Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The nightmares get to him.

Flashes of images jumbled up indiscernible lit in a dull shade of blue.

And, sure, it’s reasonable that he’d be seeing this over and over in his dreams, it hasn’t been a week since they got back from Earth-2’s live action Planet of the Apes/Gladiator crossover and, hey, that was freaky, man! He’s never claimed to be fearless, and a telepathic gorilla decided to threaten his friends by speaking through him, so. Not really his fault he’s spooked. Tonight, though, tonight is…

Worse than usual.

An army of gorillas barreling through a breach and advancing on Central City.

Talk about guerrilla warfare, right?

People screaming in terror, their friends droning the same haunting words, just barely too staticky to decipher.

He needs more sleep. Or less sleep. Or not to sleep at all, ever again.

Jitters a ruined husk; the police station collapsing; every corner of the city burning.

Who needs sleep, anyway?

Cisco rolls over in his bed and his dreams blur into a much nicer vision:

Gypsy. A sarcastic smirk on her face and her arms firmly crossed.

He really has got to see if he can vibe her number…

An arm—large and hairy and very, very familiar—comes out of nowhere and strikes her hard, flinging her twenty feet back. She lands at the feet of a half dozen gigantic gorillas.

I’m dreaming, Cisco tells himself. A dream, a dream, wake up, wake up, wake up.

He turns—point-of-view swirling staggeringly around him, the blueish hazy whirling of perspective shift—until he can see what he dreaded, what he knew he would see.

Grodd. Ohhhh boy, it’s Gorilla-effing-Grodd, who’s clearly not content with how they ditched him on Earth-2. And now he’s grabbed Gypsy—Earth-19 or Earth-2, it doesn’t matter, Cisco’s gonna be there for his girl (she’s not his girl, obviously, he has all the respect for that kickass bounty hunter)—

And he’s trying to get her to open a breach.

She gets back to her feet with a defiant roll of her eyes. Grodd roars and leaps toward her—

Wake up, wake up, wake up!

Cisco, with a concerted effort, cuts off the vibe and opens his eyes. His heart is pounding, he’s clutching his chest, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe.

Chapter Text

Earth-19; a few days earlier.

Cynthia is so tired of being stalked by this maniac. It’s not like she can’t see him following her all the time.

She pauses at a bridge, leaning against the railing and staring down at the iced-over river below. The lightly-falling snow sticks in her hair and she brushes it away, giving him plenty of time to catch up before saying, “I know you’re there, you know.”

There’s a brief gust of wind and a slight crackle, the standard sign of the Flash’s approach.

“Harrison Wells,” the Flash says, his voice resonating in an unnatural tone.

A corner of Cynthia’s mouth quirks upward, the slightest smirk of acknowledgment. “That’s not my name.” She doesn’t turn around.

“You were sent to collect him.”

“Dead or alive.”

“Dead, in this case.”

“You have a point, Flash?” Like everyone else on Earth (19, that is), she has her theories about who the Flash is. His interest in HR? That narrows it down.

Another gust of wind, another crackle of lightning, and the Flash is standing beside her.

“I have unfinished business with him.”

Cynthia narrows her eyes and studies the figure beside her, his shape slightly blurred through the snow. Unlike Earth-1’s Flash, he doesn’t have a bright red, tripolymer suit, just a maroon leather coat and long yellow gloves. He pushes his goggles off his face, leaving the white strip of fabric wound around his mouth and nose the only protector of his identity.

“I know he’s alive,” the Flash says.

She laughs. “When have I ever not completed a collection? I’m sorry if you wanted to know what the next chapter of ‘HR Wells’ Adventures in the Multiverse’ would hold, but the story’s over. Permanently.” She goes back to gazing at the frozen river. “So whenever you feel it’s appropriate to stop following me around and go back to bringing in criminals—”

“I also know about the coffee.”

Cynthia goes cold, and it has nothing to do with the snow.

“What?”

“I know about the coffee,” the Flash repeats. “Travel between dimensions is allowed for you, of course, but interdimensional smuggling isn’t. And as you pointed out, it is my job to bring in criminals.”

“Am I… being blackmailed… by the Flash?” Maybe she should just run—there’s enough time to shove the Flash through a breach to the other side of the Earth, or another Earth altogether, and destroy the evidence before he can return and arrest her.

But, damn, she really wants that coffee…

“What is it you want?” she asks.

“I need to see HR,” the Flash says. “Take me to him.”

Cynthia sighs. “Fine. But I’m only dropping you off. I’m sure you can make the return trip yourself. They don’t call you the Accelerated Man for nothing.”

She can’t see his mouth, but his eyes betray his pained grimace. “They don’t call me the Accelerated Man anymore, thank Elysium. What an awful name…”

“Come on, A.M.,” she says, holding out her fist in preparation to create a breach. “Let’s go to Earth-1.”

She focuses on Cisco rather than HR—it’s always easier when she’s got a stronger connection to her target, and, well, Vibe. What a connection.

It’s not until they exit the other end of the breach that she notices it’s not Earth-1 that Cisco’s on.

And by then, it’s far too late.

Chapter Text

The tension in the Cortex is so thick a speedster couldn’t phase through it.

HR reclines leisurely in a chair, feet propped up on the table of computers. He slurps coffee. Loudly.

Harry, leaning against a wall across the room, is glaring at nothing in particular. At each slurp, his right eyebrow twitches just a bit higher.

Jesse and Wally are running together in the Speed Lab, and, from the sound of it, enjoying themselves. Their laughter occasionally echoes so loud off the high walls of the Speed Lab that it can be heard in the Cortex.

Caitlin types at one of the computers near HR, sneaking glances at him and Harry every so often.

HR gulps the rest of his coffee and, ever the icebreaker, says, “So, Harry, I can call you Harry, right? Harry, you know, what with the whole, you know, gorilla thing, I think you could write a bestselling book. Have you ever considered—”

“No,” Harry says flatly.

