It wasn't hard for me to find the breech that Barry and the others had opened up. Since the breeches had this sort of gravitational pull, it was like being drawn to a magnet with powers like mine. So, I ran until I found it inside of a crumbling building before stopping dead in my tracks.
I stare at the glowing blue light in front of me, not sure if I wanted to go back or not. Something deep in my gut was drawing me back...back to Barry, back to the others, and back to S.T.A.R. Labs. I knew that I needed to go back home and find Jay, but a part of me didn't want to. I didn't want to face Jay...well, Hunter I suppose, since I found out he lied to me all of these years. It made me wonder what else he lied to me about.
However, my mind wins over my gut as I dash off and jump through the breech, the wind around me whipping at my face before I leap forwards, opening my eyes to find myself in the same building, only different. I was home. I actually made it back.
It takes me a moment to absorb it all again before I turn and run out of the building, knowing exactly where I was going to find Jay. The speed force inside of me was slowly ticking downwards, but I knew I had enough energy to make it back home before it ran out.
As I raced along, I noticed how everything looked worse than the last time I had been here. Hunter and I had made a point that we were in charge around here, which left the city in pretty much ruins, but now...it looked like Hunter had been dragging the city down more without me. I couldn't tell if I was happy about that, or if I wished it wasn't like this.
It doesn't take me long before I'm running through the woods I knew so well and stopping down below the cliff, looking up to find the cave entrance where Jay and I lived for so long. I missed it like hell while I was away, and I hated to say that, but it was the truth. It's all that I've known.
Nerves start to flood into me as I take a deep breath and dash up the side of the cliff, wind whipping at my face before I skid to a halt at the top, my eyes taking everything in. First thing I saw was the living room I had sat in for so many nights, then I saw the dinner table that Hunter and I shared so many meals together at, and then I saw the cages that held Wally and the other inmate.
Wally doesn't notice me at first, but the moment his eyes finally did land on me, they went wide. I forgot that I didn't have my mask on. "R-Raven?"
My eyes scan for Jay, not seeing him anywhere. I take a few steps forward towards Wally. "Wally."
"What am I doing here?" he asks me, wrapping his fingers around the steel bars. "What are you doing here?"
I take a deep breath. "Listen Wally, it's too long of a story to tell, but you need to listen to me, okay? First, are you alright?"
"I'm physically okay, but mentally not so much," he sasses me, before cocking his head. "And I'm a little cold."
I groan lowly. "I'm going to get you out of here-"
"Raven?" I hear a deep voice speak out, but it wasn't Wally's. My heart sinks into my stomach from the sound of it as I turn around, a wide smile forming on my face that I couldn't help. Despite the lies he told me and the secrets he hid, I didn't care; it was just me and him.
I don't say anything as I use my speed to throw myself into Jay's arms, something that he always told me not to do, since he hated hugs, but this time I couldn't help it. He accepts it nevertheless as his warm breath trickles down my neck, a sigh of relief coming from his throat. I was never happier to see him than I was now.
"Are you okay?" he breathes in my ear before pulling me away to look at me in the face. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"
I shake my head, staring at Jay's eyes through the dark black mask. I wanted to rip it off of him so I could see his face, but I knew he wouldn't want that with Wally watching. "I'm okay. I-I didn't think I'd get to see you again after they closed the breeches-"
"I would have found a way back to you," he tells me. "But you're here now; you're back. How did you break out?"
"I didn't, Barry let me out," I say quicker than I could stop myself.
Jay furrows his eyebrows. "He just let you go?"
My mind flashes back to the conversation Barry and I had before I had gotten here, along with what I had done to him. "He wanted to talk, so he let me out, but then I got away. He said he'd give up his speed, Jay. He said he just wanted Wally back."
A dirty, filthy grin washes upon his face; one that I never though I'd see on his face. It was something worse than what I was used to seeing, and something about it set alarms off in my head, but I just ignored it.
"I guess we better get going then," he says with a giddy tone as Wally backs away in the cage, pressing his back and hands against the wall. Jay starts to walk around me then to get Wally, but before he can, I reach out and grabs his arm.
He looks over his shoulder at me as I give him a stern look. "Barry told me some things, and I just wanted to know if it was the truth...Hunter."
Jay's face goes dark then; I could still tell from behind that mask. "He told you my real name, huh?"
"He told me that and something else..." I fade off as I clench my jaw, not wanting to say out loud what I knew was the truth deep down. "He said that my parents were dead. That you killed them all those years ago."
Jay stops and turns to me then as I lower my arm, anger yet sadness written on my face. It was so hard to be mad at him while he stood right in front of me...why didn't I want to scream? To yell?
Jay takes a deep breath, speaking slowly and sincerely. "Let me just start from the beginning, okay?"
I look up at him with large eyes, nodding my head. "Okay."
-*+*-
14 years ago
"What do you mean she won't go to bed?" Teresa Black says into the phone as she moves things around on her desk, hardly paying a lick of attention to the baby sitter on the phone.
