(A/N): I wrote most of this before the season 1 finale, then it languished in my files for a year. Recently, I found it and finished it up.
It was nice having another woman around Star Labs. Even before the explosion, Caitlin had been part of a severe minority. In fact, the ratio of male-to-female had actually improved afterwards. Now with Iris as part of the team?
"Actual parity," she said happily. "We're fifty-fifty."
"Gender-wise," Iris pointed out. "But yeah. I can see how it would start to feel isolating."
Barry and Cisco were sweeping the building for more of Wells' evil little cameras. Iris and Caitlin had taken on the task of trawling through the contents of his computer, searching for notes or diagrams or maybe a file called EVIL_PLAN_AHAHAHAHA. Mostly it was very mundane things related to the actual running of a research facility.
Caitlin copied them onto her stick drive anyway. Someone was going to need to run Star Labs from now on, and nobody ever said being evil stopped you from being a good administrator. The opposite actually.
The nice thing about Iris, besides her being another woman, was that she could actually multi-task research and conversation.
"They're such nerds, you have no idea," she continued on her theme of so-glad-you're-here.
"I might. I grew up with Barry, remember?"
"Cisco has seen every bad movie in the history of ever and he assumes that I have too. And if I haven't, he makes me watch them with him." Caitlin squinted at an Excel spreadsheet, then sent it to her drive.
Iris laughed. "Don't tell me you didn't enjoy some of them."
"Some of them." A lot of them, honestly. Especially when Cisco cooked for movie night. She honestly believed she could eat crema de pollo every day for the rest of her natural life. "But it gets old, you know. I truly think he and Barry have geek-offs when I'm not around. And oh my god, don't even get them going on the zombie apocalypse."
"You know the CDC has used the zombie apocalypse model to test disaster preparedness?"
"Yes," Caitlin growled. "I do."
Iris laughed again and rubbed her eyes. "Well, I can't claim I'm not a geek in my own special way." She considered something on the screen and scribbled a few words onto a post-it, then slapped it onto a wall already decorated with them.
"Your way involves research and interviews and old newspaper clippings. It's sort of like being back in med school, honestly."
"Even when I was in school, that's how I would sort out my thoughts. I'd scribble notes on the wallpaper. It drove Daddy crazy until Barry found some chalkboard paint."
"Oh, so his murder board?"
"Oh, yeah, I taught him that." Iris stepped back and looked at her post-its. "Hey, can you do a search across documents?"
"Oh, yeah. For what?"
"The term speed force. That's the third time I saw it come up."
They had to call Barry and Cisco in to see. They all crowded around Iris's murder board and traced their fingers from one mention to the other.
"You think it actually exists?" Cisco asked Barry. "Like, can you feel something out there, when you're running?"
"Sometimes," Barry said. "Sometimes it's like I'm dipping into a river. Especially when I crack a boundary, like Mach 2."
Iris watched him, eyes wide. She'd told Caitlin that she was still getting used to the idea that her best friend and the Flash were the same person, that lightning lurked under his skin and crackled in his legs.
He glanced at her and looked away, shifting from foot to foot, hunching his shoulders as if he was trying to make himself smaller. "But maybe that's, like, extreme runner's high."
"There's so much we don't know." Caitlin narrowed her eyes. "What I'm curious about is whether it's his own theory, or they've actually proven the existence of such a force."
"What, in the 22nd and a half century?"
Caitlin snorted. "He's from further away than Duck Dodgers."
They discussed it for awhile longer and then went to ask Gideon, who confirmed that it was a prevailing theory among speedsters in Thawne's time. As for the speed force itself, the AI didn't have much better information than it was what gave speedsters their speed. Nothing about where it came from, or how it worked. It was just … speed, that was all. Pure speed.
Caitlin rubbed her temples. It was a lot to wrap her mind around and she was getting a headache. She exchanged looks with Iris, who announced, "My brain is going to drip out my ears and I'm starving, so let's call a halt, okay, guys?"
So nice not to be the only one who thought of sensible things, Caitlin thought happily.
Barry went for pizza, and it was while they were all sitting around in the cortex with the pizza box on the workstation (except for Barry's own box, sitting on his lap) that Caitlin said, "What I'd like to know is, who said it first?"
"Said what?" Cisco asked, gnawing on crust.
"Oh, come on. I'm sure the time could be measured in milliseconds."
Barry swiped a patch of tomato sauce off his chin and licked his thumb. "Not really sure what you're talking about, Caitlin."
"Speed force?" she said skeptically. "Really? Neither of you said, 'May the speed force be with you'?"
They both gaped at her. Slowly, a smile spread across Cisco's face. "Dude, you just outgeeked us, congratulations." He held up his hand for a high five.
"Don't call me dude," Caitlin said. "Really? You really didn't think of that?"
"Nuh-uh, and trust me, I'm deeply ashamed of myself. C'mon, don't leave me hanging!"
She rolled her eyes and slapped his hand back. He grinned at her, and she grinned back.
Iris started laughing. "Caitlin, I don't think you're the one who's outnumbered here."
FINIS