HR, undeterred, continues, “The gorilla is no longer a threat, so I’m thinking, why not get something positive out of the experience? See, I had to stop writing—”

“Stop writing?” Iris asks, entering the Cortex with Barry, their hands entwined. “When did that happen?”

“Stop publishing my groundbreaking work,” HR amends, “but, Harry, you can continue my legacy!” He gazes upward and gestures with his drumsticks, as though reading off an enormous poster: “The Harrison Wellses of the Multiverse: Volume Two!” Moving the drumsticks slightly lower to indicate the byline: “By Harrison Wells and Harrison Wells.”

“No,” Harry repeats flatly.

HR opens his mouth to continue, most likely another cheerful acquiescence, but he’s cut off by Cisco entering the Cortex.

Cisco looks a wreck; his face is paler than any of them have ever seen, there are dark circles under his eyes, and, perhaps most telling of all, his gorgeous hair is unkempt.

“We’ve got a problem,” Cisco says.

Everyone startles to attention, moving closer to him. Jesse and Wally speed in, swirling to a lightning-enhanced stop in the center of the Cortex.

“What’s going on?” Caitlin asks.

“Grodd.”

Barry shakes his head in confusion. “We stopped the gorilla attack, I don’t understand.”

Cisco lets out a hysterical laugh. “Yeah, I thought so too. And then, last night, guess what I vibe? Grodd with Gypsy.”

All around the Cortex, mouths fall open in shock and horror. Everyone but Harry and Jesse.

“With who?” Harry asks.

“She’s a bounty hunter from my Earth,” HR says. “She came here looking for me.”

“Cisco dueled her and won, so she went back to Earth-19,” Barry adds.

Cisco pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through it. “Wait, I have a picture.” He holds it up, revealing a picture of the two of them side by side. He’s smiling; she just looks bored.

“When did you get a picture with her?” Caitlin asks. “Before or after the trial by combat?”

“Hey, I have my ways,” Cisco says defensively.

“Wait, I recognize her.” Jesse leans closer to the picture, studying it. “That’s Cynthia Reynolds. She goes by Charm on Earth-2. She’s got a talk show where she shows off psychic abilities or something.”

“Cynthia,” Cisco says slowly, drawing out the vowels. “Nice name…”

“Cisco,” Harry snaps. “The gorilla?”

He clears his throat. “Anyway, on Earth-19, Cynthia can do everything I can, and more. Grodd might not have me, but if he’s got her, it won’t matter.”

“But why would Cynthia be on Earth-2?” Barry asks.

“Because of me.”

That’s… a new voice. Everyone turns to see the person standing in the entryway of the Cortex, a man in a red leather coat and steampunk-esque goggles, a white strip of fabric around most of his face.

Barry, Wally, and Jesse immediately react, speeding toward the intruder. He moves, just as fast as any of them, a brilliant white lightning crackling in his wake, avoiding the trio and ending up on the other side of the Cortex. He raises his hands outward in an offering of peace, and the three other speedsters momentarily halt their pursuit.

“Who are you?” Barry demands.

“Wh—” HR pushes to the front of the group, stumbling over his words. “Why would you come here? How?”

The intruder pulls off his goggles and face covering, revealing a face that Team Flash has gotten used to seeing reflected in windows and puddles when walking with HR.

“Hello, Harrison,” says Randolf Morgan. “It’s been a long time.”

HR’s drumsticks fall pitifully from his hands. “Hi, Randolf.”

Chapter Text

Harry looks both like he understands nothing and like he despises every moment of it. It’s not a question when he finally asks, “What.”

“Wait,” Wally says, pointing back and forth between Randolf and HR. “The Flash on Earth-19… is your business partner?”

Randolf quirks an eyebrow and looks at HR, appearing a bit put out. “Business partner? I… suppose you moved to another Earth and faked your own death just to get away from me, so I shouldn’t be surprised…”

HR, without his drumsticks, looks less like himself. Or maybe it’s just the fact that his ever-present smile has vanished. “I moved to another Earth? R, you—you sent me the decoded cryptogram with the caption ‘It’s for you.’ So I think, okay, after our argument, you need some space—you need a lot of space, sure, eighteen Earth’s worth, okay. I’ll—I’ll just leave. So I came here, and then that bounty hunter came after me, and, hang on, why are you here?”

“The gorillas,” Randolf says. “HR, we need to talk about all of this, but the gorillas are a larger problem.” He looks to the others in the room. “I knew you couldn’t be dead, HR, so I talked to Cynthia, and… convinced… her to bring me to you.”

“Convinced?” Iris asks suspiciously.

Randolf ignores the question. “We ended up in some forest on—Earth-2, you said? That’s where all the gorillas are?”

“Yup, that’s Earth-2. Gorilla City,” Cisco confirms. He shudders.

“Cynthia changed the moment we arrived. The breach had barely closed when she turned to me, opened another, and shoved me through it. I ended up on this Earth. That was… a day or two ago? I’ve been running for a while. I landed on the other side of the planet.”

“Grodd must have mind-controlled her,” Jesse says. She looks tense—in fact, she’s vibrating ever-so-slightly at superspeed, appearing blurry. “Cisco, do you have any idea how long until they get here?”

“I don’t know.” Cisco shakes his head. “I can try vibing again, see if I can figure it out.” He leaves. Caitlin glances at Harry, who nods, and they both follow.

“I should go fill in Joe and Julian,” Barry says. “We can’t keep this a secret from the police.”

“I’ll go with you,” Iris offers, and they leave together.

“HR, we need to talk,” Randolf says. HR, looking a little bit like a scared puppy, nods. He adjusts his hat and the two of them exit the Cortex.

Wally and Jesse, the last ones, look at each other.

“We should go train,” Jesse says. “If Grodd and his whole gorilla troop are coming, we’re going to need all the practice we can get.”

Wally nods, frowning slightly.

