled a laugh. "Because that is definitely Sobel."

Indeed, a man sped ahead of the group, his chin rocking up and down and his fists punching the air with every step. It was almost comical how far he brought his knees up as he ran. Even from such a distance, his bellow, though unintelligible, could be caught in the breeze. All these characteristics made him seem like the captain Easy despised, but the one that confirmed it was how he ran without an ounce of gear whereas all the other men did.

"Yeah, that's Sobel, alright." Tink agreed. "Sheesh."

As Easy ran their drills, the mechanics high above looked past them to the town even farther beyond. Aldbourne appeared as a table model, shrunk so far by distance that when Leslie held out one hand, she could visually cup two or three buildings in a single palm. Kiko brought out treats wrapped in yesterday's paper from her pocket and revealed them to be candied orange slices she'd picked up in town yesterday on a date with Penk. The girls snacked away, lounging on the grass, and as Tink stretched out, she raised her hands toward the sky and remarked that the wind was getting cooler now that it was Autumn. Leslie drew a ribbon out of her pocket and asked Kiko to tie her hair back for her, and as Kiko complied, Tink started to talk about her time in Exeter.

"...and so I moved there with him for a while, after he graduated. The war was on, by then, and it was spooky, living with the blackout curtains and the air raid drills. And I don't mean Halloween-spooky, I mean kind-of-scary-spooky."

"Did you ever go to London?" Kiko, who'd decided to braid Leslie's hair, asked.

"No. Charlie went there for work sometimes, but I didn't come along. Never wanted to, either."

Leslie swallowed a sticky bite of orange. "What's he do? For work?"

Tink laughed softly. "Good question. This and that. It's mostly work for the government, I think."

"You think?"

She waved off the question. "Anyway, I came back home once I got a flyer 'bout the Mechorps from my cousin Janie, and you know the rest. But, oh, Exeter was nice. Lots of old buildings. If you think New England's got some old buildings, regular England's got 'em beat by a couple thousand years."

Leslie and Kiko shared a confused look, and Tink wagged her finger, realizing.

"Oh, right, you've never been. Well, New York City, but everything there's been all modernized, ya know?" She nodded sagely. "The mills up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are really somethin'. Fueled the whole Industrial Revolution way back in the 1870s."

Leslie looked curiously at Tink. "I never knew you were so interested in history."

"I'm not, really," she confessed. "My cousin Janie goes to college for history. I used to help her study, but then I left with Charlie and my brothers took over that job." A small smile graced her lips. "Actually, I think this is Janie's last year before she graduates."

"Oh, nice!"

As Leslie bobbed her head, feeling the braid swish about, Kiko sat back and pondered for a minute.

"I think I'd like to go to college someday."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm not sure for what, but... No, I know. I'd study flowers."

Tink plucked a dandelion from the hill. "Like this?"

"Well, uh..." Kiko stifled a smirk. "That's not quite a flower."

"It's not?" Tink studied the green-stemmed, yellow-petaled plant in her hand. "But it looks like a flower."

"It's, um, it's actually a weed."

Tink pouted. "Phooey."

She tossed the dandelion aside and pointed at the bushes down the hill.

"Those are flowers, right?"

"Yes, those are flowers."

"What kind?"

"I think they're rosebushes," Kiko supposed, "but summer's long gone, and those are the last of the blossoms dying with the cold."

"Aww."

As her friends spoke of flowers and Kiko proved her unexpected knowledge of botany, Leslie lay, content to listen. Easy had disappeared behind a hill a few minutes ago, but she still watched for their reemergence. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and Leslie turned her face up toward the sky, feeling its warmth on her cheeks and shoulders and closed eyes. She was starting to feel better, as September gave way to October and New York City seemed farther with every passing day. She didn't startle so much at sudden noises, and this morning, when Eli Shackley sleepily brushed past her to get to the bathroom, she didn't shy away. Her flashlight, a savior, now rested beside her pillow rather than in her hand. For the last two weeks, on the S.S. Samaria and English dry land, she'd kept it on all night until she wore the batteries out, shining a faint, blanket-dampened light to stave off the darkness. She'd attempted to sleep with it off last night. Aside from a spook from an owl outside, nothing went bump in the night, and her dreams, though strange, were not nightmares.

"Lady? Yoohoo."

Tink waved, trying not to startle her, and Leslie blinked out of her reverie to see her friends looking at her with creased brows.

"Where'd you go?" Kiko asked, half-teasing, half-worried.

"I was just..." Leslie waved vaguely at the sky. "The sun was warm. Guess I drifted off a bit. Sorry."

"No worries," Tink reassured. "I was just telling Kiko about the time I went to see the Exeter Cathedral. Charlie couldn't come because of work, but I was happy to go by myself. They had a service and everything—boy, was it something to see."

Leslie sat up and crossed her legs, turning her full attention toward her friend. Tink looked pleased, and Kiko's expression of concern eased.

"Well, go on! What was it like?"

"Majestic! Awe-inspiring! Fuckin' huge!"

The girls laughed.

"There were so many glass-stained windows I lost count, and the old gothic pews stretched as far as the eye could see..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#leslie sheppard #audra 'tink' luchette #kelani palekiko #leslie sheppard ficlet #leslie sheppard 38: breathing in the last days of september #destiny carries a wrench #band of brothers #band of brothers oc ficlet #band of brothers oc #band of brothers ficlet #hbo war show #hbo war show oc #hbo war show oc ficlet #hbo war show ficlet #oc ficlet #oc fanfiction

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shhh-no-ones-home · 3 years

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personal jesus* frank castle x reader

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I don't usually add these disclaimers but this fic is nothing really close to anything I've written before so we'll add 'em anyway. And usually my stories are between 800 and 2500 words but I've exceeded that on this one so I'll add that too.

Wc: 2741

Warnings: canon level blood and gore mention, stitching him up, bad words, smut, and the likeness. It's very vulgar.

*- this is nothing but smut. Porn with a little bit of plot basically. Thigh riding, nipple play, not really a blood kink but like maybe if you squint, dick riding, unprotected p in v (please use protection in real life), and I think that's it. Enjoy 🥴

Song: joker and the thief by wolfmother

tag list: @cynic-spirit

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I sat on the couch reading, enjoying my late Saturday evening, the coffee sat under the lamp next to me long forgotten. I was all but consumed and was ready to ignore my alarm telling me to go to bed in the next couple minutes. It was almost midnight but I was determined to finish this book. After all, I only had twelve chapters left. Work could wait.

I flipped the page, new chapter, alarm began to ring. I turned it off and kept reading. Turned my attention to the next page and there was a knock at my door. I rolled my eyes. It's midnight, it couldn't be anyone that important. I flipped the page. Then the banging on the door started. Once, then another time, then another.

"Alright, I'm coming."

I mumbled under my breath, setting the bookmark in the spine and setting the book next to the mug on the side table. There was another slam of a fist against my door as I peaked through the peephole. It was frank and he didn't look great.

"Shit."

I mumbled under my breath as I fiddled with the door chain quickly. In a matter of rushed seconds the door was open and he was stumbling forward into my arms.

"What the fuck frank?"

I inquired a little annoyed, kicking the door closed and walking him to the kitchen table.

"I was gonna go home but your place was closer."

He groaned as I set him in the leather chair.

"And if I don't get this taken care of I'm gonna bleed out."

His voice was gruff, head dropping back against the back of the chair as I assessed him. He was covered in blood and I couldn't tell if it was his or someone else's. But knowing him it was probably a mixture of both. But as my gaze traveled up his torso and to his neck I noticed something.

"How far down does this go?"

I asked, touching the cut lightly with my finger tips and he jolted upright, grabbing my hand tightly in his own.

"I can't fix it if you don't let me at least see it."

I said and he let out a long shaky breath.

"Start with something else first."

He demanded, voice deep and strained like he'd been yelling. I shook my head.

"I'll be right back."

I look over him one last time before disappearing down the hall. I got in the closet first, getting everything I needed out of it before going back to the kitchen and filling a bowl with warm water.

"So, how much of this is yours?"

I asked, pulling up a tv tray and setting the bowl on it, soaking a wash cloth. He sent me a look, resituating in his seat to get comfortable, legs spread wide and one hand resting on each thigh.

"No, answer, per usual. That's fine."

I mumbled under my breath as I got to work wiping the blood off his face. I was careful not to push on the bruises I could see, taking extra care around the cuts and scrapes. There was a small one under his left eye, another deep into the brow bone. That One he hissed at when I went over it. I shook my head.

"I need to see this at a batter angle."

