"Tony."
It's late and Woodward is staring at the space where Barry should be, arms flexing into steel, ready to take a crack at him. Why Barry wants to go near him is beyond Cisco, but Cisco doesn't speak. Doesn't say anything over the intercom. He can let the exchange play out – as long as everyone plays nicely.
"Never pegged you as the gloating type, Allen," Woodward says, glaring menacingly at the empty space in front of him as if he can see Barry standing there, suited up.
Barry's shoulders straighten authoritatively. "I'm not here to gloat."
Damn, Cisco thinks, popping a red vine in his mouth. He wouldn't mind watching Woodward get his comeuppance; verbal sparring matches are his favorite pastime. Barry is getting sharper at them – he's not as sharp as Caitlin, but he can definitely hold his ground.
Against Cisco, that is. Caitlin crushes him. (And resets his dislocated shoulder for him which, super-healing or not, ow.)
"I'm here to make you an offer."
"Gonna let me go?" Woodward sounds almost as disbelieving as Cisco feels.
He thinks, I can lock down the pod in six seconds if I have to.
He hopes he doesn't have to. Barry isn't that stupid.
Barry's lips twitch in a smile. "No." (Cisco's shoulders relax.) "No, I'm here to ask if you wanted to talk about what happened to you."
Woodward slams both fist into the glass so hard it reverberates, and Cisco knows he can't break it but he still has to stop himself from punching the lockdown button and telling Barry, "Okay that's enough meta-human therapy for one day."
Barry doesn't even flinch. He just stands there, eyes full of a quiet sadness, and then he says, "The particle accelerator explosion affected a lot of people, but knowledge of . . . meta-humans isn't exactly public yet."
"So that's what you call us?" Sharp. Agitated. He's behind a door that could withstand a nuclear blast, Cisco reminds himself calmingly. He's not going anywhere. It isn't entirely comforting, but it keeps his reflexes in check as Woodward paces the cell. "Meta-humans, huh?" he spits. "Gonna start a Boy Scout club next? Freaks only?"
"Tony." Again, his name. Like a laurel leaf. A peace offering Woodward doesn't deserve, and Cisco thinks of Jake Puckett and how much he would love to see him locked behind a virtually impenetrable glass door. "I'm sorry."
Woodward is so caught off guard he doesn't even speak for a moment, folding his arms and glaring with what can only be pensive frustration at Barry. "Really, now, why is that? For locking me up in a fucking cell?"
"No." Cisco doesn't know how Barry keeps his cool. "I'm sorry no one was there to tell you what had happened to you. That you had to figure it out on your own."
Maybe Caitlin's sedatives have a lingering psychotic effect, Cisco muses. He should probably put it down in Barry's medical file, but it's still a little weird to him that one of his best friends is also Barry's personal physician, so he leaves it out. Caitlin will deduce it on her own if it's serious and if not Barry deserves to maintain a shred of privacy. Nothing else about him is private: they have everything, brain scans, bloodwork, physiological responses, his molecular makeup.
Cisco should turn off the feed. Or, at the very least, mute it. It isn't his place to pry.
But he can't shake the possibility that his foolproof containment system could fail, so he sticks around, watching the exchange unfold on screen.
"You wanna hold my hand while you're at it?" Woodward sneers. Rebutting Barry's apology a little too forcibly to maintain believability. There's a tremor in his voice as he continues, emotion building underneath the surface as he stares Barry down. "I died, Allen. I fell into a pit of molten scrap metal and my skin turned to steel. And you." A smirk that isn't remotely humored: "You, what, slipped on a treadmill? And became a god damn super hero. Who would've thought."
Barry's voice is equally humorless as he huffs. "You're the reason I have these powers, Tony. People like you. You chased me my whole life, made my life a living hell for seven years, and now – I am finally fast enough to outrun you."
"So why don't you?"
Excellent question. Cisco fishes for another red vine as Barry shakes his head, turns away from Tony, facing one of the walls.
"Because I'm tired of running from people like you." He's stepping closer to the glass, barely a foot away from it when he speaks again. "I am not afraid of you anymore, Tony."