Jesse, noticing his expression, pauses. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I just wish you’d already talked to your dad about staying on Earth-1. Now it seems like it’ll be a while before you’ll get the chance.”

Jesse gives him half a smile. “Let’s worry about the gorillas for now.”

“Wait, you’re telling me that, after all that, Grodd is coming here?” At Barry’s reluctant nod, Joe lets out a heavy breath and rubs his temples. “This is bad, Barr. Does Julian know?”

“Not yet. Can you talk to Singh? This isn’t something we can hide from the police this time. They need to be prepared. We can’t let them get to the city.”

Iris, hesitating only slightly, adds, “It was one of the headlines.”

Joe nods immediately. “I’ll discuss it with Singh. You go warn Julian that the monkeys are back.”

“Allen,” Julian scoffs, “I realize you’ve probably never bothered to look at a calendar, but even you must know that it’s not April Fools’ Day.”

“This is serious!” Barry insists. “Cisco vibed it. Grodd and his army are coming.”

Julian sighs and tosses aside the file he’s been working on. “It’s a good thing the city’s light on crime today, isn’t it?”

His hands are only shaking a little bit.

“What destruction is the city facing this time?” Singh asks once Joe has closed his office door, before he can even get out a word of explanation.

Joe blinks. “How did you know?”

Singh lets out a long-suffering sigh. “It’s always one disaster or another with you, Detective West. I assume this has something to do with the Flash? Some new metahuman?”

“Sort of,” Joe says. “Meta, yes; new, no. And not at all human.”

Singh frowns.

“Long story short,” Joe has always been one for cutting to the chase, after all, “an army of gorillas is going to be marching on Central City before long.”

There’s a pause. Singh blinks.

“What?”

Joe holds out his hands placatingly. “I know, it sounds insane—but you’re going to have to trust me on this, Captain. When have I ever misled you?”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Singh mutters. He shakes his head. “All right, West, so there’s an army of gorillas—”

“Oh, and they’re telepathic,” Joe inserts. “Very smart gorillas who are telepathic and have mind control.”

Singh looks blankly at him for a long moment. “…Why do I live in this city?”

Joe gives him a minute longer to process the situation.

“Okay,” he finally sighs. “I have no reason not to believe you. I’ll figure out some way to explain this to everyone and get them patrolling for… gorillas.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Joe says. He turns to leave the office.

“Oh, Detective—”

He glances back at Singh’s baffled expression.

“When this is over, tell the Flash I need a very pointed word with him.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Randolf is pacing around the med bay—mostly at normal speed, though the faintest haze of white lightning occasionally gathers around his figure. HR sits on the edge of a bed, turning his hat around in his hands in the absence of his drumsticks.

“So, have you had the coffee here yet?” HR asks finally. “Because it’s incredible, really, you’d love it.”

“I don’t care about the coffee,” Randolf snaps. “Sorry,” he immediately apologizes. “I just—I wish you’d talked to me before you took off for another Earth.”

“But you sent me the message—”

“You sent me the original encoded cryptogram with at least a dozen emoji and no other explanation, and it was the first time you’d contacted me in a month. So yes, I decoded it. I thought that was what you wanted.”

HR places his hat back on his head. Randolf doesn’t point out that it’s backwards.

“Well, I thought, you were upset, you probably want to be alone. I know you don’t like being around people when you’re upset. But then it was a month so I emailed you—”

“With only emoji!”

“You didn’t like anything I had to say before, so I thought maybe just saying nothing would be better.”

“That—” Randolf stops pacing and runs a hand through his hair, exasperated. “That wasn’t the problem, HR. Our cover was blown, the city hated us, there was my picture in every paper—not as the Flash, as myself—and you—you acted like it was no big deal.”

“I—I—” HR stutters; he tries again. “R, I thought you always liked my optimism.”

“I love your optimism, and I love you, but the optimism wasn’t helpful in that situation and you weren’t either, HR.” Randolf sighs. “Sometimes I wonder whether you’ve ever taken anything in your life seriously.”

Before HR can respond, there’s the sound of approaching footsteps. Caitlin, hesitantly, pokes her head into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she says, “but Cisco’s got news.”

Chapter Text

In one sense, Cisco knows he’s reclining on a vaguely uncomfortable chair in STAR Labs. But in every other sense—sight, sound, smell—he’s in Gorilla City again.

Cynthia stands totally still now, a blank expression on her face. Hundreds of gorillas crowd the area around her, most of them clad in rough-hewn armor, wood or stone or both. Grodd roars and Cynthia, her movements too deliberate and smooth to be natural, raises a fisted hand.

“I see Cynthia,” Cisco says haltingly. “There are a lot of gorillas, guys, like, a lot.”

It takes a moment, but slowly, a delicate tendril of interdimensional energy drifts out from her hand. It’s hard for Cisco to tell at first; there are too many overlapping blues to pick out the right one. But when he realizes—

“She’s opening a breach.” He can feel his heart rate pick up.

Desperate to stop this anyway he can, he calls out, like he did to Zoom: Cynthia!

It doesn’t seem like she’s heard, or if she did, the mind control doesn’t allow her to respond. Cisco winces; he remembers that feeling, when Solovar was speaking through him. The total emptiness of his own mind, thoughts suppressed into silence, all he knew were the words that poured unwillingly from his mouth—

He despises the fact that Cynthia is going through the same thing, and he tries yelling again. Cynthia!

The others, he’s sure, are frowning at his outbursts, and he already knows it’s pointless. But then—

But then, something flickers in her eyes, a corner of her mouth twitches, and her hand drops back to her side, breach unopened.

“How—” Cisco takes a shaky breath.

She looks confused, she murmurs, “Cisco?” and looks directly at him. Relief courses through Cisco. Hi, he says, in vibe and out. It’s okay, you—

Grodd cuts him off with another feral roar, and all emotion clears from Cynthia’s face. She raises her hand again and this time, instead of a trickle, the breach opens like a flood, large enough to allow a gorilla through. Cynthia, Cisco tries again, but this time she doesn’t react at all, and then Grodd is through the breach and it’s too late.

