future au.
When she's lonely (well, more alone than usual), she comes back. Not in the way Cisco had dreamt of for countless years. No, she comes back to the place she was founded—where she had found purpose and along the way, people she would call friends.
She slides her back against the cold, concrete wall, until she hits the ground unceremoniously, dust kicking up around her and her cheeks are wet with crystallizing tears. She stretches her legs out in front of her and ungracefully knocks her head against the wall. Pain surges through her skull but its immeasurable to the pain she feels in her heart.
Her head lolls to the side and she barely registers on the smashed computer and broken swivel chair. Instead, the grimy window captures her attention, like it always does.
She would've called it beautiful—the way the light filters through the broken blinds, illuminating the dust particles that hang in the air. She doesn't call it beautiful because of circumstance.
The blinds hang haphazardly because of her, the dust is because of her. The absence of everything in this godforsaken room is because of her.
She doesn't know how long she sits there for. Nowadays, time trickles by without her noticing. She guesses it's because she has nothing to live for—nobody to live for.
Maybe that's why she comes back here, grasping at straws for her old life.
But no one hands her a cup of coffee as soon as she arrives. No one spins her around in her swivel chair, telling her to have fun once in a while. No one picks her up and runs at dizzying speeds, smiling at her all the while.
And that's why she cries.
Once, she had tried cleaning the place up when she had felt extremely desperate. She mended her swivel chair by glueing it together with ice, sorting out the broken beakers by volume and pushing Barry's (Cisco's) mannequin that once held their suit, back into the broken glass casing. She used her jacket to wipe the dust off her surgical table, meticulously plucked the scalpels, forceps and scissors from the debris and placed them in order on it. She cleared all of the rest of the debris by pushing it into one corner of the room.
Then she had finished and waited. She dragged her chair back into its place behind her old desk and sat. And waited some more.
After the sun rose, and set, and rose, she stood up. The back of her chair had fallen off sometime, but she didn't notice. She stalked towards the mannequin she had carefully put back into place, and with an icicle, stabbed it straight in the heart, dragging it down, leaving jagged lines in her wake.
She didn't know what she expected. Barry to come running back to her? For Cisco to run into the room with a new invention on his mind? Even for Joe or Iris to show up? Harry, to fill up the room with his ego?
The room a mess after she left.
Another time, she had gone down into the room. Where Ronnie died for the first time—where she had died for the first time.
And where she came back to life again, in Barry's arms.
She iced the whole thing.
Cisco's Cave, or CC for short, as he liked to call it, she left virtually untouched. She had walked into there once, expecting herself to ruin it (like she always does), but her arms (and heartbeat) fell short when she reached the whiteboard he used to draw his carefully thought out inventions.
This one was titled 'I miss you, Cait'.
She grabbed a red whiteboard marker and wrote, 'I miss you too', before scribbling it out with a lot more force than necessary, blunting the marker, and throwing it at the board.
She ran out of that room and never went in there again.
Her eyes track a lone dust particle, watching it float in the stale air without a care in the world. It reminds her of the papers that would fly when Barry would speed into the room and it feels like another stab at her cold heart.
The number of times she has trashed this room should make her ashamed. She does it almost every time she comes back here. This time is no exception.
It starts with an icicle thrown at the grimy window.
"The Cortex," Wells (Eobard) would lovingly call it. "The hub of S.T.A.R's scientific thought and discoveries. Quite fitting, don't you think Snow?"
She laughs now because it's more fitting than ever.
Sometimes (all of the time), she thinks she hears footsteps. Maybe a whir followed by wheels, if she was feeling a bit more nostalgic. Or an echo of laughter, if she was feeling a bit self-deprecating.
Her heart always stops and her head always swings towards the direction she hears it. She always walks toward the sound, always start to run because the footsteps always get further and further away, and she always calls out, "Barry!"
She always falls short at the elevator and always stops chasing because there was nothing to chase in the first place.
She's ripping all the blinds off when she hears it. She stops immediately (including her heart) and her head spins around. Tentatively, she walks in the direction she heard it. Glass crunches under her feet but she doesn't notice. All her attention is focused on the hallway.
And it goes again. The telltale sound of wind rushing and feet skidding to a halt. The telltale sound of Barry.
And she's off. She runs, head popping into every room she passes by.
"Barry!" The name catches in her throat.
"Barry, please, please, please!"
At this point, she can't see properly. Water fills her vision and her mind clouds with deja vu as she reaches the elevator (this time is different. It has to be. It has to ithastoithasto.) and furiously stabs her finger repeatedly at the button. She plasters a hand on the cool, stainless steel elevator doors, and cries. She turns around, leaning against the door and she slides excruciatingly slow down to the ground.
"I'm sorry," she hiccups. "I'm so fucking sorry." Her hands wipe furiously at her tears.
The elevator dings and she falls back.
But someone is there to catch her this time.