Sherlock meets The Flash and Arrow

Chapter 25

Oliver

Cisco looks up. (Why, Cisco? Why?)

Cisco's face twists like he's fighting with himself. He opens a breach and yells to Barry, "Cortex!" Barry nods and Cisco vanishes into his breach.

The person above us drops to the ground. John, in one smooth, elegant, and well-practiced motion, pulls out his gun, removes the safety, aims without looking at the person, and fires.

The person screams and falls back. I still refuse to look at it, but it's not making sounds like it's dying, so I'm guessing it was a non-fatal shot. Barry whizzes over and clonks the guy over the head.

I finally look at the person. He's got dark brown hair but looks uninteresting. Sherlock walks over and looks at the bullet wound. It's clear through his left shoulder.

Sherlock smiles. "That has got to hurt."

John smiles also. "It does. Trust me."

Sherlock looks at John. His eyes catch on John's shoulder. "You would know."

I look at Sherlock. He warned us about this man. This man was scary enough to send Cisco running back to the Cortex. "What's so special about him?"

Sherlock kneels next to the man. Without looking at me, he says, "He can control your emotions. If you meet his eyes, he can make you feel anything. With Cisco, it was the emotion rage. Barry has a way of handling this man from when they last fought. Cisco's gone to get that thing, but if he doesn't make it in time he'll go on a rampaging spree."

I try to picture a rampaging Cisco and utterly fail.

John

Barry looks at Sherlock with an incredulous expression. "How in the world did you know that?"

Sherlock rocks back onto his heels. "Don't look up came from the way that his eyes were glowing. A sort of unnatural red. The emotion thing was easy. You all must've seen how Cisco looked like he was fighting with himself after looking at this man. No reason for him to do that unless something was betraying him. Wasn't his body, or he couldn't've run. So it has to be his head. There's no reason for Cisco to run away from his friends unless he's afraid of hurting us. A little cliche says that red means anger, which was mirrored by Cisco's expression, so rage. Obvious. He also didn't look at me, so the anger's targeted at me. He didn't want to magnify it. Barry recoiled when he saw the legs of this man. The only way he would've recognized a man just by their legs would be if he'd seen the man before. The recoil signifies that their last meeting was under less-than-pleasant circumstances. Which brings us to the way of handling this man.

"The Cortex would have lots of triggers for emotional breakdowns. Cisco's smart, so why would he run there? Much safer to go somewhere that he's never been, so nothing reminds him of the target of his anger—namely, me. So why go to the Cortex? There has to be something there, something important to defusing his anger. Seeing as Barry's already fought this man, it stands to reason that they would have some way of defeating him. That thing would be in the Cortex.

"And if he doesn't get that thing in time, he'll rampage to try to find me. Seeing as he's put himself in the Cortex, that'll excite his anger. If he does come after me, let him. There's no way we're going to be able to defuse his anger with whatever device you have. Cisco knows about it and is able to counteract whatever it does. We'll just have to shock him back to himself. At some point, his morals will rebel against him killing me. That should snap him back to himself."

Barry's cocked his head and is staring at Sherlock with a look of amazement on his face. Oliver looks pretty similar. On the other hand, I'm completely unphased by the long list of deductions. I guess I'm used to it.

"Should?" I ask. "What if it doesn't?"

"I should be able to hold him off well enough to get him to not kill me."

This really worries me. I've seen Sherlock play up his abilities for my sake. He may be an amazing fighter, but he doesn't have superpowers. At least not physical ones.

Oliver says what we're all thinking. "There are fates far worse than death. I'm willing to bet that one of them is being subjected to Cisco's wrath."

Barry says, quietly, "Cisco's a part of my team. He's seen me beat up a lot of people, and he's trained with Oliver. He knows how to make things hurt, and how to use his powers. If he pushes too far with his powers he gets an immense migraine. Or, if there's any sort of wonky temporal alteration, he has these weird seizure things that hurt like crazy. He knows how to handle pain."

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this whole time-is-changeable thing. "Wait. If this...temporal alteration...thing causes him to have seizures, and you went back in time, why didn't your time travel cause that?"

Caitlin's the one who explains. "Barry basically rewrote the timeline. That doesn't alter the past, it erases it. Temporal alterations are when someone goes back in time and changes the past. Because time is linked to interdimensional space, as in the fabric of spacetime, it affects Cisco in an extremely negative way."

Barry adds, "Besides, you're at a disadvantage now that your hand's wounded."

Everyone glances at Sherlock's hand, so Sherlock immediately tucks his hands into his coat's pockets. Still, I catch a glimpse of them. My bandages have held strong even through Sherlock's exertions. Still, his hand is dripping with blood.

I feel my eyes widen and I rush to Sherlock. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"We had more important matters to tend to. I'll be fine. Stop worrying."

I give him a fierce look. "I'm a doctor and you're my best friend. I can't just stop worrying about you."

Sherlock pulls away from me. "I think we should be worrying more about Cisco than about me. He's been gone too long. He didn't get the device in time."