He screams her name, again and again, until—it’s not his throat that’s raw, because it comes out as a whisper on Earth-1—but he can feel the stress on his vibing power. It takes so much energy to audibly project into vibes and he’s using everything he can—

Not that it makes any difference. Cynthia maintains the breach and the gorillas charge through it.

Cisco pulls off his goggles and sits up. “They’re here.”

The first witnesses’ screams might have been heard across the city. That almost imperceptible rattle of china at Jitters? The momentary heightening of static on all the phone lines in the police station?

Consider:

A gorilla, easily six-foot-six and five hundred pounds, wearing stone armor, barrels out of a swirling blue gap in reality.

Then hundreds follow. All of them the same size, similarly clad. Many of them growling, a dissonance of wordless guttural snarls.

Bystanders are already drawing breath to scream when four words sear into their minds—

Where is the Flash?

And then they scream. And the sound of their sheer terror at being faced with the forces of Gorilla City might have been heard across Central.

Barry and Julian have just made it back to STAR when Joe calls.

“Turn on the news,” he says. “Now.”

“That’s never good,” Barry mutters. The team gathers in the Cortex as he switches on Channel 52.

“Oh my god,” Caitlin whispers.

Onscreen is Central City Picture News—a seven-story building—and ten people standing at the edge of the roof. All of them stand totally still, expressions blank.

“It’s Grodd,” Julian says.

Wally squints at the screen. “It’s Iris.”

Instantly, both he and Barry are gone, Jesse inches behind them. It takes only seconds before all three are at the foot of the building, so they’re on site when all ten people speak in the same monotone.

Flash.

Barry shudders at the sight of Grodd speaking through Iris.

Surrender the city. Come to me. You have four hours.

As one, the ten of them, still with blank faces, step forward—

And plunge off the side of the roof.

Of course, that’s when Grodd decides to release them from his mind control, as evidenced by the sudden screaming.

Barry, Wally, and Jesse run, sprinting up the side of the building and snatching the victims from the air, bringing them safely back to the ground. Barry holds Iris in his arms for a little longer than is strictly necessary, and she clutches to him with the same fervor. Each of them can feel the other’s heartbeat, fast as a speedster’s footsteps.

The stakes are clear.

The team reconvenes in the Cortex.

“You’re not giving yourself up,” Iris tells Barry immediately.

“We have four hours,” Julian grumbles. “What are we going to do in four hours?”

“I know one thing we can do,” Cisco says. “We can rescue Cynthia. The two of us will be able to open a large enough breach to get all the gorillas back to Earth-2 as fast as possible when we defeat them.”

“First we have to defeat them,” Wally points out. “And from what you’ve told us, Barry barely defeated Solovar. There are hundreds of gorillas here.”

Cisco points at him. “That’s your problem. All you speedsters? You’d better start training. There are punching bags somewhere in STAR Labs.”

“Gorillas fight back,” Jesse says.

“Then you need to train hard.” Cisco is already on his way out. “Harry, let’s go.”

Harry follows. The others look around at each other, expressions grim, and get to work.

“Do you have a plan, Ramon?” Harry asks as they enter their lab.

“Yeah.” Cisco shoves a few miscellaneous devices out of the way and grabs the pulse rifle Harry left in the lab before his departure. He pushes it into Harry’s arms. “I’m going to open a breach, we’ll go through, I’ll grab Cynthia and you shoot any gorillas you see.”

“Aren’t you forgetting about the telepathy?” Though that doesn’t stop him from taking the gun and slinging it over his shoulder.

“We won’t be there for long. If we’re at all lucky, we’ll have enough time to get out before we get…” Cisco gestures vaguely to his head. “And I think the universe owes us a little bit of luck at this point.”

“Rule one of being a superhero, Ramon—the universe never owes you anything.”

Cisco laughs drily. “I know.” He slips on his Vibe goggles, cracks his knuckles, and opens a breach.

Cynthia is in a cage improvised with the iron bars from a fence. She’s definitely still brainwashed, but luck does seem to be on Cisco’s side today, because there are only two gorillas standing guard.

Harry blasts the nearer one with his pulse rifle. It knocks the gorilla back, but doesn’t stun him for more than a moment.

“Harry, get the cage!” Cisco yells, ducking around him to keep the gorilla off its feet with his power. Harry has only a fraction of a second until the other gorilla will be on top of him, so he uses it, shooting the cage. It warps the metal just enough that Cynthia will be able to get out, but Harry has no time to assist her, he’s already turning and desperately squeezing the trigger as the other gorilla leaps toward him.

The pulse throws it back just enough that it crashes to the ground just to Harry’s left rather than on top of him. Cisco takes the opportunity to pull Cynthia out of the cage. The gorilla he’d been barely managing to hold down rises easily to its feet, and Cisco gestures frantically to Harry.

With a final shot over his shoulder, Harry runs to Cisco’s side, and they duck into a breach just too small for the gorillas to fit into.

“That was fun,” Cisco says once back in STAR Labs, breathing heavily.

“Sure, Ramon.” Harry gives him an irritated look, but then Cisco snickers, and Harry breaks into a laugh as well.

Cynthia continues to stare blankly, though, which sobers them quickly.

“It seemed like, when you were vibing earlier, you got through to her at one point,” Harry says. “So…”

“I have no idea what I did,” Cisco admits. “But I can try to do it again, I guess.” He looks at Cynthia and frowns.

Sure. Unbrainwash someone with absolutely no idea how to even go about it, and less than four hours until the city is officially under attack.

Just another Tuesday in Central City.

Chapter Text

On his way to critique the speedsters’ form (and see what exactly Jesse is up to with Wally, of course), Harry passes the Cortex. In his peripheral vision, he catches a glimpse of his doppelganger, now sitting alone at the table of computers, slowly spinning a drumstick around one hand, and looking far less cheerful than he’s ever seen him.