I stated boldly before straddling his left thigh and tilting his head up and to the side for more light. He looked at me for a moment, holding his breath as I rinsed the rag and got back to work. It took him a second to let the air back out, when he realized I didn't care what he was doing beneath me.

"This must've been some fight."

I mentioned more to myself than anything. He stared back ahead of him, swallowing hard.

"You should see the other guy."

He said quietly and I snorted, wiping the remaining blood off his face.

"Something tells me he'll be in the paper later this week under that section in the back titled 'obituary'."

He side eyed me, tightening his jaw as I moved to open my kit. I started with q-tips and rubbing alcohol, and setting out a few small butterfly bandaids.

"This is gonna hurt."

I said and he huffed a laugh out, as if to say sarcastically 'and you think it didn't hurt when it happened?' But I just ignored it. I dipped the first q-tip into the alcohol and pressed it to the cut under his eye. He hissed and jerked away and I sent him a look.

"Sit still or it's gonna get infected."

He drew his brows at me before going back to where he was before.

"If it hurts that bad, just squeeze here."

I said, grabbing his hand that had been situated under me on his thigh and placing it against my hip.

"But don't move."

I said firmly, holding his jaw tightly with one hand and getting back to work. His breathing was unsteady as I ran a new qtip dipped in alcohol over the cut. It was still trying to scab so I was getting more coagulated blood than I had originally bargained for. He kept his jaw locked in place as I added the bandaid to the cut under his eye. Now onto the brow bone. It was deeper, still running blood down and almost into his eye. It was a race between me and it and luckily I was winning. When I touched it with the qtip he squeezed my hip so tightly i made a pained noise.

"Shit."

We said in unison and I shook my head.

"Sit still."

I said annoyed, grabbing another bandaid and positioning it around his eyebrow. When it was on I moved his head again via his jaw to make sure there weren't any more. I had cleaned all the blood off already and the only traces of the fight that were left were the deep purple and yellow bruises littered under his left eye and across his nose and right cheek. I nodded once in content before pushing his head to look up and inspecting the deep cut that started at the base of his jaw and got thicker the further under his shirt collar it got.

"I need to look at this now."

I said and he sighed.

"Fine but don't do that shit you just did to my face."

I rolled my eyes.

"Big baby."

He glared at me before letting his death grip on me go and lifting his shirt. My eyes went wide as his shirt hit the table in a wet heap. The cut went all the way to his sternum and was all but gushing blood.

"Why the fuck didn't we start with this?!?"

I said in a loud, angry tone, looking from the cut to his face.

"Didnt want you to worry."

He managed and I shook my head, getting my stuff out quickly.

"No, you don't get to do that. All this time and you could've been dead in my kitchen."

I said a little more pissed off than I meant. I started again by wiping the blood away, holding a dry wash cloth to his chest to stop it from bleeding more.

"Hold this, lots of pressure."

I instructed, his right hand coming up and doing as told. His left hand went back to my side as I started cleaning the small part of the cut at his jaw.

"What did you do frank?"

I inquired, again more as a 'thinking out loud' than looking for an actual answer.

"I backed up before he could run me all the way through. Damn ninja. Sliced up, almost took my fucking ear off."

I sent him a look, one he returned as I cleaned the thinner part of the cut, adding butterfly bandaids; two on his throat, one on his collar bone, one just below it on the edge of his peck.

"That's gonna need stitches."

He sighed, sinking further into the chair and his lower stomach pressing against my thighs.

"Alright. Let's get it over with."

He complied and i bit my tongue. I quickly got everything out, sterilized the needle and he moved his hand. It was still bleeding and I knew this would be messy. I leaned forward to get a better look and his hand went with my hip.

"Why don't you just sit."

He said and I looked up to him, brows drawn.

"What?"

I asked and he rolled his eyes, a small smile playing on his lips but it was barely there.

"Sit."

He said, grabbing my waist and pushing me down onto his leg. I made a surprised noise and he laughed, groaning a bit.

"fine, but don't move, I don't want to make it worse."

He stared down at me intently as I got to work stitching him up. His gaze was intense and he kept his iron grip on my hip the entire time. I would be flustered if I weren't so focused. The stitches were barely helping as I sewed against his chest. It was still bleeding a lot. And when the stitches were done it seemed like I had more work to do than when I started. I moved to clean it and he caught my hand.

"Is that really necessary?"

He asked and I deadpanned.

"Yes frank now let go."

I said sternly and he did, brows drawn as I poured the alcohol over his chest. He hissed, throwing his head back as he bruised my hip more. The blood ran freely down his torso as he breathed heavily, it rippling against his abs as they tensed. I took another dry rag and wiped it off. The bleeding was starting to slow now that the cut was together and I was more relieved. He looked back down at me, his chest rising and falling quickly.

"Shit woman you sure know how to do a number on me."

I smirked at him as I leaned over and put the stuff back on the tv tray.

"I've had a lot of practice."

I said a little cocky and he smiled.

"Good thing too."

He said and I rolled my eyes playfully.

"You're a menace frank castle. But I wouldn't want it any other way."

He just stared at me for a second and then I realized I was still sitting on him and should probably get up before it gets weird. I placed my hands at his shoulders and tried but he still had a grip on me that was prohibiting me from doing so.

"Frank?"

I asked and in a second his lips were against my own. It was then that I'd realized he had a cut on his lip. He tasted like iron and hissed through his teeth when I ran my tongue across it. I smiled against him but he kept going. It was needy and rushed and everything I had imagined it would be. Not that I had thought about it often but he wound up in my apartment covered in blood a couple times a month so I'd be lying if I said it hadn't crossed my mind once or twice.

"Frank."

I moaned against him as he kissed the side of my mouth, then my jaw, then across my neck. My arms were around his shoulders now, holding on for dear life as his hands roamed my body. I adjusted against his thigh and he growled against my ear, his hands guiding me to do it again. I did it without even thinking, pressing my core further against him if that was even possible. I could feel myself getting wetter and wetter and before I knew what was happening my own blood soaked shirt was off and sitting next to his on the glass table.

"I've been wanting to do this for a while."

He confessed through staggered breaths as he undid my bra, his mouth traveling across my collar bone and down my chest. Then my nipple was in his mouth and I was moaning again. I scratched lightly at the back of his head with one hand and trailed my finger tips down his torso with the other, being careful not to touch the cut. As I got further down his motions slowed, and when I began palming him through his jeans he rested his forehead against my chest and breathed heavily.

"Shit."

He breathed out and I laughed, his hips pushing up to meet my hand. He was already hard and I could tell he wanted more. As I undid his pants he sat back upright, kissing me again like his life depended on it. It was just as harsh and sloppy as before but he froze when I took him out of his pants, stroking him lightly. His eyes were closed and his mouth hung open and I could feel his hands at my thighs trying to push into my pajamas shorts. I kissed across his face, feeling his hot breath fan over my jaw and neck.

"Need you. Now."

He said, finally looking at me. His pupils were blown out and his eyes were black with lust as he pulled my one leg over his right one so I was sitting on his lap properly now. I kissed him again as he pushed my shorts and panties to the side, holding me against him. I looked down long enough to line him up and sank down onto him. I moaned at the new feeling, watching as he dropped his head back against the chair, his brows knitted together as he screwed his eyes shut. I kissed across his exposed neck and chest as I moved on top of him. His legs were still spread wide beneath me, helping me out as I rode him.

"Shit. Faster."

He managed, looking back to me as his hands gripped my ass tightly.

"Yes sir."

I said playfully, and he groaned. As I did as told he slapped my ass and I squealed in surprise, clenching around him. He screwed his brows together, watching my every move with intent as I bounced on top of him quickly.

"Frank."

I moaned, reaching down to circle my clit as he kept me steady on top of him.

"Keep going beautiful."

He encouraged and I dropped my head back, feeling the knot build in my stomach.

"Frank."

I whined again, my legs beginning to shake.

"Just a little bit more."

He grunted out, thrusting up to meet me as my movements got slower.

"Oh god."

I said panicked, as I felt closer, him pounding up into me.

"Oh my god."

I yelled as my body shook, my orgasm ripping through my body, pussy clenching around him. He held me close as I shook on top of him, riding out my high as he chased his own.

"Y/n."

He moaned, his thrusts getting harsher.

"Y/n."

He said a little louder and I could hear the chair creak. I lifted up and dropped to meet him and he moaned loudly against my neck, hand placed firmly at my back as he came in me. I could feel him twitch against my walls as his pace slowed. We both breathed heavily, sporadically, as we calmed down. We still had a death grip on each other, my arms around his shoulders, his arms around my waist, our heads pressed against one another. It was like the aftermath of a hurricane.