"Take down this glass wall and we'll see how fearless you really are," Woodward growls, subsonic, his entire body turning to steel. "Huh, Allen? Have a go at it. It'll be just like old times."
"I know what you're capable of."
"Breaking you," Woodward finishes.
Cisco thinks of the first painful glimpse of purple and blue bruises across Barry's chest, evidence of multiple rib fractures, and he can't mute the way Barry screamed when they finally got the glove off his shattered right hand. He shudders at the memory, refocusing his attention on the screen and not the floor where, just hours before, Caitlin and he scraped Barry off the floor. It's over now. Woodward is locked up; he can't hurt anyone.
Even if Cisco still feels an impulse to grab Barry by the back of his suit before he ventures too close.
His voice is soft and almost imploring as he says, "You don't have to be a criminal."
Woodward huffs, reverting to skin, and Cisco exhales. "So, what, I send the police some flowers and a written apology and my records are erased? Free man again?"
"Wouldn't hurt," Barry says blankly.
Woodward stares him down and Cisco can almost see the tension between them. An immovable object meets an unstoppable force, Cisco thinks, amused.
Except Woodward isn't immovable.
And Barry isn't unstoppable.
"Why are you really here?" Woodward asks. There's a bluntness to his tone that Cisco appreciates. It's almost two in the morning, everyone else is asleep, including Caitlin and Dr. Wells, and yet here they are. Chit-chatting over the absurdity that is their lives.
"I'm here because no one should spend the rest of their life in a cell," Barry says quietly. And then, tone hardening, he adds, "But if you choose to hurt people, then you will."
"You want to reform me." Woodward steps up to the glass until he's so close Cisco thinks he can almost see through it. That's impossible – improbable; nothing is impossible – but Cisco doesn't sit back in his chair, leaning on the cuff, ready to intervene if he has to. "You think you can change me?"
Barry steps up to the glass, and they'd almost be touching, Woodward's crushing silver hand closing around Barry's heart. "No." Then, laying a hand flat on the glass, he adds, "You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved."
There's a chillingly familiar tone in his voice that Cisco recognizes from the Danton Black case. While Caitlin and he were pleased to have Multiplex removed as a threat from the general population, his death – his suicide – hit Barry hard. He took the job personally. Anyone who came into the crossfire was his responsibility, and while Cisco knew how to separate the probabilities and respect his limits, Barry seemed to think everyone fell under his jurisdiction. Every loss was his fault.
Cisco makes a quiet note to ask Caitlin about what sort of psychological impact Danton Black's suicide may have had on Barry, why he can't seem to talk to any of them about it, like he can suppress it far enough to erase it from existence until it shatters him.
They can't afford to lose him. He brings out Caitlin's smiles and Cisco's humor. He engages Dr. Wells' mind and protects Central City. (He's also way better than Hartley ever was, even though that isn't a particularly high bar to overtake.)
Barry's a hero, but sometimes – sometimes it's the heroes who need saving.
"What are you even trying to do, Tony?" Barry presses, sounding fatigued for the first time that night.
"Put heroes in their place," Woodward replies flatly. "Remind people that The Flash is nothing."
Barry smiles tiredly, triumphantly. "Just the person who put you in that cell."
Cisco says, "Attaboy."
Because there really is nothing better than getting even, especially with childhood bullies. They're the people who tormented you in an environment where you should have been safe to grow and instead learned to keep your head down or face the consequences of being noticeable. You could be nothing and satisfy them, or something and enrage them. Cisco chose the latter; Barry chose the latter; and, he suspects, Caitlin chose the latter, too. Appeasement never works; it only delays the inevitable.
Confronting danger head-on is what they do. Barry doesn't run into burning buildings with the idea that he couldn't get burned. He does so in spite of it, and Cisco coaches him through it because they both recognize that there are things worth getting burned over.
It always comes down to a simple motto: no matter how dangerous it is, I have to try.
And that, Cisco thinks, as it clicks – that is why Barry doesn't walk away from Woodward.