Harry sighs. Deeply.

“That,” he says, entering the Cortex, “is the patented Team Flash ‘I need advice’ look.”

HR glances up, startled, and immediately breaks into a grin far too wide to be real. “Harry! How’s it going, my very handsome doppelganger? Figured out a way to stop the gorillas, have you?”

Harry gives him an unimpressed look, and HR’s ramblings peter out. His smile turns into a sheepish sort of grimace, and he wags the drumstick halfheartedly in Harry’s direction. “You’re a hard one to fool, aren’t you?”

Harry leans against the nearest wall, his arms crossed. “It’s a matter of experience. Every single member of this team—myself included—has lingered alone somewhere in STAR Labs hoping for someone to talk to them, but too afraid or insecure or scared to ask. So.” He sighs again. “What’s going on? It has to do with Randolf, I assume?”

“You assume correctly.”

“Well?”

HR sets the drumstick down. “We had an argument. Back on Earth-19, a few months ago. He ran STAR Labs, but I was the face of the company. R isn’t much for people, on the whole. And once he became the Flash, it was much more inconspicuous for him to vanish if he didn’t seem to be running a company. But what do you know, people found out. It wasn’t my fault. Well, it was a bit my fault.”

Harry raises an eyebrow.

“Only a bit,” HR maintains. “Anyway, R was upset, and scared, and I guess to him it looked like I wasn’t taking it seriously.”

“I can’t imagine how you would have that effect on people,” Harry says drily.

HR shrugs morosely. “All I wanted to do was cheer him up, tell him it was okay, that people would forget about it.”

“But that wasn’t what you meant to say, was it?” Harry asks.

“Yes—no. I just meant that I would still be there for him, and I hoped that would be enough. That we’d get through it together. I don’t know. It seems silly now. I guess I was scared that he’d leave me.”

Harry grimaces. This all sounds far too familiar. He abandons his wall-leaning and takes a seat next to HR.

“Look,” he says. “We’re not alike in very many ways, you and I. You’re not a scientist, you say more in an hour than I do in a month, you wear…”

He glances at the abomination that is HR’s clothing—a t-shirt featuring a garish red heart with two soulless eyes, staring eternally—and winces.

“…goofy t-shirts that I’m sure Cisco loves.” He shakes his head. “But we do have one thing in common. We’re not good at telling,” he thinks of Jesse, of her mother, “the people we love how we really feel. Until it’s too late.”

Harry stands up abruptly; that’s quite enough emotion for one day. He claps HR brusquely on the shoulder. “Randolf’s here. He broke the laws of your world and traveled across eighteen Earths to find you. You’ve still got time. Don’t wait until it’s too late.”

He leaves.

HR picks up the drumstick again and starts spinning it around, a little bit faster now.

Caitlin helps Cisco bring Cynthia into the med bay and lay her down on the bed. Once she’s connected all the sensors and monitors to Cynthia, Caitlin looks at the screen reading her brain wave output, though she knows exactly what she’s going to see.

“It’s exactly like Eiling,” she says in a hushed whisper. “Her primary motor cortex and Broca area.”

“I know,” Cisco says. “I’m going to try to reach her like I did before.”

“Cisco, I’m not sure that’ll work—”

“It worked for Iris when Barry was being controlled by Grodd,” he says tightly. “I know, I know it’s a long shot, Caitlin, but I have to try.”

Caitlin gives Cynthia a worried glance and nods.

“Good luck,” she says. On her way out of the med bay she glances at the clock.

Three hours.

Cynthia stares straight at the ceiling, hardly blinking. Cisco drags a chair to the side of the bed and gently takes her hand.

“Hey, Cynthia, it’s me,” he says softly. “I know you can hear me somewhere in there. You heard me before. You’ve got to come back and help us. I can’t open a breach large enough all on my own.” He laughs slightly. “Come on, I know you want to make fun of me for that.”

This feels useless. He thinks back to what exactly worked before. It was too well-timed to be a coincidence, surely…

It clicks. Oh god, it clicks. If he’s right, this might just be the way to defeat Grodd’s army.

Cisco rifles through Caitlin’s medical supplies until he finds another of the brain wave readers. He plugs it into the same screen as Cynthia’s, sets it up to display both sets of data at once, and carefully places it on his own head.

Then, as he did just prior to Cynthia’s relapse before, he recalls the feeling of being possessed by Grodd, the empty mind, the total lack of motivation.

On the screen, the pattern of his brain waves morphs until it resembles Cynthia’s. And the moment the two graphs align, Cynthia gasps and looks around frantically.

“Cisco?” she asks, confused. She starts tugging the wires of various machines off her.

Cisco can’t resist a fist-pump of joy. “Consider this your official welcome back to Earth-1, Cynthia.” He ducks out of the room and shouts loud enough to be heard in the Speed Lab, “I have a plan!”

Chapter Text

It takes nearly two and a half hours, but that’s good enough.

They have a plan.

“This device will sync up your brain waves,” Cisco explains as the speedsters return to the Cortex, all their limbs buzzing with speed force. “I call it the Groddguard. Grodd isn’t powerful enough to take over all four of you at the same time, right, and if all your brain waves are identical, it’s like each of you has the mental resistance of four people.”

“Four speedsters, actually, which is better,” Harry inserts.

“You just can’t resist telling me I’m wrong, can you?”

“If you’re naming it the Groddguard, I’m allowed to tell you you’re wrong.”

“It’s a good name!”

Cynthia smirks at Cisco’s annoyance. “All you have to do,” she tells the speedsters, “is fight off the army of gorillas. Easy. Cisco and I will be standing by to send them home when they surrender.”

“Oh, it’s that easy?” Barry asks jokingly, though he looks genuinely worried.

“There are four of us,” Randolf says. “And we’re a lot faster.”

“There are hundreds of them, and they’re a lot bigger,” Julian says. At everyone’s exasperated looks, he seems to realize. “Oh. You’ll do fine, Allen.”