"Thanks."

I said through a breathy laugh and he sat up, brows drawn in confusion. His hands were at my hips now and I could feel him going soft in me.

"For what?"

"For the great ride cowboy."

I said with a wink and he smiled, shaking his head at me.

"Is that a fair trade off?"

He asked and I shrugged.

"I stitch you up and you cum in me, I don't know if that has the same affect."

He laughed, kissing my cheek.

"Would it make it better if I helped clean up?"

He asked, gazing up at me, an innocence to him that I hadn't seen before.

"How about this. We go take a shower to get this blood off both of us and then we'll see where that takes us."

He kissed my jaw, tracing his fingers lightly up my back.

"Sure thing doc."

#wattpad #x reader #smut #frank castle #the punisher #the defenders #marvel #imagines #one shots #336

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httpmentalbreakdown · 2 years

Text

Puzzle Piece

Isabella “Bella” Marie Cullen was soaking wet as she glided into the cottage she shared with her husband. It had once housed three, but her daughter had long since moved out with her husband Jacob Black. The spacious cottage hadn’t changed much. The original grandeur had worn off into a cozy familiarity. It was one of her constants.In her haste to change out of her wet clothes, she ended up kicking something in the doorway. If she had been human it might have slid lightly. However, the strength of her marble foot combined with a steel toed boot sent the object flying. It landed by an end table which is where it would stay for now. The need to change and overall lack of curiosity was more important at the moment. The flying object might just be the highlight of her day, or it could disappoint and be a constant. She already had a list of constants. Some which often depressed, frustrated or soothed her. Constants kept things in order. Once upon a time, when she still lived with her mother , she had to remain consistent. The only thing consistent about Reneé was her inconsistency. She can’t remember too much, but that stood out vividly amongst other murky human memories. The only memories vampire’s couldn’t recall with perfect clarity.

It was imperative though because Edward was heavily featured in many of them. Edward, her husband, is another constant. It was a constant that she still yearned for after all these many years. The love they had was still strong, pure, but not all consuming anymore. Soulmates. She called them that despite Edward’s insistence at lacking one. The years had diluted the overpowering feeling of “not being able to live without the other”. It was more that they could live and be apart, but they didn’t want to be. It could be the passing years, or the thrill of new love long extinguished. A steadfast love feeling the dents of experience.

It was hard to acknowledge the change in their connection. A frozen mental state is hard to mature and impossible to mold. Another one of her constants. They could age chronologically , but they could never develop pass a teenage mind. That’s not to say she hasn’t changed. Bella had graduated numerous times, had a degree in Literature, Psychology, and Marketing. She had lived in more places than people could imagine and seen the world change over and over. Still the constant of time plagued her mind. Time meant nothing to vampires. Seventy years was like a drop of water in a bucket. Bella hadn’t noticed the passage of time until they had relocated to Forks again. The face in the newspaper had caught her eye. Only Forks would still use newspapers. The face was under a list of obituaries. The girl- woman in question had a friendly smile and round glasses adorning her shiny eyes. The wrinkled and grey hair only adding to her beauty. The smile is what made her pay for the paper and continue to read.

Danielle Weber. Loving Daughter, Mother, and Grandmother.

Weber. Weber. Angela. Angela Weber. In those muddy memories, she sees a tall girl with glasses and a friendly smile. Her real first time in Forks and her real first time in high school. There’s other people at the table, but she pays them no mind. Angela was the only one she truly felt was her friend. They weren’t all that close but she remembers her niceness and inability to pry. Edward even enjoyed her due to her friendly and selfless thoughts. She had invited us to her wedding what she knew was a literal lifetime ago. We obviously couldn’t go because it’s hard to explain still looking like you’re 18 when you’re supposed to be almost 40. We had instead sent a return card with a paid vacation to Greece. It was the first of many cracks, in her supposed picture perfect life. The wedding wasn’t necessarily the issue, it was the principal. She and Edward couldn’t go to friend’s weddings, high school reunions, post on socials. It was the lack of choice due to the ever growing list of constants. A constant being never changing while everyone and everything around you died. Even Danielle Weber, Angela’s great great great granddaughter.

In the beginning, she would never have admitted to this . Partially due to naïveté and the other part pride. However, pride washed away and centuries under her belt, she could admit to missing Bella Swan. Her human arrogance and ignorance had sewn buttons over her eyes. She recalls a conversation with Rose on a balcony, where the blond had admitted to missing the “possibilities”. She also recalls her own confusion and light irritation. Rosalie had represented everything she yearned for and was willing to die for. There was no greater possibility than having Edward and our piece of forever. Rose’s bitterness that Bella had once perceived as ungratefulness, was the same feeling that plagued her years later. Maybe it was payback for her idealism and easy time as a newborn. Even Edward’s now occasional self deprecation was understandable in the grand scheme of things.

In times like these she often wishes for sleep. Another thing she had started to miss when the melancholy sunk in. When she’s awake that leaves more time for a wandering mind. Vampires are easily distracted. Our sensory capabilities too overwhelming for the human brain. Edward used to watch her sleep when she could, and she never understood until she couldn’t anymore. The need to escape your thoughts just for a few hours. The nights find her, book open, her advanced mind allowing her to read and think simultaneously. To think about those possibilities. The ones she neglected when she had gotten that first taste of this life. That seemed so trivial, next to her love she had for the bronze haired Adonis that was her whole being. Did she sacrifice too much? Could she have somehow fit in the life she hated once she realized she could be more? In another life maybe she could have fit. She always felt like a jammed in puzzle piece back then. She didn’t fit in with humans or supernatural, constantly stuck in limbo. She wanted Edward so wanting him meant wanting his world. At least at the time it did. She can safely imagine a life where she aged while Edward stayed the same, eternally beautiful, and the happiness that she feels is startling. Could she have really been happy as human? The door opening diverts her from her thoughts. Edward is calling for her, the object from earlier she had kicked, dangly from his alabaster fingers.

A backpack

The one she had bought carelessly because they would be starting another high school next week. Emmett was her brother as usual. Same cover story, same gawking kids, constant, constant, constant. So when she looks at the backpack for another high school, in another year, in another small town, she knows without a doubt she could’ve been.

#bella swan #bella cullen #edward cullen #rosalie hale #twilight #twilight renaissance #analysis #the cullens #oneshot

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chaotic-tired-cat · 3 years

Note

world walker to date is one of my most favorite fanfics ever. it's so well-written! not too op, with real difficulties and plot, but still light-hearted and funny! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 i hope life smoothens out for you so we can get an update of this awesome story! :D :D :D

Aaaa thanks Anon!! This ask made me super happy - I'm glad you like World Walker and that it hit the right balance between angst and comedic moments (tbh that's one of the things that's really hard to get right). Things are still hectic but as soon as they're not that chapter is getting finished!!!

Since it might be a while, have a post-World Walker scene from the pov of a couple civilians. It was written to try out Cryptid as Izuku's hero name (/^o^)/

(Note: this scene isn't canon to World Walker and was written before I knew how the story would end.)

“Why do you even think this is going to work?” Yua hovers around Mariko’s efforts in the Denny’s parking lot, careful to avoid stepping on the complicated design taking place under Mariko’s second piece of chalk. The first one was sacrificed to ward off a raccoon. They specifically chose to do this after midnight for the ambiance, but Yua is starting to have second thoughts.

It’s very dark, and they’re both fem-presenting teenagers with emitter quirks in a deserted part of town.

This is not a good place to be.

“I got the pattern off a hero,” Mariko assures her. “You know how I was in the gym when Uravity's fight hit school, right?”

Yes, and Yua is trying desperately to forget the worst day of her life, thank you.

“Uravity and Cryptid dug me out, but it was weird, because he drew this symbol on a piece of the roof and it just- stayed. In the air. Even when nothing was supporting it.” Mariko pauses, beaming at the magic circle that’s mostly made of lines and squiggles to complete the aesthetic. One of the symbols doesn't look right. It slides out of focus, and Yua carefully steps back, because hell no.

“How is that supposed to help us summon a ghost-”

“Finished! Start filming, hurry, hurry, hurry!” Mariko drops her piece of chalk as Yua scrambles to swipe open her camera. Before Yua can stop her, Mariko has drawn a pocket knife, cut the pad of her thumb, and is smearing blood on the unsanitary parking lot ground.

Delightful.

Her hand is going to get so infected.

That’s right about when the air above the circle tears itself apart.

