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After sending Harry and Jesse home, it had been unanimously agreed to regroup at Joe's house to decompress. All of them are shaken, coming down from adrenal highs, buoyed by the almost euphoric disbelief of we won, Zoom's gone, we won. No one wants to be alone tonight. Sprawled on Joe's ridiculously comfortable sofa, Cisco drifts, floating in that pleasantly fuzzy mental space created by combination of food coma and an overwhelming exhaustion of health and spirit.
Barry is drifting too, Cisco can see, but in a haze more numb and fatigued than the rest of them. Losing his dad hit him hard; seeing Jay Garrick, the real Jay, wearing his dad's face - a double blow. The speedster excused himself to the porch some time ago, eyes red and shoulders bowed. Iris followed, to try and comfort him in his grief, but she returned alone. He's been out there since.
Cisco rouses himself enough to make sense of the dial on his wristwatch. It's been almost an hour, and Barry hasn't come back in. He frowns at the ceiling, then pulls himself to his feet, stepping softly past a sleeping Caitlin.
"Hey, Barry-" he calls, as he opens the door, and steps out onto the porch.
The only thing that answers him is the persistent cricket song, the quiet rush of the wind. The summer night is crisp against his bare skin, just the right side of chilled to combat the heat lingering from the day, but the goosebumps that rise on Cisco's arms are not from the cold.
"Barry?" He looks around, stepping further into the darkness and peering about, as though Barry had taken to hiding under bushes like a skittish cat. But there's no sign of him, and Cisco's gut is beginning to clench with the sense that something is Not Right.
"Barry!"
Not 48 hours ago, they had to lock Barry in a cell because he wasn't thinking straight. Now Barry is nowhere to be found, and the tightness in Cisco's gut is evolving into a vice around his heart. He doesn't need a vibe to realize that while they may have stopped Zoom, it couldn't, wouldn't stop Barry's grief from consuming him in the aftermath.
Cisco knows where he's gone. Yet he still dashes out into the yard, shouting into the darkness, his pleas falling on deaf ears.
"BARRY!"
He stops, bare feet sinking into dew-wet grass, and looks down. The ground under his feet is vibrating, like the feel of a far-off earthquake. Cisco knows better. It's a timequake, ripples expanding out through history as Barry changes the past.
"Oh, Barry," the meta whispers around the lump in his throat.
The ground under Cisco's feet cracks. The timeline shatters, but Vibe is at the heart of the storm.
The world goes white.
Cisco falls.
Endless swirling darkness light sparks of speedforce timeforce grey gold red green the flash of blue eyes cold a familiar smirk and Cisco falls, endlessly tumbling, no up or down or beginning or end and he may go mad but he's in control, has control, this can be controlled -
He screams reaches out tangles fingers in the threads of silverlight vibrating across the universes yanks hard feels a tug somewhere around his navel as he slips sideways and-
He stumbles, crashes to the blessed, painfully hard ground, retching and shaking, unable to process anything beyond the pain in his head, the tilt-a-whirl of timelines, has-beens and would-bes and never-weres.
"Ramon!"
"Cisco!"
Familiar voices, hands, clutching his shoulders, smoothing hair back from his face, blotting tissues against the hell of a nosebleed he can taste draining down his throat. He's propped up, a cup of water tipped to his lips. He drinks, parched, gasping for air once half of it is guzzled down. Harry's face, Jesse's face, swim into view above him. Somehow, he's pulled himself across the dimensions. If he didn't feel so sick, Cisco might even feel impressed of himself.
"Cisco? What happened? How, why are you here?" Harry frowns, prising eyelids up to check Cisco's pupil reaction. Cisco shudders, mind grasping for words as fingers grasp Harry's sleeves.
"Barry - he - the timelines - went back - timequake - I couldn't..."
It's too much for his battered brain to convey. Cisco slumps forward into Harry's arms, trembling, heedless of the blood dribbling down his chin that smears bright red across Harry's shirt. The Earth-2 residents share a look of horror over his head. Smart ones, they are, they've figured it out. Good.
Cisco lets the darkness rise up and buoy him into merciful unconsciousness.