“Wait, if our brain waves line up, doesn’t that mean we’ll all be thinking and doing the same things?” Jesse asks.

“The device allows your brain waves to sync without doing that,” Caitlin explains. “You might be able to feel each other’s emotions occasionally, similar to the effect of the Firestorm matrix.”

Barry nods in understanding. The majority of the people in the room just look confused.

“Firestorm?” Wally asks.

“Long story. We’ll tell you later,” Cisco says. He hands the Groddguard, which resembles a phonograph with a lot more dials and levers, to Harry. “Let’s go.”

Harry moves to leave, but Caitlin grabs the device from him. “I’ll go.”

He gives her his patented look, but she doesn’t back down. “You’ve spent more time with Grodd than any of us, Harry. You of all people should know that it’s a bad idea for anyone with Harrison Wells’ face to spend any amount of time around him.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

“I’ll go with you,” Julian offers.

Caitlin doesn’t roll her eyes, but she comes close. “All right. But I’m driving. We should get into position. There’s a good rooftop near where the gorillas are based.”

“You know, a group of gorillas is called a troop,” Julian says as he follows her out of the Cortex.

Iris comes in as they make their exit. “I just got off the phone with Dad,” she says. “The police are in place and ready to fight.”

Cisco and Cynthia clasp hands, open a breach together, and step through.

The four speedsters pull on their cowls (or goggles, in Randolf’s case), exchange nods, and run.

Barry stops a block away from the gorillas, and the others circle back after a moment. They can already hear the vague growling and rumbling of the hundreds of nearby gorillas.

Caitlin and Julian are in place, the police are scattered on nearby rooftops out of telepathy range, Cisco and Cynthia are waiting for the battle’s end, and the rest of the team watches nervously from STAR Labs.

“Are we ready for this?” Barry asks.

Wally and Jesse look at each other and exchange tight smiles. Randolf adjusts his goggles. They all look at Barry.

“We’re ready,” Jesse says.

Barry gives a single nod. “Then let’s go.”

They run.

There are a lot of gorillas.

Luckily, the layout of the city means that the speedsters can’t easily be overwhelmed: the space between buildings is small enough to only allow two of the massive monkeys side-by-side at once. Regardless, it’s… a lot.

They split up, each taking on different strategies. Barry sticks to the Reverse-Flash-esque vibrating-hand technique. Without the buildup of momentum Solovar had, it’s not as effective, but it can throw a gorilla back a few paces, and for now that’s good enough.

Jesse ducks under a gorilla’s arm as he takes a swipe at her, and, as the arm moves back over her head, grabs onto it and uses it as leverage to swing around, kicking the gorilla’s head with all the speed she can, severely denting his helmet. The gorilla lets out an anguished growl and flings her away. She flies through the air and hits the side of a building hard.

Wally abandons his attempt at lightning throwing and goes to her side, helping her back to her feet. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” They return to the fight, this time tag-teaming against a particularly large gorilla. Their symmetrical swirls of lightning flash around and around, and the gorilla, disoriented, misses when he tries to hit them.

Randolf is trying some of the standard tricks he uses on Earth-19. Flashing up to a rooftop, he runs directly at the edge and then leaps, using both the height and the speed to add weight to his punches. The first couple of times, it works exactly as expected. Then he finds out firsthand—gorillas can catch. Shortly afterward, he finds out they can also throw.

Shaking off the pain and getting to his feet, he tugs the white wool fabric from around his face. A brief pause to dodge the pair of gorillas charging at him, and then he scrubs the wool between his hands as fast as he can manage. His specially designed gloves protect him from the intense heat from friction, and when he finally wraps the fabric back around his face, the gloves are crackling with static electricity. The two gorillas, having turned around by now, reach down for him, and he doesn’t resist their grip, offering each of them one hand.

The crack of electricity conduction hurts Randolf’s ears, but it’s worth it: the gorillas fly backwards from its effect. He has no time to celebrate; he dashes to the next closest enemy and leaps toward its face, pressing the palms of his gloves—still superheated from the friction of the wool—against its nose and mouth. It howls in pain. Randolf stumbles as he lands, and Barry catches him before he can fall.

The sound of gunshots reaches their ears. The police are shooting, and, though it doesn’t seem to be very efficient, the mass quantity of tranquilizer darts does overwhelm a gorilla or two.

They’re making progress. Slow, but very definite.

Wally and Jesse dart over, and the four speedsters take a moment to catch their breath before returning to battle—

Except not all of them do.

Grodd, now advancing toward them, growls.

Understand now how you try to avoid my control, the words enter their mind.

Wally and Jesse glance at Barry and Randolf in confusion. Barry and Randolf don’t look confused.

…They don’t look much of anything, really.

But Grodd can commune with Grodd’s soldiers as you commune with yours.

“What does that mean?” Wally whispers frantically. Jesse shakes her head.

Harry, through their comms, answers. “He’s linking with the other gorillas telepathically. He’s strong enough with their help to control you even with all four of your minds linked!”

“Oh no,” Jesse says. She and Wally glance again at Barry and Randolf, who are starting to shake in place, lightning coming off of them like fog.

“Wally, Jesse, get them out of range!” Iris shouts through the comms.

They try, Wally heading for Randolf, Jesse for Barry. But the two more experienced speedsters dodge and run, deftly avoiding their grasp. The struggle moves to a side street, far enough away from the gorillas that Wally and Jesse only need to focus on their now-opponents. They both pointedly ignore the sounds of destruction coming from the troop—the two of them can’t defeat Grodd’s army on their own. They need to get Randolf and Barry back.

But now the two of them aren’t even running away—they’re avoiding Jesse and Wally standing in one place. Both speedsters are vibrating at the precise frequency necessary that they phase straight through the others.

“It’s like trying to catch a ghost,” Wally says, panic, frustration, fear.

“Guys, help!” Jesse pleads into the comms.

On the rooftop above them, Caitlin and Julian peer over the edge.