The baby sitter, Cara, sighs into the phone. "Raven won't go to her bed. I keep telling her that it's late and that she needs to sleep for school in the morning, but she claims that her bedtime isn't until later, but it's already almost nine thirty."
Teresa pauses at the baby sitter's words, knowing her daughter better than anything. "Raven has always had trouble sleeping. She gets nightmares a lot. What I usually do is let her pick out a movie and sit with her in the living room on the couch until she falls asleep. She just doesn't like to be alone at night, that's all. She'll be out like a light five minutes into the movie, guaranteed."
Cara nods her head, glancing over at the little girl sitting at the dinner table drinking her glass of milk. "I'll try that. Thank you."
"Anthony and I also might be home a little bit later than normal," Teresa says softly, hating the reason she would be home late. "I'll pay you extra for it."
"That's okay Teresa," Cara nods her head, not caring if the couple was home later because she loved the little girl and because she needed a little extra cash. "I'll talk to you later."
"Thanks again, Cara," Teresa says before hanging up the phone, setting it down onto her desk before her eye catches the one thing she was looking for: a pen. She quickly grabs it up off the desk before turning and leaving her small office area, heading down the hall to meet back up with the others.
As Teresa makes her way down the hall, Anthony Black was already with the others prepping the patient. He was a regular for them at this point, since none of his treatments seemed to be doing much for him. They believed that soon they would start to take into effect, but no one knew how soon that would be. This was already the sixth time they'd be running the test.
Anthony grabs the muzzle to put on the patient before the long haired man speaks out coldly, sounding tired and angry. "You know this isn't going to work; why keep trying?"
"It will work," Anthony says, walking around behind him. "You wouldn't be here right now worrying about it if you were a half decent person."
"My father murdered my mother right in front of me," the man laughs tiredly, sounding like a madman. "If you had a childhood like mine, you'd understand."
Anthony frowns. "That doesn't excuse your behavior, Hunter. This is for your own good."
Before Hunter Zolomon could say anything more, Anthony Black wraps the muzzle around Hunter's mouth, clipping it in the back to make sure it didn't slip off. Just as he does this, Teresa Black walks into the room to join the others, a clipboard and a pen in her hands.
"Is everything set and ready to go?" she directs everyone as they get to their positions, nodding their heads. Anthony joins his wife by standing at her side as they stare at the madman in front of them, his eyes burning into their skulls it seemed. They were used to seeing these types of things now though; everyone that came through here hated them.
"We don't have all day people," Teresa orders coldly, clenching her jaw. "Let's get started."
A man standing at a little table turns a dial to the number 2 as electricity starts to course through Hunter's veins, making him shake in the small metal chair. His eyes roll back into his head as sparks burst from the chair, but Teresa and Anthony just watch in awe, jotting a few notes here and there about the readings of the shock therapy.
A few miles away however, a large boom is heard all over Central City as Teresa and Anthony both look up, wondering what the sound was. Their questions were answered when the wave from the particle accelerator bursts through the building, sending it's dark matter through the room as it throws many people up into the air.
Teresa gets knocked off of her feet as her clipboard flies across the room, along with Anthony Black. She wasn't hurt though; neither was her husband, but she was confused as to what had just happened. When she looks up to examine the damage, she finds Hunter gone from the chair as if he used the situation to flee the scene, which is what he did.
It wasn't but a few weeks after when Hunter came back to get his revenge on everyone that made him suffer. He checked everyone off of the list as fast as he could, but he saved Teresa and Anthony Black for last. They were the ones in charge of the shock therapy; he wanted them to suffer the most. He wanted them to pay.
So, he killed them in the worst ways possible. While the little girl was sitting at the dinner table with her father, he first snatched Anthony and used the same style of muzzle he had used on him to choke him to death. While Raven worried about where her father went, Hunter came back and stole her mother from her just like how his mother was stolen from him. Teresa was killed in her own bath tub due to electric shock caused from her curling iron falling into the water. Hunter made sure to make it appear that both of them committed suicide, and he got away with it.
As for the girl, he planned on sticking his hand through her heart. He didn't want her to suffer as much as her parents, but he also couldn't have her alive. However, as you all know, the moment he saw that the little girl possessed speed, an idea sparked in his head.
Ever since he had been gifted speed, he wanted to get faster. Being faster meant more power, and power was what he craved. When he learned that she possessed the ability to actually take power from whoever she touched, he grew envious. He wanted to know how she could do it. He wanted to steal that ability from her.
But over the years, he grew to care about the girl. He learned that having her on his side was good enough for him instead of possessing the power she had, so he taught her what he already knew. Without her, he wouldn't be as powerful as he was today. However, what he didn't know now was that he raised a girl that was capable of turning on him; a girl that had the potential to take him down herself.
And she had a fighting chance.
-*+*-
This chapter was weird? I don't know, but I kind of liked it cause of the backstory part. Did you guys expect her parents to be involved with that? Or did you even ever wonder why he killed them, haha.
vote and comment! this story doesn't have much left to go before it's over!