"You made my life a living hell, Tony," Barry says, very quietly. "I don't want to make yours one, too."
Woodward scoffs, turning away from the glass. "Leave me alone, Allen." There's no fight in his voice, and both of them look tired, now. It's been a really, really long day.
Longer still for Barry. "If you change your mind," he says benignly, "I'm here if you want to talk." Then he presses a button on the panel, walking away before Woodward's pod returns to its holding area, his shoulders curved inward, defeated.
There's a nanosecond of silence and then Cisco leaps out of his chair when the papers fly off the desk.
"Cisco?" Barry asks, sounding surprised and a little on the vulnerable side. Cisco thinks of how he's been knocked down three times in the past thirty-six hours and hates that he had to watch the fourth unfold, helpless; because he knows that's how Barry sees it. You can't save everyone. "What are you still doing here?"
Cisco stalls. "I could ask you the same." Then, regaining his footing, he says, "It's not your fault."
"No," Barry agrees, Flashing out of his suit and into his lounge wear, Star Labs shirt already slightly faded. "It's not. But I needed you and Caitlin and Dr. Wells or I would never have become the Flash."
"You wouldn't have become a bully," Cisco tells him.
Barry shoulders his bag, exhaling slowly. "I wouldn't have become a hero," he retorts simply. "Maybe he just needs direction."
"And – you're going to give it to him," Cisco says, unable to keep the skepticism out of his voice. "Why?"
"Because I don't want to have to lock up every meta-human I see," Barry answers. "I can't be the only person who doesn't want to watch the world burn."
You are so far, Cisco thinks grimly, reflecting on Woodward's predecessors: Weather Wizard (dead), Multiplex (dead), The Mist (captive), Captain Cold (at large), and Plastique (dead).
Maybe it should shake him more that every meta-human* they've encountered has either intentionally or unintentionally hurt people. (*Except for Captain Cold. That guy's just a dick.) While their modified prison works nicely in theory, the reality that there are three people who died because of their efforts and two who are in their holding indefinitely doesn't sit well with him.
Barry only spent fifteen minutes with the Mist, who didn't even bother to speak to him, just roared and flung himself at the glass.
Then he summoned Woodward from the holding area.
Maybe he just needs direction.
"Nothing changes overnight. Let's just take it one step at a time," Cisco advises, putting a steadying hand on his back when Barry sways unexpectedly. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Barry says, straightening, looking pale and out of sorts but at least not lying on the floor in agonized silence. "Just – got a little dizzy there."
"It's been a long day," Cisco sympathizes, walking over to the wall and fishing around his stash for a protein bar. "Here," he says, passing him one. "Actually taste-tested this one." Then, grimacing, he adds, "One bite. Caloric equivalent of thirty-two tacos. I have never been so full ever. But at least now it actually tastes like a bonafide granola bar."
"You're the best," Barry says, squeezing his shoulder, and he sets his teeth on the bar, taking off a bite with delicate precision. He relaxes when the original sharp, exceptionally bitter aftertaste doesn't overwhelm him. (Prototype one: eighteen tacos. Cisco has gotten better at packing in the calories per square millimeter.) "Thanks for coming after me," he adds quietly.
Cisco considers saying that it's more fun to be a spectator and not the receiver of Caitlin's wrath. He thinks about explaining that it's what friends do, even if they don't have powers.
Instead, he says simply, "Any time."
Cisco can't always change things, can't take away Barry's pain or the suffering in the world around him, but there are times when he can make a difference.
Sometimes that difference is simply acknowledging someone else's contributions. Being there to recognize the value of trying.
You didn't save Danton Black, Cisco thinks, or Clyde Mardon, or Bette San Souci.
But you tried to save them.
Effort isn't measured by achievement; it's measured by output. How much you give to a cause to make something happen.
Thinking back to that conversation in the weeks after Tony's death, Cisco will remember how Barry's effort changed him. Made him self-sacrificing instead of self-serving in his final moments.
You can't change a person, Cisco knows, as they walk together down the Labs, out the door, underneath the stars.
But you can show them direction and hope they will follow it.