“Oh my god,” Caitlin whispers. “The city is doomed.”

Julian can only shake his head in despair. “This is bad, this is very bad—how do you stop two experienced speedsters?” With their position above the current conflict, it seems like there’s something they should be able to do about it, but he can’t think of anything. All those times he fantasized about stopping the Flash’s uncontested reign over Central City, and now, when it matters, he’s got nothing? Sure, he and Caitlin aren’t currently being mind-controlled by Grodd, but that’s cold comfort when the city is on the verge of destruction.

Caitlin turns to him, her expression panicked. “I don’t know.”

“Great.” Julian throws his hands up and turns away, exasperated. “This is wonderful. Allen and Morgan have turned on us. And you know what, I bet you’re going to go evil too.”

Caitlin blinks a couple of times, startled. “What?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know,” he says acerbically, turning back to face her. “You’re probably secretly rooting for Grodd and his gorilla army.”

“Julian.” She tries to cover her discomfort and annoyance with a laugh, though she’d rather do anything but laugh right now. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, come on, Snow. You’re only kidding yourself. Everyone else at STAR Labs is just waiting for you to crack.”

Her confusion begins to turn to anger. How dare he—he knows what she’s going through, or she thought he did—he should not be saying these things.

“Go on then, admit it,” he presses. “You’d love to watch all your friends die…”

Caitlin’s fuming.

Julian sneers. “…Killer Frost.”

Back at STAR, Iris realizes what Julian’s doing a moment before it happens. She leans over Harry to get to the microphone. “Wally, Jesse, run!”

Julian, not flinching at Caitlin’s obvious fury, grabs the thin chain of her snowflake power suppression necklace and pulls.

It snaps, and so does Caitlin.

A sphere of ice and snow and frost, thick as a blizzard, blasts outward. It throws Julian hard to the unforgiving surface of the roof, though that’s not the injury that’ll matter—he managed to turn his face away, but the majority of his body is frosted over regardless.

Caitlin was positioned close enough to the edge of the roof that the expanding sphere reaches all the way to the ground—more specifically, to Barry and Randolf. They freeze in both senses, their phasing ceasing as ice encases them.

On the roof, Caitlin—Killer Frost, that is, her eyes blue and cold as the preceding blizzard—smirks. She turns slowly until she sees Julian, and then those cold eyes open wide with shock and maybe a little bit of horror.

Frost goes to Julian’s side, turning him over to lie on his back. He’s unconscious.

“Julian,” she whispers, and the name sounds strange now from Frost’s lips. She needs to—

She tugs the broken necklace from Julian’s partially-frozen hand, the metal cold against her skin. Ice drips from her fingers without her conscious intent as she brushes fingertips across the gap between the broken links. Frost fuses the two ends; Caitlin puts the newly repaired necklace back around her neck and sighs.

Look what she’s done. Again.

Her earpiece is broken, frozen solid. She pulls the one from Julian’s ear and replaces hers.

The rest of the team is shouting frantically, voices overlapping.

“I’m back, I’m back,” she says. “Julian is seriously injured and it’s my fault…”

“Snow, you stopped Barry and Randolf,” Harry says. “It was necessary. We’ll care for Julian after the battle.”

“But there’s no way we can win.” Caitlin sighs. “Cisco’s device worked, but it didn’t matter. Grodd could still overpower them.”

“Now, I have an idea,” HR says. He doesn’t seem at all affected by the few groans that come through the comms. “We had four minds connected and that wasn’t enough, because that clever gorilla just connected to other minds of his own. Seems to me that we need more minds.”

“There are twelve of us,” Cynthia points out. “There are hundreds of gorillas.”

“But,” HR continues, “we have something the gorillas don’t.”

“Love?” Cisco asks sarcastically.

“Aside from that. We have Central City.”

There’s a collective gasp of realization over the line.

Sounding gratified, HR elaborates. “If we get everyone’s brain waves to sync, we should have enough brainpower to beat the monkeys!”

“Gorillas,” Caitlin corrects.

“Whichever.”

Wally, on the ground below, says, “I got this.” He sprints through the streets, looking for the TV cameras that must be around somewhere—there.

“…and all of Central City is waiting to see—”

“Sorry,” Wally interrupts. “I have to say something.” The cameraman obligingly turns the camera toward him. He faces it and waves. “Hey, Central City. Kid Flash here. We’re trying to defeat these terrifying telepathic gorillas,” he gestures behind him, “but we need your help. Everyone needs to think the same thing: Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash.”

He continues chanting it and holds out his arms, wordlessly encouraging the reporter and cameraman to do the same. They start slowly, but soon are chanting as determinedly as he is: “Flash! Flash! Flash!”

Hopefully, people all around Central City are doing the same. “Keep going,” he says, and rushes back to Jesse and the other speedsters.

“I’m aligning your brain waves to the new frequency,” Caitlin says. “Hurry, warm up Barry and Randolf.”

Wally and Jesse do, using heat from friction to melt the ice. Barry and Randolf quickly catch on and start vibrating, sending the last bits of frost swirling into steam.

“I have a plan,” Jesse says.

“Let’s hear it,” Randolf says.

“When you and Barry were brainwashed, we couldn’t stop you because you kept phasing out of our grip. Which made me think—the gorillas can’t hit us if we phase through them.”

The others nod, quickly catching on.

“This had better work,” Barry mutters. “Come on, let’s save Central City.”

They run.

This time, instead of going slowly, limited by being thrown across streets and hurled into buildings, the speedsters take down the gorillas methodically and efficiently. It doesn’t hurt that the police have done their part—at least a third of the gorillas have been brought down through tranquilizers alone.

All four speedsters work as a team now, phasing out of danger only to let someone else get in a hit.

The troop is going down.

Barry realizes that he’s actually enjoying himself. It’s exhausting, phasing every other second, but he’s moving through the gorillas like a bullet, jumping through half of them and punching the rest with stunning force.