Mariko shrieks. Yua almost runs, then remembers herself and makes sure her phone is pointed at the sliver of starlight shining out of thin air. She knows her horror film tropes. Whatever they released into the world is taking them first, but she can at least get a video account to warn people of what they did.

Eaten by a demon or some shit. That’s a bomb-ass obituary.

Pro Hero Cryptid crashes out of the portal, one hand protectively wrapped around a bowl half-full of salad. His Uravity sweatshirt mostly obscures Froppy sweatpants, but Yua is more alarmed by the fact that Cryptid looks surprisingly human. No needle-sharp teeth, no starlit eyes. Spinach flutters to the ground around the hero in a gentle shower of greenery that nestles in his curly hair as if adding to the foliage. He stares blankly at them, then at the scribbles under his feet, before pointing a truly pissed-off look at the sky.

“Are you serious?” Cryptid yells at the city skyline. A spinach leaf falls off his shoulder. “Right in front of my salad?”

“Holy shit,” Yua whispers, and discovers that she can, in fact, be more embarrassed than the time their teacher made the whole class sing ‘Happy Birthday’ while she stood in silent mortification on a chair. “We summoned him.”

Mariko claps both hands over her mouth to keep in her laughter, eyes wide. “We really did.”

This seems to draw the hero’s attention back to them.

“You two okay? Yes? Nobody’s hurt? Oh, thank goodness.” Cryptid stabs a fork into his vegetables, shoves it into his mouth, and makes grabby hands for the chalk. Mariko passes it over with a potent mix of awe and glee.

“I am so sorry,” Yua breathes.

Mariko sniffs. “I’m not.”

“And I’m glad to be summoned,” Cryptid finishes with a sunshine-smile. He’s very… human. The wrinkled eyebrows he directs at Mariko’s chalk art do not resemble the otherworldly creature that showed up during All Might’s last battle. “Better for me to be dropped here than for y’all to get… hm. Yeah, this is good.”

Hm?

Hm??

What does ‘hm’ mean?

Yua reaches over and frantically swats at Mariko’s sweatshirt in an attempt at telepathically communicating her many, many feelings concerning accidentally summoning a hero into this godsforsaken Denny’s parking lot.

“How did you find a stasis glyph?” Cryptid mumbles around his fork.

“Copied it from you. My quirk lets me mimic actions if I see them without blinking.” Mariko peers around his shoulder at the lines taking form.

“That’s such a cool quirk,” Cryptid tells her instantly. “Do you need a clear line of sight? Is it only capable of copying real-life actions or can you use recordings? Oh, are you limited to your own flexibility and strength, or is this a mirror skill instead of a mimic? You could use that for anything, it’s a very adaptable power.”

Yua cautiously edges closer to give the camera a better angle at the ground while Mariko preens. “What are you even doing?”

“Editing. Here, look- right there, you tied it down with intent contrary to the meaning.” Cryptid shuffles over so she can see and points out a circled section. He smudges out the blurry patch.

Mariko watches eagerly as the hero replaces it with a mishmash of lines that Yua can actually make sense of. “I don’t understand any of what you just said, but hell fuckin’ yeah, you funky lil’ cryptid.”

“Oh, sorry. I get called whenever the void gets angry, and this is the language it speaks,” Cryptid says, like this makes sense. He taps the lines eagerly. “Put a stasis glyph on the ground and continents will stop shifting, which is a whole lot of bad news."

"Uh huh," Mariko says. Yua swats at her again, because there's no way she understands and going along with this for entertainment value alone is going to get them into some sort of horror movie B-Plot.

Cryptid just looks amused. "Next time you need to experiment, use a paper base instead of the concrete. It’s safer. And- is that blood?”

“Maybe,” Mariko says, partially as a dare for him to say anything because she isn’t really the type to listen to anyone, regardless of if they’re a hero. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Huh. Yeah, you got me there.” Cryptid puts his bowl of salad on the ground and fishes around in his Uravity sweatshirt for a tiny med kit.

“Where’d we go wrong,” Mariko asks, like they are ever going to try this again. Yua hisses for her to stop and is ignored with the extreme confidence of someone determined to keep making the same continuous mistake until success is summoned through stubborn willpower alone.

“You didn’t need to hurt yourself.” Cryptid bandages her hand, slips away the medkit, and says gravely, “Blood never brings anything good.”

“Holy shit,” Yua repeats as Cryptid takes a bite of salad and goes right back to his art project like this happens every other Tuesday. Mariko glares at her, but honestly, this is the wildest thing.

The hero keeps saying things.

“Not to lecture either of you, but it’s a bad idea to mess around with unborn languages without supervision.” Cryptid hands back the chalk and takes another bite of his salad. “This stuff can blow up in your face. So, can I escort you guys anywhere? Because it’s a little dark and this isn’t exactly the safest part of town.”

That’s about when Yua realizes something under the spinach is glowing.

#Anon #Tired cat asks #World Walker #Fic snippet

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30secondfics · 4 years

Text

EAT OR BE EATEN (A/U) 6 OF 6

~ Author’s Note ~ “Before the renaissance we had the Black Plague.”

- @thekingoflegoland

Rated M

Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5a > Part 5b > Part 6

Seattle, January 2021

Gabriella Torres stepped out of her rideshare and studied the house she stood in front of. A small shingled house, hunter green, the grass browned from the cool weather and the paint of the white front door chipped from years of neglect. She knocked.

A woman with a black lacquered cane opened the door with widened eyes, pale, as if she had just seen a ghost.

“Hi, I’m looking for Calliope Torres-”

“She doesn’t live here.“

“My name is Gabriella Torres. Aria Torres is my mother—was—my mother.”

The woman sighed and eyed the young woman. “You're a spitting image of your mother. Come in.”

The sunroom of the house was clean, sterilized. It still smelled of cleaning products and polish; it was well tended to, unlike the exterior of the house.

“Can I get you a coffee or a tea?” the woman asked.

“Water, please, if you wouldn’t mind,” Gabriella answered. She took the glass the woman offered her and took a generous sip.

“What did you say your name was again?” the woman asked, taking the seat in front of her guest and leaning her cane against the side table.

“Gabriella.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

The woman paused in thought.

“I’m sorry to come out of the blue, but I thought you would prefer meeting in person rather than starting a paper trail… Aunt Calliope.”

Calliope nodded in agreement and cleared her throat. “So how did you find me?”

“I just started grad school at the University of Washington, I’m doing my masters in library studies-”

“Impressive,” Callie nodded, glad and relieved to learn her niece was educated.

“Thank you. I was in foster care my whole life, you see, I knew nothing but my mother’s name. I swore to find her one day and I searched for her for years and years. Then, finally, I came across her obituary and I found out she lived in Miami… and, well, my research led me to you.”

“So you know who I am…” Callie cleared her throat and picked at the cotton of her pants.

“You’re Calliope Torres. You were the head of the Torres Crime family. You were responsible for the Miami Mob Massacre of 2013 when all of the heads of the city’s crime families were murdered.”

“Allegedly,” Callie corrected.

Gabriella nodded in agreement. “Early in 2014 the Feds gathered enough evidence to put you on trial-”

“Alex Karev and George O’Malley came forward and turned themselves in, in an attempt to put me away,” Callie informed. “Even after I paid them a very generous amount of money to leave town. It seemed that it wasn’t enough for two men who felt overpowered by a single woman.”

“You were on trial for 21 days,” Gabriella continued. “Until you were proven not guilty. After 21 days they were going to let you walk free, you were free—then you were showered with bullets on your way out of the Miami courthouse. A man named Robert Stark was arrested; he claimed you destroyed his life over unsettled debt.”

“And yet he’s still in jail and I am not,” Callie couldn’t help but smirk.

“My mother perished that day, and you were airlifted to Miami General with life-threatening injuries,” Gabriella added. “Some articles reported that you wouldn’t make it out alive, while others rumoured you would never fully recover. You were mentioned in the papers for months, until suddenly you weren’t. New leaders of the other crime families began to take their place, and new gang wars plagued Miami. By the time you walked out of the hospital a free woman, you were old news and the Torres empire had crumbled. You’ve been laying low ever since.”

Gabriella was nothing but correct in her explanation. The Torres empire crumbled, and it crumbled hard. In Callie’s absence, and Alex and George’s incarceration, other members of the corporation fought for themselves, fought amongst themselves, stole for themselves, until there was nothing left but a few skids of canned peaches scattered across the city. The Torres mansion was looted and then destroyed by opportunistic rival families. The Torres name became irrelevant. A name no longer feared. A name no longer remembered, despite the damage it did in the past decades. Bigger crimes flooded Miami, and though grudges still existed, seeking revenge against the Torres family was no longer a priority.

