Always Running

Orion

Cisco knocks on the door to Caitlin's at 2:00 in the morning.

"This better be important." He groans as he slinks in. "Call me at 1 in the morning after Christmas. Expect me to walk to your place. Barely slept. Still full. Better be coffee. Not going to work tomorrow." He continues to mumble to himself as she slowly makes his way to Caitlin's couch, curls up with a blanket and lays back down, closing his eyes.

"Hunter Zolomon." Barry says.

"Cool name." Cisco says sleepily.

"It's Zoom's name." Caitlin adds.

One of Cisco's eyes pops open in curiosity. "I'm listening."

Caitlin walks over and sits on Cisco who grunts, but finally agrees to sit up while they tell him what's going on.

"We're not positive, but...look it's a start."

"If we can figure out who he's close to. Where he might be. What his pre-accelerator explosion life was like." Barry says.

"Great. We'll all get started on it tomorrow. Bed now." Cisco groans, staring to roll over to go to sleep.

"No. No one else can know." Barry cuts in.

Cisco rolls back over to look at him. "Why?"

"Zoom knows about me. All of us. I don't know how but he knows more than he should. The more people that know about this, the more likely Zoom is to find out we know. We keep this between us three."

"And Harry." Caitlin cuts in. Barry turns to look at her. "I kinda already told Harry." She gives him an apologetic look. "He knew I was looking. He helped me find him."

Barry nods. "Okay fine. We keep this between us four." The other two nod in agreement.

"Codename." Cisco grumbles. The other two look curiously at him. "We need a codename."

Caitlin raises her eyebrow at him. "You mean like...Zoom?" Barry chuckles, looking over at Caitlin.

"No." Cisco groans in tired annoyance. "If we need to talk about his identity specifically, so no one knows we know what we know, y'know?" Barry and Caitlin mumble a half-hearted agreement. Cisco rolls over and buries his head into the cushion. "Grbrrgan." He groans.

"What?" Barry and Caitlin say together.

Cisco lifts his head up enough to clear his face. "Orion. Constellation. Hunter. Codename. Goodnight." He dramatically plops his head back in the cushion and immediately starts snoring loudly.

*******************************

"How was your Christmas?" Barry asks Harry as he walks into the cortex the next morning.

"Presumably better than yours given the circles under your eyes." Harry says dryly.

"Uh, yeah. Long night." He says, slumping down in a chair near Harry.

"I take it Snow told you about Zoom?"

"Yeah. We agreed not to tell anybody else. Less people know, less likely Zoom finds out."

Harry's eyes are still locked on his screen. "Did Ramon agree to this? I know it physically hurts him to be silent."

"Him and Caitlin both agreed. Us four are the only ones to know and we need to keep it that way." Barry answers.

Harry nods and goes back to work. Caitlin and Cisco walk in shortly after with coffees and dark circles under their eyes matching Barry's.

"So, when are you two gonna officially move in?" Cisco asks.