An Open Letter From Cisco Ramon

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

OK, so Dr. Finkel just gave me the Evil Eye, which means I must have been narrating this out loud. Heh. Taking this seriously now, Dr. F!

Hey, everyone. Cisco Ramon here, your favorite intergalactic breacher, coming at you live from this very comfortable couch in Dr. Finkel’s office, uptown Central City. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. Well, I’ll tell you.

***

It all started at Big Belly Burger, where we were recuperating after several rounds of laser tag at the local arcade. After we scared the wait staff by ordering enough food to feed a small army, we got to talking about the weird shit that’s gone down this year. You know, flying electronic Samurais, megalomaniacs with magical chairs – not to mention the fact that Mr. and Mrs. S.T.A.R. Labs have a grownass child running around. Team Flash goes through it every year, but this year felt like something out of a Greek tragedy. Between me breaking up with Cynthia, Caitlin’s Killer Frost woes, Ralph dying and coming back to life, Barry and Iris’…everything, and Harry losing his intelligence, I don’t know how we’re all getting up to go to work in the morning.

Dr. Finkel is just out here making BANK.

Which is when Iris revealed that she and Barry were still going to therapy on the regular. Those two usually like to keep their “West-Allen” stuff away from “Team Flash” stuff, so this was pretty surprising. But she brought it up to thank Caitlin for suggesting it, since it was really helping them navigate everything that was going on in their lives. And then Caitlin said that she was still going to work through some stuff about her dad, Thomas, and all the repressed memories she apparently has of him. Ralph said that he’s still seeing her too, to cope with being brought back into the world after a short stint in the Witness Protection Program, where he went after DeVoe put a hit out on him (the official party line, tell your friends) and he’s Ralph. Joe and Cecile are going to figure out their lives with a newborn screwing up their sleep schedule. Even Wally, apparently, dropped in for a quick heart-to-heart – except he did it about a decade ago while running around time with the Legends.

I was pretty shocked, I gotta say. Team Flash has always been a stiff upper lip kinda gang. Most of the time, if you want people getting in their feelings, you call Team Arrow. And besides, everyone usually just talks to each other about their problems. The patented STAR Labs hallway peptalk, designed to make all your worries and insecurities disappear? Come on. What therapist could offer that?

But then as Caitlin pointed out, the STAR Labs peptalk isn’t really a long-term solution. It’s more like a band-aid covering a bullet hole. Which is when everyone turned to me and asked whether I would be going to therapy. Which, hello? I am Cisco Ramon. I don’t need therapy. I am a veritable ray of sunshine. There may have been an embarrassing incident after my breakup with Cynthia involving a bottle of Grandma Esther’s moonshine stolen from Iris’ cabinet and me singing “She’s Out of My Life” alone in the Cortex, but it’s fine. Barry deleted the footage and Caitlin got to me before I could graduate to drunken voicemails. It’s fine. I’m fine.

I told everyone this, obviously. And they seemed fine with it. I should have known, though, when Caitlin got that look on her face. You know the one. That “My Best Friend Is Being an Idiot But We’re in Polite Company So I Can’t Drag His Ass” look.  Which is why I ended up there. And why even though it was Caitlin’s day off, she asked Iris to keep an eye on the GPS system that tracks everyone for their safety, and if I left this building before four o’clock, she had to tell Barry. Who was going to run me back here so that I could finish feeling my feelings. I was literally trapped.

She does this a lot.

Dr. F looked harmless enough. You know, warm, friendly. A little like the mom from Even Stevens (which she didn’t appreciate me telling her, since apparently Ralph said the same thing), but I didn’t suspect she was going to suddenly grow seven heads or turn out to be a mobster or announce that she’s a speed god from the future here to murder everyone. But like I said, I was fine. So I kind of wanted to speed things up a little.

“Listen, Dr. F-”

She didn’t look up from her notes. “Dr. Finkel.”

“Sorry. So, um, I’m really just here because my friends think I need to unload all my troubles onto a neutral third party, but this is all a little too One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for your boy and I don’t really have anything to talk about-”

“According to Caitlin,” she said, consulting a sheet of paper, “you ‘have a tendency to hide your deeper emotions behind jokes and movie references’, and she’s concerned that you’re not letting yourself feel things.”

I paused. “Well, Caitlin is-”

“Didn’t you break up with your long-distance girlfriend this year?”

“Yes, but-”

“And  this was after spending six months without one of your best friends, who went on sabbatical without warning?”

“It’s more complicated than-”

“The year after your brother died,” she continued, “your mentor was murdered, and your career was derailed by the Particle Accelerator explosion?”

I stared at her. “You got the Nixon tapes back there, too?”

“Listen, Cisco,” she said. She took her glasses off. “I understand that you may not want to open up to a stranger about everything that you’ve been through, but from what I understand, you and your friends have been through a lot of trauma. That shouldn’t be ignored. So, since you may not necessarily want to talk to me directly, I want you to write a letter.”

“A letter?”

“A letter. Sometimes it’s easier to write our problems than to speak them out loud,” she explained. “Address it to whatever or whomever you want – maybe some of the people who caused some of the trauma. And then we can read it and work through it together.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” I shook my head. “Look, Cynthia and I breaking up was sad, and so was Barry going on sabbatical, and there was all that stuff with the Particle Accelerator explosion, that all sucked, but that’s just…life. I can’t be mad about that. It’s not like there’s someone out there making all these decisions on purpose.”

“Well, actually, they are.”

“…What?”

“You’re on a TV show,” she shrugged. “A TV show about The Flash, his superhero exploits, his family, and his friends – which of course means it’s also about you. It’s been on for about…” she looked at her notes again. “…four years, and you’ve been on since the beginning-”

“No,” I interrupted, looking for my jacket. “Nah. NOPE. I’m not doing this with you. I’m being Punk’d. Ralph! Reveal yourself, Dibny! Get out here now or when I find you I’m going to wrap you around a telephone pole and electrocute it!”

“Cisco, calm down-”

“Calm down?” I laughed. “You just told me that I’m on some sort of Truman Show reboot and you want me to calm down? Now, where did he put the cameras?” I looked around her office, lifting potted plants and candles. “DIBNY! I know this was you, jackass!”

“Cisco,” she said again. “This isn’t a joke. Everything that’s been happening to you for the past four years has been decided by a team of writers. They decide who lives, who dies-”

“Who tells my story?” I demanded sarcastically.

“Well, yes,” she laughed. “And they’re the ones telling it.”

I lowered myself back down onto the couch. “So somewhere out…there, there are a dozen people sitting around a big table deciding how my life is going to go? And then they write scripts about it?”

“Precisely.”

“How do you know this? And, like, where are they? Are they on another earth? Or – or maybe they exist outside the concept of other Earths-”

“Details aren’t important,” she interrupted, waving a hand. I eyed her.

“Is it popular?”

Damn. Gotta say, a little part of me still kinda thinks Dibny is behind this.

“Highest-rated show on The CW. Does pretty well on Netflix.”

“Damn straight I’m on the highest-rated show on The CW,” I grinned, and she sighed.

“Look, Cisco, my point is that a lot has happened to you in the past few years, so it’s OK if you’re sad or angry or just want to talk. Any normal person would. And, well,” she said, leaning back, “if there’s anything that I know about you and your friends, it’s that you don’t have normal problems.”

***

So, yeah. I’m on a TV show. And looking back on the past four years, it turns out I’ve got a lot to say. Buckle up, kids. Uncle Cisco’s going to tell you a story.