Callie remained silent. It had been years since she lived that life, it was hard to believe its vibrant contrast to the life she lived now.

“Sorry,” Gabriella brushed. “I was just searching for my mother, I didn’t mean to uncover so much more about you.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Callie reassured. “That was my past, and I will take what I did to my grave.”

Gabriella remained silent.

“So what do you want to know about your mother?” Callie asked.

Gabriella released a sigh with both grief and relief. Grief of the loss she had held in her heart for so long, and relief that she was finally going to get some answers.

“I want to know why my mother left me at the hospital that day, knowing she had the means to raise me.”

“I can’t answer for the dead,” Callie shook her head.

“I know that, but you at least knew her…”

“And I know giving you up was probably the best decision she could have made for you.”

“What?” Gabriella asked with furrowed brows. She spent her life in poverty. She was alone. She moved from foster home to foster home. The closest thing she has to a family is an old college roommate.

“My sister Aria was… impulsive. Especially when it came to money. She and my father would always clash on her irresponsible spendings. I believe she had you the year she just about had it with our father and so she disappeared for a year to travel across the country in a van with some friends. She was in no state to raise a child, even if we had the money.”

“But I grew up poor, without a family-” Gabriella began to argue.

“Do you think a crime family would have been any better?”

“Maybe,” Gabriella shrugged.

“It cost us your mothers life,” Callie reminded. “It nearly cost me mine.”

Gabriella remained silent.

“A life of riches is far from a fairytale when it’s funded with bloodmoney.”

Gabriella avoided her aunt’s eyes.

“So if it’s money you want from me I no longer have much of it,” Callie admitted.

“I don’t need money,” Gabriella promised. “I just wanted answers.”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer anymore than that,” Callie replied. “I didn’t even know my sister had you until this morning.”

“Would you have stepped in if you knew back then?” Gabriella asked.

Callie paused in thought. “Probably not,” she answered honestly. She believed the mob was no place for a child.

They sat in silence for a moment. Then Callie glanced at the clock.

“Then I won’t take up much more of your time,” Gabriella promised and stood from her seat. “Thank you for your time.”

Callie simply nodded.

“Can I ask how you found out where I live?” Callie asked before the younger woman could leave.

Gabriella signed. “Seattle Grace held a Gala last week. I was sorting the newspaper section of the library when I saw your face. Your hair is much shorter now but I had studied the family so much I recognized you right away… it wasn’t hard after I ran a search for you in Seattle.”

“What newspaper published that article?” Callie needed to know: if her niece could recognize her, how many more people could.

“Seattle Local. Don’t worry, I’ve already shredded as many copies of the paper as I could find,” Gabriella reassured.

“Thank you,” Callie sighed in relief.

“Can I ask you one last question before I go?” Gabriella asked.

“You just did.”

“Do you think there are people out there who still want you dead?” Gabriella proceeded to ask.

“I know there is,” Callie nodded. “Dozens of them.”

“How do you bear it? How do you live in fear?”

“I don’t,” Callie answered confidently. “Knowing my life could end at any moment is what makes every day so worth living.”

000

There was one part of Gabriella’s story that was missing; one part of the Calliope Torres story that was very private and protected from the public eye. Down a long hallway, two feet and a cane dully tread across grey terrazzo floors. The door at the end of the hall held a plaque, yielded the Seattle Grace Hospital logo and the title Chief of Surgery. She opened the door.

Large windows letting in lights from the Seattle Skyline also enclosed the spacious and personalized office. The walls were decorated with various frames, some with photos, others with accomplishments and awards. One of which was the 2014 Carter Madison Grant and a photo of a small clinic in Mawali.

Arizona Robbins glanced up from her laptop and over reading glasses arched a single eyebrow.

“Sorry, I’m late,” Callie apologised.

Arizona smirked and motioned for her lover to come closer with finger.

Callie rounded the cherrywood desk and gave her wife a kiss.

“Hmm,” Arizona hummed with satisfaction.

“Missed you.” She said this every day.

“Missed you too,” Arizona replied with a smile. “How was your day?” she asked, pushing her chair back to make room for her wife.

“Well…” Callie leaned her cane against the desk and pushed the laptop back to sit on her wife’s desk, “I had a visitor at the house today.”

“A visitor?” Arizona repeated, intrigued. “We haven’t had a visitor in a very long time. Who was kind enough to send you a hitman this time?” she asked sarcastically.

“Not an assassin,” Callie informed with a small smirk. A very small part of her missed when an assassin or two would shake up their home. It had been so quiet the past few years since they moved to Seattle, Callie could almost say she was starting to get bored. She and Arizona had become so good at silently putting hitmen away; they made great fertiliser for the flowers in the back garden.

“Really?”

“Yeah, it turns out I have a niece. It looks like Aria forgot to mention she had a kid twenty-two years ago.”

“No way…”

“She looks just like her, Arizona, if she’s a con artist she sold it really well.”

“How’d she find you?”

“She saw a photo of me in a local paper, from the Gala.”

“Oh, Calliope… I didn’t know you’d be photographed.”

“It’s fine,” Callie shrugged. “I’m sort of glad she found me. It was nice talking about Aria again.”

“Are you going to keep in touch?”

“I didn’t want her to feel obligated to keep in contact. She’s a smart girl, she’ll come back if she wants to.”

Arizona gave her wife a sympathetic smile.

“Anyways, tell me about your day…” Callie encouraged her wife.

“I think I’d rather save the talking for later,” Arizona said with a smirk.

“Oh…” Callie chuckled and moaned when her wife pressed their lips together. Arizona’s hands were on her waist and they slowly made their way up her shirt as they kissed.

“You called for me, Doctor Robbins?” Callie teased, between kisses.

“I did, and you’re late,” Arizona played along. She loved her wife for a hundred million reasons, and one of them included how ungodly good she was at getting her off.

“I’m awfully sorry,” Callie apologised in her bedroom voice.

“Y-you’d better be,” Arizona gasped when her wife’s mouth wrapped around the skin on her neck and began to suck. “D-don’t leave a mark…” she scolded, “again.”

Callie smirked and slipped her hand into the white lab coat and down the navy blue scrub top. She cupped her wife’s breast; soft, warm, and a bit more plump than she remembered.

Arizona felt wetness begin to grow between her legs. Slick. Heat. Then a gush of fluid like the breaking of a damn.

“Callie!” Arizona shrieked.

“Arizona...” Callie gasped when she felt the wetness run down her leg, “was that?”

“I think my water just broke,” Arizona said with widened eyes.

“It’s a good thing we’re already at a hospital,” Callie chuckled and took her wife by the hand before leading her towards the maternity ward to have their baby.

Callie and Arizona rushed down the aisle, hand-in-hand, away from the altar where Elvis stood to officiate. With no family left between the two of them, they spent their wedding night celebrating their rather spontaneous wedding with a rather expensive bottle of wine and room service.

Overlooking the city of Las Vegas, a city also once ruled by crime families such as the Torres’s, Callie held Arizona in her arms as they watched the night lights.

“I never pictured myself getting married,” Arizona admitted softly.

“You’re telling me this now?” Callie arched her eyebrow, taking hold of Arizona’s hand that was now weighed down by a wedding band.

“No, Calliope, I mean… I never pictured myself getting married in the white dress and large crowd. But this… this was perfect.”

“Oh…” Callie smiled mischievously and planted a hot kiss on her wife’s neck.

“Callie!” Arizona squinted her eyes and stopped walking.

“Breathe…” Callie coached.

“I am breathing,” Arizona gritted through her teeth, freezing for a couple of minutes before gathering up the strength to walk again.

“We’re almost there,” Callie reassured.

Arizona puffed air out of her cheeks and followed her wife’s lead. Moments later, she found herself on a hospital bed, monitors attached to her belly and her wife by her side.

“Push,” Arizona encouraged.

Callie let out a long grunt as she pushed against the resistance band that Arizona was holding behind her. She took three bullets in her arm, two in the gut, and one in her femur which left her with a permanent limp. She had accepted her fate of the cane, but she had yet to give up on rehabilitating her dominant hand.

“Good,” the physiotherapist praised. “You’re really motivated today!”

“Motivated to use my good hand in bed again,” Callie pushed against the purple band again.

“Callie!” Arizona gasped, not impressed with her lover’s vulgarness in front of the physiotherapist.

The therapist couldn’t help but chuckle, “It’s good to have goals.”

