The Flash: Repentance

Chapter XVI

After about 30 minutes, Wenn feels like she has collected herself enough to tell Barry about what happened.
She swallows and takes a deep breath, hoping he will understand.

"I killed my ex-boyfriend..."

Barry blinks, that is not what he expected. But he also knows that whatever happened had to have been an accident. This woman isn't capable of deliberately killing a person.
So he tightens his grip on her. He knows this is a big deal for her and she needs to know he will be there for her no matter what.

He puts his chin on top of her head.

"What happened?"

She starts playing with the buttons of his shirt.

"I told you that after I woke up in my lab, I stumbled home and locked myself in my apartment for months."

Barry hums.

"That is only partly true. When I got to my apartment, Damian was standing outside the door. I broke up with him 3 weeks before. He was a scientist, that is how we initially met, charming, handsome, he knew how to play a person just right. So I fell for him.
After a few dates and things became more serious, he changed.

He turned out to be an abusive asshole. He... He took great pleasure in pleasure in physical, but mainly emotional torture.

I tried to stand tall and not show him how badly I was hurt. "

She takes a shaky breath, the continues.

"I failed miserable and he dragged me in to the apartment. He started yelling at me, saying I had no right to leave him. That I was his. He then noticed something was off. Cutlery, the TV, every item that was in some way magnetic was either floating or slowly making it's way towards me."

Wenn starts to shake again, and Barry has a hunch were this is going. He swallows and rubs his hands up and down her back.

"He figured out that something happened to me and he made me his personal guinea pig... He made a deal with some guy in the army, and kept me in a small steel box in the ground at some seemingly abandoned facility outside the city."

Barry pulls back a little and looks at her, shocked.

"A...box?! Oh my god, Wenn..."

Wenn nods, "The experiments were...less than humane to say the least. I've been shocked, prodded, poked, cut and things I don't even want to think about.

But the worst was that box... It cut me off from everything, plus many of the experiments were performed when I was in there. Different currents were fed through, heat/cold treatments all to see how I would react and how my powers would manifest."

She shudders at the thought of it.

"At one point they didn't even let me out of the box anymore because I had gotten too strong and they still hadn't found a way to control me. Their experiments also helped me understand my powers better, so letting me out was dangerous.

They forgot one thing, when treated with the right current, steel can turn magnetic temporarily. At one point I had learned how to siphon and discard electricity and create magnetic fields with it, something they hadn't picked up on yet.

One day, after they had done one of their experiments and I thought they all had left, I magnetized the box and was able to manipulate the lock to open. But Damian came back, saw I was out and came for me. I knew I had to move fast, so I ran forward and shoved him. He stumbled backwards and fell in to the box."

She swallows and looks at her hands, breath hitching as she tries to fight the tears.

"Without thinking, I slammed the box closed with my powers, but...I...I still didn't have a good handle on them and... I was so angry, I... I used too much force...The box crumpled like a piece of paper..."

She starts to breath rapidly, tears flowing down her cheeks,

"He was in there Barry!! The...there was blood, blood everywhere! I did that, I... I killed him, I killed him, Barry!"

She is on the verge of hysterics again, so Barry pulls her in to his embrace tightly. He places feather kisses on her forehead and rubs reassuring circles on her back,

"It's okay, you didn't mean to. It was an accident. It's okay. Shhhh, it's okay."

After a few minutes she calms down and wraps her arms around his torso, holding on to him as tight as he is holding her.

"I ran out there as fast as I could. All the bunkers and gates contained high amounts of iron, so busting out was easy.

I found an old, dingy apartment building with a manager that didn't ask questions and hid there. Afraid to go out. 'Cause what if I accidentally hurt someone? What if I killed someone again?
I ordered take-out, groceries on-line and commented for them to place it outside the door.
The first time I went out again was to pick up one of  my take-out my orders, they were swamped and delivery would take forever. That is when I accidentally made a knife fly, almost hurting another person, so I locked myself up again. At one point I just... just wanted to kill myself..."

Barry is the one who is shaking now. Or rather, boiling with anger.

How, how can someone in their right mind treat another human being like that, putting her in the state she was in now?!

Wenn feels his anger rise. She looks up and puts her hands at the side of his face, willing him to look at him.
He looks at her, tears threatening to spill from his eyes.
Wenn presses a gentle kiss to his lips.

"It's okay, Barry, I am okay now." She whispers

He pulls her back in to his embrace. He needs to hold her. How did she survive such horror? No wonder she wasn't too keen on being poked and prodded by Caitlin, trying to understand her powers.

"Are you?" Barry asks, "The nightmares and what I just witnessed tell me otherwise."

"I'm coping. You saved me, Barry. Well the Flash did." She gives him a small smile.

"At my lowest I saw a news article about a red blur, a person, saving people. I figured he or she must have gotten powers the way I did and was using it to do good. I realized that if I could get a good handle on things, maybe so could I."

Barry strokes her hair, "Not maybe, you CAN."

"So... you don't hate me?" Wenn carefully asks.

"Hate you?! I could never hate you! I love you!" Barry answers

"You...do?"

Barry blinks, mulling over this statement, then firmly concludes, "Yeah... yeah I really do."

Wenn puts her head back on his chest and smiles,

"I love you too."