Legacy » Snowbarry

10

"Dad, Penelope, we're all ready to celebrate-"

"Hersch isn't Cicada."

Nora had gathered everyone to STAR Labs, except for Caitlin and Ralph, who were still investigating the fake death certificate.

"What? He has to be."

"No. Dad and I checked Cicada's bootprint from the crime scenes with Gridlock and Block and it's 3 sizes bigger than Hersch's. It's not him."

"Well, of course it's him. It's always him. Every time I capture Cicada, it's always been the same man."

Penelope shrugged at Sherloque. "Well, maybe this time it's different."

Cisco glanced at Sherloque. "Wait at minute. You've caught this guy before?"

"37 times. I've captured 37 Cicadas, 37 different Earths and every time I try to capture him, trail always leads to that Earth's David Hersch."

"So this psychological profile that you created, you just made it up?"

"Not the first time. Now, the next 36, then I just trot it out there. You know, to impress the client, and then,"Sherloque snapped his fingers, "skip to the end."

"And here I thought you were just a bad detective. But you're just a lazy one."

Sherloque glanced at Cisco. "I'm not lazy. I'm efficient, right? Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that there's no reason for the Cicada of this Earth not to be David Hersch."

"Maybe there is if someone travelled back to the past and helped stopped a satellite. Everything is changing, and maybe this is one of them."

"Oh, mais, no. You must- How can you not tell me this? How am I expected to operate when you don't give me all the variables?" 

"I don't know, but what we can expect is a refund."

Sherloque turned to glance at Cisco. "Oh, no, no, no. That money is long gone."

"What do you mean 'it's gone'. You spend all that money in one day?"

"Right."

"On what?"

"My ex-wife-ves. Ex-wives. 7 marriages, 5 wives. Lots of alimony. That's not the point. The point is simply this is not my fault." Sherloque pointed Nora. "It's your fault. She is to blame. Timeline vanance." 

Sherloque walked away and Nora turned to her father. "Dad, you're not gonna let Hersch off the hook because of a bootprint. He's a meta. How do we know what this guy can do?"

"He's not a meta, Nora. There was no dark matter readings."

"She's right. From one CSI to another, we have to look at the facts, right? We got the wrong guy."

"No, not this time. You know what we should do? We should throw him in the pipeline for safe keeping until he talks. I'm gonna go get him."

"Nora, stop." Penelope stopped Nora before she could run off.

"No, you're not. We're not going to kidnap a suspect in police custody. If you don't see what's wrong with that, then you can sit this one out."

Barry and Nora glanced at each other for a few seconds before Nora sped off. 

"Well," Cisco started, picking up another drink, "guess we're back to square one with Cicada." He poured the drink into his own cup.

Later, Barry and Iris were talking on the balcony when there was an emergency in the pipeline intake. 

"What happened?"

"As far as I can tell, it looks like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when this fusion cell went critical. I think it wasn't placed in its crate properly."

Barry directed his gaze to the hat on the floor. "Vaporized in to ash."

"What a way to go."

"Shenanigans."

Cisco and Penelope both startled Iris and Nora when they appeared behind them. 

"Good grife!"

"I call shenanigans. You see, these cells right here, they run in a redundant cascade circuit. That's how they power the pipeline in the first place. So if one of them blew, they all would've blown."

"The whole pipeline would've exploded."

"Exactly right."

Cisco crouched down near what they thought was ash and used a licorice to taste it. "Darling, Oolong."

"Tea leaves."

Cisco nodded at Penelope. "Exactly. Penelope, could you be a dear and check the building for a weasel in a pork pie hat, about yay tall, smells vaguely of poutine?"

Penelope sped off and moments late came back with Sherloque, who glanced down at the hat.

"Whoa. Tell me, who died?"

Penelope turned to Cisco. "I found him with this."

She tossed him the extrapolator.

"Of course you did. So you thought that you could just leave to another Earth without paying us back?"

"Worked on my 4th wife. And my 6th. Same woman." Sherloque glanced at Barry

"Oh."

"Okay, Cisco," Iris glanced at the long haired man, "Maybe it's time we have a talk about a little place called debtor's prison."

Cisco began to lead Sherloque out. "Come with me. You make me miss Herr Wells."

"Come with me."

"I'm- I'm taking you!"

Iris, Cisco and Sherloque left the pipeline and left Penelope with Nora and Barry. 

"You okay?" Barry glanced at Nora. 

"Yeah. Yeah, it's just... for a second I thought that inviting Sherloque got him killed and I just... at least that's one thing that's not my fault."

"Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something." Barry and Nora sat down and faced each other. "I think I understand how you're feeling. Sometimes, our powers are so extraordinary it makes our mistakes feel amplified, especially guilt."

"But we should feel guilty." Barry glanced at Penelope, who went to sit next to Nora. "I mean, everything bad that's happened, it's our faults. But we just want to fix it."

"I've never messed up this badly before, and I can't stop thinking about it."

"That's just because you care. You both do. And that's okay. It's a good thing. But," Barry sighed, "If every time  either of you make a mistake you just rush in to fix it, you're only going to make things worse. I know that better than anyone. You just got to have a little more patience. Take a moment. Think before you act. Fix the problem the right way, all right?" 

Nora and Penelope both nodded. 

"Okay."

The three of them headed back up to the Cortex just as Cecile pressed the distress signal, alerting Cisco and Iris. Cecile had a feeling that something was wrong downstairs, so when she went to check, the real Cicada had gotten in and tied Joe to a chair. Cicada wanted Cisco, and was able to get him when he showed up to help and Cicada left just as Barry arrived. 

"He took Cisco."

"Cicada took Cisco."