“Let’s see how your baby is doing…” Doctor Carina DeLuca snapped on a clean glove and placed herself between the patient’s legs. “Oh…”

“What?” Callie and Arizona said in unison.

“When did you say your contractions began?” Carina asked.

“I guess, this morning…” Arizona thought out loud.

“This morning?” Callie repeated with disbelief. Her wife had been in labour all day and she didn’t receive a single text of mention.

“I thought it was just a stomach ache from all the poundcake I ate for breakfast.” Arizona admitted.

“Did you eat the whole coffee cart too?” Callie teased.

“I only had three...” Arizona defended, “this time.”

“Move to Seattle with me,” Arizona said, her head nestled on her wife’s chest. Las Vegas streets were loud but she could still hear Callie’s pounding heartbeat.

“Seattle?”

“They’ve offered me a job as an attending… if I accept it, we can have our own life there. Just you and me, far away from the craziness in Miami. You don’t belong there anymore, we don’t belong there anymore. We both need a new start, somewhere we can raise a family.”

“You want kids?” Callie asked, surprised. With all the commotion, they forgot to talk about having children.

“I want a family, whatever that may look like. I’ve never had one and I want one with you.”

“You can start pushing on your next contraction,” Doctor DeLuca instructed.

“Callie, I’m scared,” Arizona told her wife.

“You’ve made it this far, Arizona, I believe in you.”

“What if we lose this baby too?”

“We can’t think like that right now, Arizona, you need to focus on having this baby, okay?”

Arizona nodded her head and grunted as she pushed as hard as she could.

The house was so quiet.

With Lucy’s passing, there was no longer pitter patter of paws against the hardwood as she played around the house. Now their house filled with the noise of Arizona turning the page of her newspaper, and Callie watching car review videos on her phone.

“You think it’s too soon to get another dog?” Arizona asked.

“I don’t know if I want another dog,” Callie admitted.

“Can I finally have my chicken coop, then?”

“No…” Callie slowly shook her head.

“Well, we’re certainly not getting a ferret, Calliope-”

“I’ve been thinking… it’s a good time to have a baby.”

Arizona’s face brightened into a smile. “A baby?” she breathed out.

Callie nodded, “A baby.”

“Your baby is almost here…” Carina announced.

“Really?” Arizona phanted.

“Do you want the mirror?”

“Oh god, no,” Arizona shook her head in denial.

Callie couldn’t help but laugh.

“Don’t you dare laugh,” Arizona scolded her wife. “You owe me a new vagina after this!”

“I’m sorry…” the doctor repeated herself. “Please stay and use the room for as long as you need to.”

“Thank you,” Arizona nodded at the doctor and continued to console her wife.

Callie watched the doctor leave with blank eyes. The news hurt her more than she thought it would. She didn’t even know she wanted kids until she married Arizona, and now that she found out she couldn’t, she was heartbroken. Her life of crime, the bullets of revenge, had already taken her sister from her; she was saddened to learn it also took away her chance of having children of her own.

“What do you need from me?” Arizona said softly.

“I don’t know,” Callie shook her head.

“I’ll have them, Calliope, I want to have them,” Arizona offered for the hundredth time.

“I…” Callie gulped to rid of the dryness in her throat, “I thought we could have some of yours and some of mine too.”

“Oh, Calliope…” Arizona sighed in defeat. “It would have been amazing to have a little you running around the house, but I promise you they will be our babies no matter what.”

“She’s here…” Carina announced.

“It’s a girl?” Callie asked with surprise, relief and excited butterflies fluttering in her stomach.

“It’s a girl,” Carina confirmed.

Callie and Arizona smiled at the crying infant. Carina placed the child on Arizona’s chest and Callie wrapped her arms around her family. She was so little yet so loud, and mighty. Her hands were bronze like a Torres and her eyes were blue like a Robbins. She was there and she was theirs.

“I love you…”

“What?” Callie said past dry lips. She thought she would never see Arizona Robbins again, let alone have her visit her hospital room every day for the past three months.

“I love you,” Arizona nodded her head. She had known, deep down, for a long time. But she was at the airport, ready to leave for Africa, ready to truly move on from her tango with the mob and start a new life, a new clinic, for children in a new land, Malawi, when she saw the Torres heir fall to the ground in front of the courthouse. She hated that she had to see Calliope Torres get shot multiple times on television to realise it. She loved the notorious boss and she couldn’t leave Miami without her.

“Arizona, you can’t-”

“You’re not my boss, Calliope, you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do anymore-”

“No, Arizona, you need someone... normal,” Callie defended her stance. “Someone who can give you the easy life you deserve. Someone who doesn’t have a past-”

“I know your past, Calliope, and I know the kind of woman you are deep down. Do you think it was easy to let someone else run my clinic in Africa, to turn down a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I can spend three months in this hospital with you? I know love isn’t easy, but I choose it because—because life without it is dull and cold.”

Callie eyed her lover.

“I know there are people who want you dead...” Arizona continued, “that danger will follow you, but—why live in fear when we can take our chances at being happy?”

“Jeez, okay, enough with the dramatics,” Callie teased.

Arizona gasped, offended, then laughed. Her speech was quite cheesy.

“I love you too. I’ve known for a while,” Callie admitted. “But I want what’s best for you. That’s why I let you go...”

“And I know what I want,” Arizona countered. “That’s why I came back...”

Callie cradled baby Sofia as Arizona finally fell asleep in her hospital bed. Sofia had that intoxicating new baby smell and Callie soaked in every minute of it. Swaddled in her hospital blanket, Sofia was content and happy to be in her mother’s arms.

Callie glanced at Arizona and watched her peacefully rest. She deserves it. Arizona let out a soft snore and it made Callie smile. Her mob career started in her father’s hospital room. Her love for Arizona blossomed in her hospital room. Now their middle family had grown by one in the hospital room.

Callie Torres was working in a cubicle, in an office, on a floor, in a building full of cubicles. She was the daughter of a notorious crime boss and she was in an office working a nine-to-five desk job. Despite her upbringing, she went to college. She attended Penn State, the first in her family to go to college. She told herself that she needed space from the mob, but deep down she knew she left home because she resented her father for not being a good husband to her mother. Over a decade later, she still blamed him for making Lucia Torres flee. So Callie moved away, to a city where nobody knew her name, and for four years she studied literature, made an honest living, and lived a modest lifestyle. She was set. She had financial independence from her father and no ties to the life he lived.

Until a single phone call changed her projection. She came back to Miami after years of avoiding the city and the chaos within it. Giovanni sent one of the drivers to pick her up at the airport and she felt helpless in the backseat of the Cadillac. She hated it: the feeling of being the young woman with no independence, thanks to the nature of the family business. There was a reason why she moved out: to be able to do things on her own.

The short car ride felt like hours, but soon she was at Miami General: pushing through a crowd of news reporters hoping to get information and FBI agents hoping to find dirt that will finally warrant the arrest of the biggest mob boss in the city. The FBI were always around—ever since Carlos himself was a child—but they could never find enough evidence to take the family court. Thus, they tried to get close whenever they could. It disgusted Callie. Her father was ill and all people cared about was exposing him.

She ran to his bedside the moment she squeezed past the door and took his hand into her own.

“Calliope…” he coughed up.

“I’m here, papa.” Callie soothed, combing what was left of his hair with her fingers.

“You came home,” Carlos smiled.

“Of course I did. You take it easy, okay?”

Carlos closed his eyes and nodded his head. He was weak, and he drifted off to sleep shortly.

“Miss Torres?” a soft knock came from the door. “I’m Dr. Teddy Altman, your father’s surgeon.”

Callie turned around and stood to politely shake the woman’s hand. “Call me Callie,” she insisted. “Can you tell me what happened? ”

“Callie…” Teddy sighed, “From the looks of things, your father has had heart failure for years.”

“He’s never mentioned it...” Callie insecurely crossed her arms, “Is he going to make it?”

“He’s responding to the ‘tropes, the medications we’re giving him, but that’s all I can say for now.”

“Is he going to make it?” Callie repeated.

“It’s hard to say…” Teddy trailed off, “But I can tell you that we’re doing everything we can.”

“Is he going to be treated just like everyone else?” Callie asked. She knew the doctor wasn’t oblivious to who she was taking care of. A high-profile man like Carlos Torres drew attention wherever he went.

“We provide treatment solely based on the patient’s clinical needs...” Teddy promised, “without moral discrimination.”

