(A/N) Because I can't freaking believe everybody just sort of forgot that suggestion he made in the Gorilla City cell.
Cisco was fiddling with one of the control boards in the speed lab, tweaking something he'd been meaning to tweak for a few days now. Nothing really necessary, just something to do with his hands while he stewed.
He heard Caitlin stalking in, footsteps thuddy instead of clicky because she was still wearing the hiking boots she'd taken to Gorilla City instead of her usual high heels.
"We need to talk," she announced - flinging down the gauntlet.
"Didn't touch your centrifuge," he said automatically.
"Not that. About what you said. In the cell. We need to talk about that."
He thought about pretending not to know what she was talking about, but the duel was engaged, they'd counted off thirty paces, they were turning around to draw a bead on each other, and any kind of pretense would just be delaying this fight.
Still, he tried, a little. "I wasn't serious."
She said, "The hell you weren't."
He raised his brows at her. She didn't swear, as a rule, not unless she had a good reason. He had a potty mouth, cursed right and left, but she was very deliberate about it. When she cursed, she fucking meant it.
She looked back, arms folded, jaw jutted.
After a night and a day in the oppressive humidity of Gorilla City, frizzies had escaped her ponytail, defeated her hairspray, and now haloed around her head, shining gold in the fluorescent lights. He considered telling her that, but she would see right through the distraction and probably be even angrier with him.
(It really didn't bear thinking about the condition of his own hair. Between his hat and the Attack of the Fluff, he was going to have a real battle to return to his usual state of lusciousness by tomorrow.)
"Did you think you were expendable or something?" she asked him, and he was forced to stop thinking about hair and start thinking about things that he'd hoped would never be spoken of again.
"It was the opposite," he said lightly, twirling a wrench. "I didn't think I was expendable. I thought I was that fucking important." He lost his grip on the tool, and it went flying off with a cheerful clang-a-lang-a-lang. He looked after it a moment, contemplating his own arrogance. "They needed me most of all. No gorilla was getting to Central without me. So, you know. Solution: me not being there."
"Do you want - "
"No," he said, and he must have said it vehemently enough that she decided to believe him, because some of the tension seeped out of her shoulders. Not all, but some. "But if the alternative is my powers being used to invade a city full of innocent people, well, then - " He shrugged. "It made sense."
"It made - "
"Sense, Caitlin, it did, you can't deny that."
She breathed in through her nose, looking all kinds of not happy, but she went on. "Then why ask me? There were so many ways to die, even in that cell. Strangulation, drowning, Julian could have broken your neck - "
He thought he was going to throw up right there on the wires. "Jesus, Caitlin, why do you know these things?"
"We studied them in med school. What they do to your body. The human body is so fragile. You can do so many awful things to it, so easily."
Yes. He knew that.
"I'm saying, why did you look at me?"
"I didn't - I didn't say you. Right away." He hadn't, right? He was … pretty sure he hadn't.
"Maybe you didn't," she said. "But then why did you agree so easily?"
"I - " He looked at his hands, helplessly. "I've heard. Uh. I've heard it's not so bad, freezing to death."
All those methods of death that she'd recited like a textbook - He was sick with the thought of them. Of how they would hurt. He wasn't afraid of dying, exactly, but he was afraid of the pain that came with the last moments of living.
And the idea that Barry could have phased his hand through Cisco's chest was a big, black stone that sat in his brain, forcing him to step around it, carefully not looking.
But freezing - he'd read about it. Freezing to death in a blizzard or whatever. Don't fall asleep in a blizzard, you'll never wake up, all the books warned.
He'd thought of that, in that moment, and it had sounded nice. Falling asleep forever with Caitlin's hands on him - on his chest or cupping his neck or wrapped around his hands. (The idea of her cold kiss hadn't entered his mind, somehow, and that was - well, it was something.)
It hadn't sounded so bad.
And so different than the way Dante had died.
It wasn't until Julian had said that about Killer Frost that he'd realized, to his sick shame, what he was asking, which was too much.
"But I shouldn't have asked that," he finished up. "It was wrong and I'm sorry."
She looked a little like the wind had been taken out of her sails. She let out her breath. "Accepted." Her mouth trembled, and he wished he hadn't seen that.
"Caitlin - "
"No, you know what - no."
"You don't accept my apology?"
"I do, but I'm still not - I understand your reasoning about stopping the gorilla invasion, but why was you dying the first thing you jumped to?"
"I was being practical."
"That's too practical. That's over the line. That's horrific. We're still human beings, and some things go too far, and killing one of my best friends, or watching him die without doing anything, that falls under that heading."
"The alternative was a wave of homicidal gorillas invading Central City. How would that go? We're in the hero business. That means we all have to consider the greater good, every time."
"There is no greater good that includes you dead," she said fiercely. "Do you hear me?"
Which was a really unfair thing for her to say, because now he kind of wanted to cry. "I think they can hear you in Miami."
"Well, good, because I want everyone to know you're not allowed to die. You've used up your quota."
God. Again with the unfair shit that brought tears boiling up behind his eyes. He said, "It was a moot point, anyway. We found another way."
"We did," she said. "We'll always find another way. Talk all you want about the greater good, but that's another thing we have to do, every time. So don't ever jump to that without looking around again. Ever."
"Okay," he said.
"Are you lying?"
"No."
She was still down at the end of the railing, her hands curled around it, knuckles white. She hadn't moved. They'd been having this argument across the whole length of the lab, their voices bouncing off the high ceiling.
"I don't want to die," he said. "I'm not - I'm going to group, I'm going to therapy, I'm taking my meds. This had nothing to do with - you know."
"You are important," she said. "You're the most important - don't treat yourself like a pawn in a chess game."
"Hey," he said. "I'm, like, a rook at least. Maybe a bishop."
"Stop trying to be funny and promise me that you know you're important enough to live. Not because of your vibes, or opening breaches, or anything that you think of, or build. Just because you're you. You know that, right? Tell me you know that."
"Yeah," he said, and had to clear his throat because there was a big fat teary lump in it. "Yeah."
"Okay," she whispered.
"And you - " He pointed. "I know we're asking you to use your powers a lot lately. And I know we've had some close shaves with you-know-who. But I'll never ask you to do that, deliberately, ever again. You believe me?"
She took a little too long to nod, but she did.
"All right then," he said.
"All right then," she echoed.
They looked at each other. The distance between them felt like a canyon.
"I think I should go home now," she said.
"Okay. See you tomorrow."
She looked at him too keenly for a moment, and then turned to go.
Usually this was the kind of thing they would have sealed with a hug or something. He asked himself, after she walked back up the ramp, which one of them had been afraid to touch the other, and got no satisfactory answer.
FINIS