Finally, it’s only Grodd who’s left.

“This is over, Grodd,” Barry calls to him. The other three skid to a stop around him. “We’ve beaten your army. You have to retreat.”

Helpfully, a breach opens behind him, and Cisco and Cynthia enter.

“Say the word,” Cisco says, “and we can open the ground beneath you and send you all home.”

Grodd glares. This isn’t over, Flash, he promises.

“We’ll take that as a yes,” Cynthia says with a smirk. She and Cisco clasp hands, and a portal opens underneath the fallen gorillas. They vanish, and Grodd steps into the breach after them.

The six of them look around at each other and laugh in sheer relief.

They’ve done it.

Chapter Text

Cisco lingers at the entrance to the med bay.

“Is Julian going to be okay?”

Caitlin turns in her seat at his bedside. “He’ll recover. In fact, I think he’s about to wake up.”

On cue, Julian’s eyelids flutter.

“Ow,” he groans. “Everything hurts.”

“That’s what happens when you deliberately try to set me off,” Caitlin says sharply.

“I—owww—I had to do it. You wouldn’t have thought of it, and convincing you would take too long.”

Cisco makes to leave—this is clearly a conversation between the two of them—but Caitlin throws him a look.

“I need to talk to you too, Cisco,” she says.

That doesn’t bode well, but he acquiesces and fully enters the room, taking a chair on the other side of the bed.

“I’m worried,” Caitlin says, “about the fact that your first instinct, both of you, is to sacrifice yourself.”

“Hey, it was a good solution,” Cisco defends himself. “If I were dead, Grodd wouldn’t be able to use my breaches to get to Earth-1.”

“And if I didn’t do anything, Central City was going to be destroyed,” Julian agrees.

Caitlin sighs. “Cisco, there were other solutions. You know that. And Julian, you could have talked to me.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” Julian maintains. At Caitlin’s glare, he backs down. “All right, all right. Fine. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Caitlin says. “I just want you to understand that I need both of you to stay alive. Barry needs you. Everyone on this team needs you alive. Sacrificing yourself won’t ever be the right solution.”

Julian nods. “Fine. Now can I sleep?”

Cisco stands and comes around the bed to Caitlin. She stands too and they hug tightly.

“Stay alive,” she whispers to him. “I’m worried about what might happen if you don’t.”

“I’ll be here,” Cisco replies. “I promise.”

“You want to what?”

“I want to stay here on Earth-1,” Jesse repeats calmly.

Harry doesn’t look mad so much as flustered. He looks to Wally. “This is because of you, I assume?”

“Well, yeah,” Wally says. “Jesse and I like each other, a lot, and we want to see if we can make it work.”

Harry runs a hand through his hair. “And you can’t do it on Earth-2?”

Wally looks pointedly at the glass wall containing the list of headlines from the future. “Iris needs me right now. Maybe after May, I’d be willing to try it, but right now I need to stay and build up my speed. We have to save her.”

Harry is about to say something, clearly something prohibitive, but Jesse cuts him off.

“This is what I want, Dad. I’ll still be able to visit you whenever I want. And it’s not like I can’t protect myself.”

“I know,” Harry says. “I’m just—” He remembers everything he’s ever said about letting her go, and sighs. “I just want you to be happy, Jesse.”

She breaks into a smile and hugs him. “I will be, Dad. I promise.”

He shoots a glare at Wally that Jesse, still hugging him, can’t see. When she steps back, he says, “If anything happens to her, I’m coming after you, West.”

Wally looks genuinely scared. Jesse laughs and takes his hand. “Don’t worry. He says that to everyone.”

“May,” Harry says. “And then you both come to Earth-2 for a few months.”

Wally nods. “Agreed.”

HR all but drags Randolf into another room. Randolf doesn’t look currently upset with him, just mildly disappointed. Maybe that’s worse.

“What, HR?” he asks.

“Look, R, I’m—I’m all talk, and, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but despite all my talking I really don’t say much of anything.”

Randolf scoffs. “I know.”

HR presses on. “When everything went wrong back home, I was scared. We’d lost everything and I was so—” He tries not to get choked up. “I was so scared that I would lose you too. So I tried to pretend that it was no big deal. I made jokes, I acted like it would be fine. Because I didn’t want—”

He’s failed at not getting choked up. Randolf lets him take a moment to collect himself.

“You said earlier that you wondered whether I’d ever taken anything seriously in my life. The answer, R, is that I never did. Not until I met you. And suddenly I had something to lose, and I, I didn’t know how to handle that. I hope—” He swallows hard and takes off his hat, turning it around in his hands helplessly. “I hope you’ll let me try again.”

Randolf lets out a small, possibly-tear-soaked laugh. “On one condition.”

HR looks up hopefully.

“You have got to take me out for coffee here sometime.”

HR sighs in relief and immediately becomes more animated. “Anytime. You know there was that blight on our Earth? Well, that didn’t happen here…”

He continues to ramble. Randolf smiles.

The team gathers again in the Cortex to send off the denizens from other Earths. Cisco and Harry present HR and Randolf with a pair of interdimensional communicators.

“If you ever need a ride to Earth-1,” Cynthia says to Randolf, “let me know.”

She turns away and finds herself facing Cisco. The rest of the team backs off slightly to let them talk.

“Thanks for helping me out,” Cynthia says.

“Anytime.” Cisco smiles. “If you need anything—”

“I know who to call,” she says, turning away. “Ready to go?” she asks Harry and Randolf.

Cisco looks slightly off-kilter. He’s not ashamed to admit that he’d expected a little bit more of a goodbye.

Everyone makes their final goodbyes, and Cynthia opens a breach.

When they’re gone, Cisco lingers in the Cortex for a moment longer.

Good plan.

He’s just about to leave when he feels the dimensional energies of the room shift. A breach opens right in front of him and Cynthia pulls him in for a kiss before vanishing again.

Cisco smiles to the empty room.

“What an exit.”