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(Ooh, she's so interested. She zooms in on all the pictures curiously in turn.)

Whereabouts are you? I don't recognize anything in the background.

bout half a mile out past the wall, pretty much due east
i come out here looking for stuff to salvage
materials i can use in tech that are hard to come by

Cool.

I've always wanted to go out there now that I've got a better grasp on magic, but I've been so busy... you're not out there by yourself are you, Cisco?

no, i've got this girl rey here, she's been helping me out with the scavenging recently.

[ Of course the implication there is that before recently, yeah, he did go out there alone. ]

Okay.

(Well, there's not a lot she can do about the previous times, but. Sorry Cisco, she can't help herself.)

If you're going out there in the future, you should let Taako know. He'd probably go with, too. Or Magnus, or Lup. (She can trust these three; she'd offer her own company, but she isn't sure if he wants it just yet.)

nah, i'm sure they've all got better stuff to do than chaperone my ass.

besides, i'm just showing rey the ropes then she's gonna be handling the scavenging on her own
like, i hired her to and i'm paying her and stuff.
she says this is what she used to do back on her home planet and she's apparently a total badass and not scared at all.

you need brushes? i just found a ton of brushes.

What are you talking about? You're all friends, it would just be hanging out.

(Scavenge and chill, or whatever the kids call it.)

Huh.
Maybe I should get in touch with her if she's more familiar with what's outside the walls.

Yeah, yes please. Never say no to brushes.

yeah, maybe.
might cause more trouble than it prevents.

[ What's that? A joke? ]

she's pretty new here but she seems to know what she's doing generally speaking
you should get in touch tho
she probably wouldn't mind playing guide sometime if you wanna see what's out here
or, y'know, i could. if you wanted.

[ A joke and an offer to hang out. And, a moment later, another picture of a whole stack of brushes sticking out of a pocket in a giant backpack, with the caption 'brushes for daaaaays'. ]

Oh, knowing the other two: most definitely. Am I wrong in thinking that you lean more towards the 'voice of reason' end of the spectrum?

(She hasn't met drunk-wild-karaoke-with-Taako Cisco yet, after all! Both this and the picture of the brushes that follows his messages makes her laugh.)

Cool, I will. Thanks for the heads up.
And hey, if you're offering I won't say so. I've got the means to get out there but I have no sense of direction for anything beyond the walls yet, so I'm not going to get very far without a hand. And it would be good to see you.

I am absolutely painting you something with these, by the way.

(She sends back a photo of a little doodle of herself doing a thumbs up.)

never really thought about it that way, but i guess you could say that.
depends on the situation and who's involved
i've been talked into some pretty unreasonable shenanigans

sure, let's do it.
i've got sense of direction covered for both of us.
it's mostly just abandoned buildings full of plants and little woodland critters that go running away as soon as you get close but
there are some cool things too

wow, okay
don't know if anybody's ever painted me anything before...
probably not.

Yeah? Like what? (Seems like there's a good story here!)

No, that all sounds really interesting to me
I don't know if I've ever talked about what I did on the Starblaster? But cataloguing plants and little critters is kind of my jam so. Yeah, that pretty much sounds like the ideal afternoon to me.

Oh, excellent. I've been looking for an outlet for a while; my art has been so same-y lately. It's frustrating.

well, this was back on earth but i got talked into going down into the sewers to help hunt a giant, psychic, murderous gorilla
definitely not the sanest decision i've ever made.

[ There are... some less fun examples but he's just going to stick to Grodd. ]

i knew you kept journals, but i don't think i realized you were doing ecological catalogues
that's pretty neat.

maybe a trip out into the ruins will help with that, too.

That is far more than I thought you were going to say, but I cannot complain; I asked. Should I ask why there was a gorilla of such description in the sewers in the first place??

(She's laughing at her phone a bit, Cisco.)

Yeah. I haven't done anything in a couple weeks so I'm pretty behind on everything, but I generally catalogue just about everything that seems relevant to me. (Spoiler alert: everything is relevant and nothing is safe!!)

Hmm, good points, all of them. Plus I can take pictures with my phone to study later.

i did say ages ago my life is pretty much like a comic book

well he was a normal gorilla at first until some shady awful scientists did shady awful experiments on him
those chemicals were still in his system when the particle accelerator blew
so he ended up huge and hyper-intelligent, and ran away obvs

the sewers were the best way to get around town undetected
the murder was... complicated. he was being influenced by a very evil and manipulative man.
not really his fault. didn't stop him from being TERRIFYING obvs.

📸 it's a date.

I really enjoy the way you detailed that like it's an every day kind of occurrence for you.

(Well, actually, maybe it is. She doesn't know.)

Well, hopefully it's a comic book that there is only ONE monster gorilla themed special issue of. You know, now that I think about it the century we spent collecting the lights of creation would make a good comic book...

(If you cut out the sad stuff, obviously. Why is she writing a book about this when she could have been illustrating something instead?)

👍🏿

tbh taking down a giant homicidal gorilla was pretty much your average tuesday on team flash

definitely.
it's a long-running story
and i'm sure a lot of the planes you visited were beautiful

[ There are other comic-book like elements - ragtag band of friends, big bad evil to fight, the universe to save - but Cisco doesn't really want to get into those because he's afraid it will sound trivializing. ]

Who makes up the rest of team flash?

(Yes, this is swiftly becoming less like a comic book and more like a collection of what work she's done over the one hundred years.)

It would be nice to preserve some of the more beautiful places. I wish I had some of my paintings here so I could show you.

[ This is one of those questions that ought to be simple to answer but is incredibly complicated, and potentially painful. Cisco's just going to... avoid any avenues that might take it towards that. ]

it's fluctuated a little over time
some old people aren't around, some new people are
right before i came here it was the flash (obviously, ha), me, caitlin (she's a doctor and really smart and cool), a woman named iris sometimes (fun fact she's taako's ex eddie's ex fiancee), her dad joe (he's a cop), and professor stein (he's a genius and a great dude)

[ ...and now Cisco's missing them, despite his reasons for his decision to stay here. Well damn. But it's a dull ache, and nothing more. ]

i wish you could, too
you must've seen so much amazing stuff...

(Oh, she thought that the answer might have been something more like her own team: just a standard set of people, but she supposes it makes sense for them all to switch out. If the IPRE had all been able to switch out of their mission for a bit they probably all would have.)

Little bit of everything, huh? (It's funny, because it reminds her of the make-up of parties back home. Gotta have a fighter; a cleric; a wizard.) Sounds like you all make a good team.

I really have. I can't pretend it was all fun and games but– you know, we'd hit cycles every so often where we'd find the light early and have the rest of the cycle to ourselves. Those years were wonderful.

hell yeah we did.

[ Of course, there had been a cancer at the heart of that team for a long, long time in the form of Dr. Wells, and Ronnie and Eddie's deaths had left awful, unhealable gaps, but Lucretia doesn't need to know any of that. ]

maybe you can tell me about a few of those years, when we're exploring.

Yeah, of course. I'll pick out some of the nicest ones.

(She certainly owes him a good handful of happy stories after all the sadness she's imparted upon him.)

When are you free to go?

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