Authors Note: Hi guys! This is my very first fanfiction. I've been reading them forever and I've been inspired before but The Flash got me really ready to write a full on (short) story! I'm new at this so be gentle. So fair warning, I ship both SnowBarry and WestAllen. Something happens in the first paragraph of the story that will make SnowBarry shippers run but trust me when I say that this story was inspired by them specifically and will not disappoint! They are both included in this story in a way I hope makes sense. I love all the characters in this show and hopefully I do justice to them. I have a clear direction with where I want this story to go and it's probably going to only be a few chapters long. For the sake of my story, Zoom never killed Henry Allen. Hopefully you guys enjoy it! Excuse any grammar mistakes, I tried to go over it but I don't have a beta. There is another author's note in the end that will explain something's in the story!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Flash or anything associated with it. It belongs to DC and the CW.
Chapter 1
Barry looked around the familiar settings of Star Labs, filled with the people he loved, and thinks that he should be content with his surroundings. Joe was at the station while Harry, Henry, Wally, Cisco, Iris and Jessie were all lazing around after putting a stop to Razor, a meta-human who was going around "shaving peoples heads off" as he liked to put it. All in all it was a pretty standard day in the office. Yet, the distinct absence of the woman, the friend that he had failed still lingers on every surface of the building. Six months ago, with the help of Cisco, Harry, Joe, Henry, Jesse and his beloved Iris, Barry was able to finally defeat zoom. As the time wraiths floated him away, Barry and the team made it their first priority to go and retrieve the friend of theirs that Zoom fancied himself in love with. Barry grabbed Cisco and flashed them over to the CCPD where they knew Zoom was holding her and before Barry could even process the scene before him, Cisco was screaming in agony, huddled around the lifeless body of one Dr. Caitlin Snow. The details of her death are still a blur to him; Henry said something about Zoom killing her even before he met with them for the final showdown, stating she'd been dead for at least a day. They won the war, that was for sure, but her death was a reminder of all the battles in between that they lost because of their mistakes.
Barry knows he shouldn't blame himself, but he can't help but think that Caitlin was only there with Zoom in the first place because of him. She begged Zoom for his life, pleaded with the man who betrayed her so greatly on his behalf and what did she get in return? She was kidnapped, held in captivity and paid the ultimate price. She counted on him to save her, and he failed to do so.
'I should have saved her' thought Barry, 'Some hero I am, I can't even save the people closest to me.'
Barry looked over at Cisco who was fiddling with a device he was working on for team Arrow. Oliver had requested new super-sonic arrows (in memory of Laurel aka the Black Canary) and Cisco was more than happy to oblige who he called the "OG superhero." Even if Cisco didn't want to do it, Barry knows he would have anyways. Cisco overloads himself with work now-a-days, delving into any and all distractions life throws his way, the memory of Caitlin haunting him worst of all. Caitlin was Cisco's best friend, she was the person who understood him most, the one who never judged him, always believed in him and the one who accepted him with all his quirks when his own family couldn't even be bothered to call him. He won't talk to anyone about it, about her, not even to Barry. Iris told him that one day while Barry was about to go fight yet another meta terrorizing the city, she went to the med bay to prepare the medical supplies in case things went south. Apparently Cisco saw her and yelled so loud that Joe had to intervene for fear of Cisco acting out.
"He told me not to touch her things," Iris had told him after the mission. Barry felt guilty for agreeing with him.
Barry didn't know how to help his friend move past this, he didn't know how he was supposed to move past this. These past six months shouldn't have been real. He's with the girl of his dreams, he has his powers back and he is worshiped by a city full of people; he has achieved things beyond his wildest dreams. And yet…..the lingering pain of what Hunter Zoloman stole from them will never heal.
"Hey there handsome," Iris' melodic voice broke Barry from his musings, "you were great out there. What's got you so worked up?"
"Nothing," replied Barry as he leaned down to press a sweet kiss to her lips, "just thinking about Oliver and Felicity's wedding. I can't believe they're getting married. Well, I mean I can believe it, on account of 'true love' and all, but still. It's about time Oliver got his head out of his a-"
"Barry, you're rambling!" Iris cuts him off. "It is great that they're getting married. It'll do us good to have something to celebrate for once. But I know you Barry, you weren't thinking about them. You know you can talk to me right?"
Iris grabbed Barry's hand, and as he looked into her eyes he saw nothing but concern and understanding. God he loved her.
"I was thinking about Caitlin." Barry let out, barely above a whisper.
Iris' brown eyes filled with sadness. Barry knows Iris wasn't as close to her as he and Cisco were, but she was able to forge a friendship with her through their talks in Star Labs. She felt the pain of Caitlin's loss as much as any of them.
"I miss her too. If I miss her this much, I can't imagine how you must feel, how Cisco must feel."
Barry has tried not to let on to Iris how much he felt responsible for Caitlin's death. She would sugar coat everything, make him look at it from different angles, but Barry wasn't ready to let go of that guilt yet. Looking at her now though, seeing her expressive eyes combined with her earlier words, he can't help but finally letting out his frustrations.