She stayed by her father’s side—only going home to get cleaned up and sleep. When she wasn’t tending to him, she was making sure his casinos were running smoothly. She became a frequent customer at the cafeteria, and even the girl at the coffee cart knew how she took her coffee. She didn’t know if it was love or guilt that made her stay by her father’s side. She felt guilty that she had deserted the family, all those years ago. And if she didn’t keep her head down that day, she would have ran into the blonde-haired blue-eyed surgical resident that stood in front of her while she waited for her coffee.

“How are the casinos?” Carlos asked one day, when he had the strength.

“Don’t worry about them,” Callie insisted, “I’ve made sure Alex and George stay on track; you just work on getting better.”

“You’re getting involved with our operations?”

“Yes, it’s fine, everything is fine.”

“You know, I always thought it would be you that I’d leave the casinos to…”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t cut-out to be a boss,” Callie hung her head in shame.

“Don’t say that, mija, I’m so proud of you,” Carlos admitted.

“You are?” Callie questioned softly.

“Always,” Carlos promised. “My smart, beautiful, girl.”

Callie wiped the tears that trickled down her cheeks and held onto her father’s hand.

Later that evening, Callie was leaving her father’s room to go home when she realized the watchman that usually guarded the door was not at his post. She grabbed her phone to call Giovanni and sighed in relief when he told her that he would fire the man for leaving his post and send over another member of his security team immediately.

In the meantime, Callie waited by her father. It was highly unlikely that any harm would come, but she still had an unsettling feeling in her gut—which amplified when she heard the door open, and she turned her head in time to see a grey-haired man.

“You must be his little girl,” he chuckled.

“What do you want?” Callie asked harshly.

“Well…” he shrugged his shoulders, his hands in his pockets. “I’m here to take him out. I don’t want to hurt anyone else, but now that you’re here... I don’t have much of a choice.”

Callie stood from her seat and took a step back. She was scared—initially— then anger sparked within her. Suddenly, she wanted to get him before he could get her or her father. She quickly weighed out her options. She was unarmed, and had been for years. She knew he had a gun, she could see the outline in his pants. She glanced around the room and in a matter of seconds she had a plan.

She grabbed the flower vase from the nightstand behind her and threw it across the room. Distraction. He lifted his hands to block the glass from hitting his face, and she rammed her right shoulder into his sternum, pinning him against the wall. Attack. The impact caused a couple of his ribs to break, and the noise of the vase shattering onto the floor caused the nurses to start peering into the window. He was able to strike her cheek with the gun, causing the skin to break, but she didn’t feel the pain. Her adrenaline was pumping through her veins and she wanted nothing more than to see him dead.

“Bitch,” he spat, trying to point the gun at her head, but bone-breaking strength pinned his body against the wall. The Torres heir was stronger than he thought.

Callie groaned and struck her elbow against his windpipe. Once. Twice. Three times. The sound of his cartilage breaking from impact. At this point, he was still alive, but the injury to his neck narrowed his trachea and he struggled to take the faintest breath of air. So Callie stepped back, letting him fall to the floor, and she kicked the gun out of his hand. She glanced back, her father was still asleep. She looked forward, the nurses had called security and they were waiting outside the door. She opened it, stepped outside, and a nurse walked to her side.

“You want me to look at that, Miss Torres?” the nurse asked.

“Look at what?” Callie mindlessly asked, still in shock from the events that took place moments ago.

“Your cheek is bleeding…”

Callie took a seat on a nearby chair, exhausted. She couldn’t believe it. She won her first fight.

“What should we do with him?” one of the security guards asked, wanting to be of assistance but also not wanting to get too involved with the mob.

“Leave him. Someone will be here to clean up shortly,” Callie sighed. It was only now that the blood from her cheek trickled down her neck that she realized she was bleeding. “I’m sorry for the noise…” she told the hospital staff, and the few patients that watched the scene unfold, “But nobody saw anything, right?”

All watching eyes turned away and went about minding their own business. Except the nurse who had offered to help, she had gone to get a dressing kit and returned to tend to Callie’s injury.

When Carlos Torres came to consciousness and learned of his daughter’s doings, that Callie was managing the casinos quite well and taking care of business in his absence, he knew what to do before his inevitable death. With her father’s ring on her finger, Callie Torres took her place behind the desk in the office she was forbidden to be in at her childhood home.

“I can’t believe she’s home…”

“I can’t believe she’s ours…”

Callie and Arizona cooed at the sleeping infant in the crib.

“We should go to bed and get some sleep while we can,” Arizona suggested. “She’ll be up wanting a feeding before we know it.”

“You go to sleep before she needs you. I’ll stay up a little longer, just in case she needs anything else...” Callie volunteered.

“We’re across the hall, Calliope, she’ll be okay on her own for an hour or two,” Arizona promised.

“I don’t mind,” Callie insisted.

“Come to bed with me, please?” Arizona pleaded.

“Arizona, I…”

“What is it, love?” Arizona asked, placing a soft hand on her wife’s arm.

“I think I’m scared…”

“She’s safe here,” Arizona promised.

“What if something bad were to happen to her, to us, to our family? I don’t want her out of my sight. I know you we’ve been safe here but you know my past-”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with your past, Calliope,” Arizona couldn’t help but smile. “That’s called being a mother. We’re going to worry about her for the next eighteen years, at least. We’ll have eighteen years to worry about her so please, can we go to bed for now?”

Callie sighed then nodded her head in agreement. Why live in fear when we can take a chance at being happy? She had chosen happiness these past few years, she took a vow to choose happiness with Arizona. Now she vowed this: if anyone laid a finger on her baby, she would hurt them before they could hurt Sofia.

FIN.

#multi #calzona #callie torres #arizona robbins #calzonafic #au #cougarsbait

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corpse--diem · 4 years

Text

Suspension of Disbelief | solo

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Nichols’ Funeral Home SUMMARY: With the weeks drawing closer to the funeral home’s grand reopening, Erin reconciles with her past and reaches her limit. CONTENT WARNINGS: none

While Erin had floated in and out of the funeral home during reconstruction, this was the first time she stood alone in the house in nearly six months. No hammers, no drills, no chatter of the crew off in the distance. They were done, nearly. Some coats of paint still needed to go up in the living quarters and there were a few doors ready to be installed sitting in the hallways, but outside of small finishing touches--it was done. Her entire morning had been spent in her office, organizing the files that had been salvaged from the fire and preparing for what she still needed to replace. It was the most finished room in the large home outside of the basement and for the first time in months, she recognized a glimpse of a life that had been long out of her grasp. Even the mountain of paperwork overtaking her desk garnered a small, wispy smile. This was normal. This was hers.

Her hands touched over a large vanilla envelope and she perked up even further at the sender. The Maine Board of Funeral Services had finally sent over a new copy of her license. She jumped up, grabbing the empty picture frame she’d set aside. The office’s final touch. Her grin grew as she tore the envelope open. The paper inside wasn’t what she was expecting. Flimsy, thin, and much unlike the higher weighted paper that a certificate typically bore.

It wasn’t a certificate. It was a letter.

The words were there. She read them clearly. She read them again. And again.

...Until a proper investigation regarding the alleged organ trafficking operation within the Nichols’ Funeral Home has taken place, the board has agreed to suspend the license of the funeral director until further notice. All funeral services are to cease immediately...

And again. Each time, it said the same thing. Her gaze became lost in the black shapes of each letter, then to the sea of white surrounding them. She couldn’t understand the words. Black ate at the edge of her vision. Everything was loud. Even the light was loud. It buzzed in her ear and grew more intense the longer she stood, frozen to her spot, the letter in one hand and the frame in the other. All she could focus on was the impossibly loud buzzing in her ear but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

All at once, it stopped.

“Oh, isn’t that just perfect?”

Erin closed her eyes and shook her head, dropping the frame and letter back onto her desk. If she didn’t acknowledge the voice or the low laughter that followed, it wasn’t real.

“I know you can hear me, Nichols.”

The smell of cigar smoke hit her nose and she tensed, squeezing her eyes shut. No. No. This wasn’t happening. None of this was happening. Quiet settled around her once more and she took a deep breath in and back out again. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. She’d open her eyes and--

“I’m still here,” the voice chimed in smugly.

Erin’s eyes snapped open.

Roy Chamber’s sharp smile greeted her with all the malice it’d bore in life. He was leaning in the doorway to her office, a cigar dangling from his lips. “Atta girl. There were go,” he exclaimed excitedly between puffs. “Miss me?”

This wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. Roy was dead. Just a husk of bone and long-rotten flesh that had been tossed into the bay months ago. The knife had slipped into the softness of his temple with some effort but no--it’d done the trick. Roy Chambers, in no uncertain terms, was dead.

