Chapter Text
-----Back to present----
Jack “woke” up again, now with a bit more clarity about his environment.
For one, he could see now and could feel, but he didn’t like what he saw or felt.
Jack’s breath came in slow, controlled pulls through the tight mouthpiece strapped over his face. Cool air hissed down a thin tube, every inhale muffled by the weight of the water pressing against his chest. He floated upright, suspended like a relic in a museum.
Everything ached.
Which it shouldn’t if he wasn’t human, so he could guess at least one of Mother Nature's plans worked.
Jack felt like his body had been drained, stretched too far, and then stitched back together wrong.
His eyes blinked, pupils slow to adjust to the cold blue lighting outside the tube. The world beyond the glass was blurred and distant, warped by the thick fluid surrounding him.
He tried to move.
Clink.
The metal cuffs around his wrists yanked against the chain bolted to the floor of the tank. His legs were bound the same way. Heavy. Designed to hold someone stronger than he looked.
Panic overcame him.
A memory appeared ~~~~~“Rule number 1 on waking up in a strange place, never wake up restrained,” North said in his serious tone. Jack had no idea why he was even here, but it’s not like he could argue; just one week of being a guardian, he got kidnapped twice. One was made by the person teaching him, but North didn’t like to hear specifics~~~~
‘Now I wish I actually paid attention to his strange lessons.’
Jack tried moving his hands to see if they were any sort of leeway. The only thing it did was rub his wrist the worst way.
‘No time to panic, think, Jack, how did you get here?’
Trying to look back into his memory, he still couldn’t find how he got there. The only thing he remembered was the goodbyes and entering the portal; everything else was blank.
Now that it caught his attention, Jack looked around himself, noticing how he only had white shorts on, and all his other clothes were gone, including his earrings.
‘Shit’
With nothing else he could do, Jack decided to close his eyes. He knew this was a bad idea, but he felt like ass, and he was hella tired. With his vision dimming and his heart slowing. The last thing he thought before passing was how he was going to get his nods.
--------Flash team--------
Barry just got an alert from Cisco to head to the lab, it was a Wednesday afternoon and it was snowing like heck, he just got off work and was about to have date with himself like his father says treat yourself like how to want to treat others and after a day of shouting from his boss and an accidental chemical spill all Barry wanted to was take a shower and eat the leftover spaghetti he had in his fridge. He would even make it look fancy, like those 5-star restaurants with candles and everything.
But he couldn’t do that, since he got an emergency notification from Cisco with no clarification of what the emergency was. All Barry could do was run, hungry.
“Cisco, I’m here. I got your emergency. What's going on?”-Barry
“Not now, bar bar… Wait, actually, now,” Cisco said, looking at Barry entering the command center. “Where is Caitlyn? Why is it only you here?”
“Our dear Ms. Frost is out on a date with her lovely fireman. But that is unimportant. Barry, do you know what I just found?” Now, Cisco was looking at Barry with stars in his eyes, and it would have been cute if Barry wasn’t about to eat a horse for dinner in his mind.
“Cisco, if this is not an end-of-the-world emergency, I’m going home” -Barry.
“No, it’s better” -Cisco was now pushing Barry towards his computer, indicating for Barry to look at it. On it were a bunch of graphs that Barry could somewhat recognize.
“What am I looking at?” -Barry
“You, my dear Speedster, are looking at the existence of dimensional travel.” Now Barry was looking unimpressed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we already knew about that. Not like you ever meet the super alien that can blow a church with her breath.”
“Okay, I will admit that was pretty stupid of me, but in my defense, that was you going to that dimension because of the whole speed thing, not me.” Still looking unimpressed, Barry had to at least hear him out before he bites Cisco.
“You know how lately the weather has been as bipolar as a grandma with dementia?” Weird analogy from Cisco, but Barry promised himself he would hear him out. “Yeah, and what of it?”
“so I was thinking it may be another case of a meta human, so I thought I should analyze the weather and see if it has the same propositions as our other weather manic” Now Barry was interested in this topic, the weather lately has been weird from one hour it’s sunny like fall to blowing heavy winds like there in the middle of December and it’s only October.
“Did you find anything good then?” Barry said, having a little edge in his voice, cause true, he is the fastest man alive, he thinks, but he hates winter enemies, they always trap him with the ice on the floor trap, and he swears that his mind always goes blank when he sees that and just falls.
“Nope,” Cisco said with the eagerness of a man who just developed the cure for cancer.
“What do you mean, 'nope?” Now Barry may have raised his voice a little, but don’t blame him; he was hangry.
“Well, not nope nope, nope as in it is not like any other meta human we have encountered, as I was analyzing the energy the weather was giving, which had no dark matter energy to it.” Now cisco was moving Barry towards the multiple screens. “Now I thought, okay, that means the meta-human can probably only control the weather, rather than actually creating snowstorms,”
Cisco was getting worked up, giving up on showing data and more, and moving around. “But that wouldn’t make sense since then they would still be a bit of Dark matter energy around the storms, but keyword there was nothing.”