“No. No,” she managed between grit teeth. She closed her eyes once more, shaking her head furiously, almost laughing at the absurdity of this moment. “You are not here. You’re--no. No.”

“Oh, yes,” Roy corrected her, boisterous and sure. But he was right. He was here, stepping into her office like none of the events of the warehouse ever happened. Like it’d been a bad dream, a nightmare, one she was about to relive. Was she dead? Was there a hell after all?

He reached for the letter on her desk and all she could do was watch. She wasn’t afraid, she realized. She should have been, she knew that too, but it wasn’t fear that gripped her. It was anger. That hard, dark anger she had been working so hard to quiet. It wasn’t quiet now. He chuckled as he looked over the words on the paper and it flared brightly within her like an angry star. “Nice to see you too, toots. Long time coming, don’t you think?” He mused, glancing around the desk for an ashtray, then up at her when he found none. “Not a smoker? I don’t know why I thought you might be. It’s because you’re always so stressed, I think. Stressed people have the worst vices. But good for you--this stuff’ll kill you.”

He leaned forward and upended it in her coffee mug before turning his attention to the frame. “Anyway--won’t take up much of your time. I know you’re busy with getting things ready for the reopening.” He nodded at the letter with a knowing grin, clearly tickled. “Told you this wasn’t going to end well for you. Remember? Because I do. Very clearly. Maybe you didn’t want to believe me or just didn’t want to hear it, but either way it’s pretty clearly you forgot. And I get that. I was dead, you won, I lost.” He dragged his finger from one end of his throat to another and flashed a grimace at her. “Point made. A dead man can admit defeat when it gets pierced through his cranium. I gotta ask though...” he paused for a long moment, unhooking the metal backings of the frame one by one, the side of his mouth turning upward into a punchable grin. She balled her fists instead.

Even now, this guy droned on. Couldn’t even stay dead without making a grand gesture. There wasn’t an ounce of patience left in her for this. “What?” She shot back.

“Was it worth it?”

The question struck Erin like a bullet between the eyes. Left her stunned, silent, wholly unprepared for the blow. He slipped the suspension notice into the frame and began closing the back up and raised a brow a her. “Really? Nothing? Not one quitty retort? Not even a ‘Fuck you’? Disappointing.” He grimaced and stepped back from the desk, framed letter in hand. “Let’s review. Maybe it’ll jog your memory, get your blood flowing, wake up that fighting spirit that got you here. We’ll circle back to that and see how you feel then, hm?”

Erin followed his gaze to the wall beside them. Small, framed portraits hung where empty wall space had been moments before. Her eyes grew and her throat tightened.

“Exhibit A!” Dale’s shit eating grin stared at her, a trail of dried blood trickling from the top of his head, down his neck, soaking into his shirt. Like a screenshot of a memory that was still burned into her memory. “Always hated that guy. Can’t say I was too upset to see him and his Hawaiian shirts say Aloha. Pretty creative with that kill though, getting that mara to do the dirty work for you.” He nodded at her. “I meant it when I said I was impressed.”

He took another step back, moving onto the next photo like he was at the beginning of a presentation. He tapped the glass of the next one. A news article. “Multiple victims were found dead following the explosion that destroyed an abandoned manufacturing warehouse at the docks on Amity Road early Friday morning.” Roy raised his eyebrows at her excitedly. “That was you.” He let out a bellowing laugh and shook his head and quickly pointed to the photo directly beside it. Another article. “Three more dead at Pat’s and dozens hospitalized. That was you too! Say, didn’t you have some friends there that day?”

Erin’s fingernails dug into the palm of her hand. “That was you,” she snapped back.

Roy raised a hand, shaking a finger at her. “Uh-uh. This,” he pointed to the Pat’s article, “Only happened because of this.” His finger jabbed at the Ring article once more before bouncing back and forth between the two. “Cause and effect. Makes the world go round. Try and keep up, Nichols. Am I losing you already here?”

Maybe if she closed her eyes and counted to ten he’d disappear and leave her alone. Had she fallen asleep? She didn’t remember laying down but it was possible. Wouldn’t have been the first time her body had given up on her the second she found a comfortable couch. He laughed again, loud and joyfully, and her entire body sagged when she opened her eyes. Still here. This time he stood in front of her mugshot, giggling like an idiot. “I’m sorry--well, no. I’m not. Not at all. This is beautiful.”

He gathered himself and took a deep breath before moving on, moving faster now as he gestured towards the next few photos: Detective Wu’s car being pulled from Dark Score Lake, a snapshot of the fire from the funeral home lighting up the night sky, Sgt. Roland Hill’s obituary, the memory of Marley lying motionless on that warehouse floor. Erin couldn’t look anymore. Roy noticed. He pressed on, loud and clear. “Death, after death, after death. Strangers and friends alike.” A photo of her and Alain doting over Betty came next. “No wonder that little French friend of yours hightailed it out of the country without even a word after you got his leg lobbed off.”

“Stop it,” she hissed. It felt like she was being crushed. Like every picture, every word, added another ton of pressure directly on top of her. Her breaths quickened and her heart pounded dangerously fast between her ribs. “Stop it.”

“Not until you answer the question, Erin.” He barked back, harsh edges replacing the humor from before. The next photo shook on the wall when he pressed a finger against the glass. “Remember them? The witches of the coven you failed to inform about a fext in town? The ones I sucked dry? Because of you. Cause and effect, actions and consequences, Erin. It all comes back around. These people suffered and died because you couldn’t leave well enough alone. Because your freedom was worth more than any of their lives.”

Roy’s smile was gone. Dark eyes stared back at her. The last spot on the wall was empty, a single nail marking the spot. He set the framed letter in place, making sure it was perfectly straight. “There,” he said calmly, stepping back to admire the small gallery before them. That sick smile returned and he craned his neck to look at Erin again. “Can’t ignore this forever, Nichols. This is your handiwork. A trail of accomplishments that brought you back home and to this place you built on their blood, sweat and tears. All for them to--” Laughter spilled from his throat, his sheer glee interrupting his own words. “All for them to suspend your license. You can’t even work.”

It took more than a few moments for his laughter to settle into a humored chuckle. Erin’s cheeks flushed with shame. Tears burned at the back of her eyes. He didn’t notice and didn’t care, pulling another cigar from his suit pocket. “Indulge a dead guy and bask in it with me for a few minutes, will you?”

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t look. Not at him and not at the wall in front of her. Her hands shook furiously and she couldn’t breathe. “Get out,” she managed, but it wasn’t more than a harsh, choked whisper and she tried it again with more vigor. “Get. Out.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

She was going to be sick. This was a nightmare. This had to be a nightmare. Her hands rushed up to cover her face, rubbing her eyes, pulling at tufts of hair her hair as her fingers glided through them.

“Please. Please. Stop. Just stop.” Erin was nearly begging now. She could feel his gaze boring a hole into her but he wasn’t letting this go. Not until she answered. Not until she looked at the wall.

“Was it worth it?”

CRASH!

Across the room, a vase of fresh flowers lay shattered on the ground where Roy had been seconds ago. She wasn’t at her desk. She was standing in front of the framed letter on the wall. The room was starkly silent outside of that. Roy was gone and the frames on the wall with him. Minutes passed before she realized she hadn’t thrown the vase across the room but knocked it off the stand near the framed letter. Did she do that?

Roy was dead. Roy wasn’t here. She’d imagined it. It’d been his voice, his image, but her words playing back at her. Her hands shook. Was it worth it? The question cycled on an endless loop, tormenting her more than the ‘No’ that screamed for attention at the back of her mind.

She ripped the letter from the wall, locking onto the words again. One word. Suspended. She gave in to the despair and rage that filled every pocket of her soul and didn’t stop until the frame was just a shattered afterthought on the ground. Didn’t stop until every book, every trinket, every photo was thrown onto the floor with it. Her screams tore through her and tears poured down her face like a monsoon that’d finally ripped through and shattered the ceiling of the safe house she’d been hiding in. What did it matter anymore? It didn’t. She’d been beaten. Roy’s last move came late and without warning, destroying the last shred of stability she had left. She couldn’t hold it together anymore. Six months of tightly wound emotions exploded without any sign of stopping. Her neatly piled paperwork filled the floor around her. Coffee covered the walls. Glass crunched under her feet.

It wasn’t worth it.

#wickedswriting #chatzy #solo #suspension of disbelief #//this got so long i'm so sorry #I don't believe this needs any real tws but pls correct me if i'm wrong

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