“But if there is no dark matter energy, does that mean the storm is naturally caused, because I am telling you that weather changes faster than your tisms,” Barry said, now getting into the adhd groove, walking around Cisco like chickens
“Exactly, the weather is entirely not normal, so I have two theories.” Cisco stops moving and now looks at Barry, “One we have a god on our hands.”
“Hold up one, I don't like the sound of that two, what about the whole dimension thingy you were saying, and three, how did you go into God?” Barry wasn't just looking scared; he was terrified. Yes, he was the fastest man alive, but what is a fast man against something more than a man?
“I am getting there, as I was saying, the theories are a God, but when I was scanning the energy, I noticed a completely new energy at the start of the whole feisty weather. After the energy, a day later, the weather gets crazy.”
“Okay, that sounds okay, much better than the God theory,” he said, looking at Cisco with less fear.
Cisco stopped looking at Barry and now went back to the computer, “So instead of a God we have a dimension traveler who is capable of controlling snowstorms, and their energy is very similar to that of normal earth weather energy that I can't possibly find or understand how they are doing this.”
“So, we are back to square one.” Now, Barry would say he is a patient man, but patient is for people who have a full stomach and don’t need to eat 50 times their own body weight just to survive for one day. “Cisco, how about we look at this later today when it is working hours with people who have more brain cells than both of us combined right now.”
“Wha but Barry”- Cisco
“Na ah ah, Cisco, you look cold and tired, looking at you makes me feel even colder and tired than I already do.” Cisco is now looking at Barry with sadness, showing him his best cute puppy eyes, but Barry will not concede and looks at him with an incredible amount of pity and hunger
“I need to eat, to be able to do some crime fighting, and you need to sleep to be able to do some background yapping.” Barry was now walking towards the exit
“Hey, my battle commentary is not yapping.”
“If the shoe fits.” Barry looked away from Cisco. Running out of the building, the last thing Cisco saw was a small wave from the man, then a flash of red lightning.
“Mimimi, if the shoe fits, I’m going home,” Cisco muttered to himself, packing his things.
----------WITH JACK------------
Jack was woken up again, this time not because he wanted to; it was a shock, it wasn’t on the point of pain bordering on it, but enough to make him shiver; it felt numb.
Opening his eye, he was hit by a quick, bright light, closing it back again. He still wanted to see what was out there and what gave him that shock, so he squinted his eyes open to see a human in a brook person outfit, if the ripped jeans and the also ripped shirt could call for it, but funny enough, he had a scientist coat.
The person was blurry in Jack's unfocused eyes, and he thought he should be hearing them say or do stuff, but he couldn’t, even when the person was carrying glass that should be clicking and having blue light; he thought light was coming out of him on multiple occasions.
Jack still couldn’t speak, but he tried doing anything he could to get the person's attention, as much as attention could get from weakly moving the chains, but they wouldn’t look at him.
Then the person walking toward a computer that Jack did not see was there, and his body became heavier, his eyes droopy with sleep until he was back in the darkness again.
----------WITH Other team------------
“You know, with weather like this, you would expect the fastest man alive to find a fast solution to an increasingly fast problem.” Mick walked in looking as menacing as a guy with pink slippers.
They were in one of their backup bases, it was a barn house, away from the city and flash-related problems, or so they thought.
“How many fast are you planning on putting in a sentence?”—Leonard
Leonardo was sitting on a kitchen table with a book on the table in front of him; it seemed he was reading before Mick interrupted. But he also had his freeze gun in his hand, right on the trigger.
“Just saying, what? can’t even make fun of your crush?” –Mick
“That is a very idiotic thing to spout from your mouth. I do not have something as childish as a “crush”. He puts his gun down, “but you are right, why hasn't his team done something about it?”—Leonard
“Maybe he is finally learning not to stick his nose into Mother Nature’s business.”—Mick
“When has meta-human ever been Mother Nature’s domain?” Leonard faced his partner, looking amused by the sentence
“Well, everything is Mother Nature’s business, after all, if she didn’t want us. What is stopping her from wiping us all in a flood?” Mick asked, now getting amused by the conversation.
“You are getting God and nature mix up plus the whole flood thing was because humans were too cruel” Leonard looked out the window staring as the sky turned from bright sunshine with no cloud in sight, to forming dark clouds with menace and cold, the sun receding into the foreground as white slowly falls at first it was gently like crystals in the sky then more kept falling and falling until the ground became covered in white with not a single sight of green or anything.
Though he isn’t anywhere near civilization, he could imagine how deserted the streets would be, no one even daring to come out in the thickest of coats.
The winds howl like a mother grieving their child, with the way they turn off and on, you would think not even nature itself knows why it is crying, all it knows is that it must cry for something or someone.