"It's my fault. I didn't save her. I should have done everything in my power to get the speed force back as soon as he took her and I didn't! I just sat around; too scared to do anything and by the time I did, it was too late! She was counting on me, Zoom took her because she wanted to save me, and when it was my turn to return the favor, what happened? I failed her. She died because I couldn't protect her, because I failed at the one thing that I always promised myself I would do as soon as I got my powers. I couldn't protect her, and now she's dead because of me!"
There was a clatter and a growl, Barry looked up to see Cisco standing and glaring daggers at him, all his tools on the floor surrounding him. He was shaking from head to toe. He took a step towards Barry.
"Ramon! Take it easy, you don't want to get into a mess you can't clean up" Harry intervened before it could go any further.
Cisco looked towards Harry, glanced back at Barry looking as if he were pained, and bolted out of the room. Barry didn't realize that as he was talking to Iris about Caitlin, his voice got louder and louder until he drew the attention of the other occupants in the room. He's not sure what got Cisco so mad exactly, Barry being to blame for Caitlin's death, or him bringing up Caitlin at all. Harry, Jessie, Wally and his dad were all staring at him with expressions mixed with sadness, concern and confusion.
"I'll go see if he's okay." Jessie stated breaking the silence that fell over them all.
Cisco had become somewhat of a mentor to Jessie, seeing her as his protégée and they became close over that past few months (though Barry suspects that her medical knowledge reminds him a lot of Caitlin and that's why he keeps he close). She was yet another project Cisco chose to distract himself with. As Jessie left the room, Harry and Wally went to the training room to test Wally's speed and to not so subtly give Iris and Barry some privacy. Henry came over and gave Barry a firm pat on the back; he and Joe having had multiple conversations with his son about this already, he decided to let Iris take this round.
"I'm going to go on over and see Tina, she's really excited to be rebuilding Mercury Labs and she said she wanted my opinion on a couple of things regarding the medical wing. Call me if you need anything." And with that, Iris and Barry were left alone.
He hadn't looked at her since his outburst. Barry wasn't sure how to face her; he hadn't meant to let that much out.
"Barry, look at me."
Barry lifted his eyes and landed them on her, only to see her beautiful face shadowed in heart break, her eyes spilling over tears. He quickly lifted his hand to wipe them away but she caught it mid-way and rested it against her cheek.
"Bartholomew Henry Allen, you listen to me and you listen to me good. What happened to Caitlin was a tragedy. It's devastating and heart-breaking and unfair on so many levels. She deserved so much more than what the universe gave her. But her death is not your fault! It is NOT our fault. The only one to blame is Hunter Zoloman. He was a psychopath who lived off of death and destruction. He was obsessed with her. He was crazy, and a monster and he is the only person responsible for her death, do you understand?" the brunette did not give Barry a chance to argue as she continued in a whisper, "You can't do this to yourself Barry. You can't let yourself drown in this guilt, it's going to consume you. She wouldn't want that for you."
"Well we don't know what she would want, do we? She's not around to let us know!" Barry pulled away from her as he felt his anger taking over, his failure consuming him and his thirst for revenge bubbling to the surface. "He got off too easy. I should have killed him myself."
"You don't mean that Barry, you're not a killer!"
"Oh really, then what am I? A hero?" Barry scoffed, "Tell that to Caitlin's corpse."
Iris didn't know what to do; she'd never seen this kind of rage in Barry before. She wasn't scared of him, Barry would never hurt her, but she was incredibly scared for him. She didn't want him to do anything drastic. He has been known to make impulsive decisions in the heat of the moment, like going back to save his mother the previous year. That caused devastating consequences for everyone involved. 'Going back in time will do more harm than good. I hope he realizes that now at least.' Iris thought to herself. Hopefully she doesn't have to worry about him doing that to change things for Caitlin. If their experience with time travel had taught them anything, it was that death was a fixed point in time and changing it could mean catastrophe. She quickly turned her attention back to Barry.
"Barry, I don't know what to say to you to make you believe me. So I'm going to ask you, what do you think Caitlin would say to you right now? I know she's not here to tell us, I know she's a corpse, but I have to believe that she's still with us. Like Eddie, like your mom, Caitlin is still with us in our hearts and she always will be. So what would she say about this thirst for revenge you have?"
"She'd say you're an idiot." Barry and Iris snapped their head towards the direction of the voice. It was Cisco, his eyes were red and puffy while his right hand had a bandage around it. They were shocked, this was the first time Cisco willingly mentioned Caitlin in a conversation. "Well, she wouldn't say it with those exact words, she'd type out a detailed analysis of all the reasons you are an idiot, make you a laminated copy and proceed to lecture you about it for days on end until she was sure that all the reasons you shouldn't be thinking the way you are thinking were stuck in your head. But she'd never call you an idiot to your face."
Cisco walked over towards the computers, the one on the right. Caitlin's. No one had used it since she died. He grazed his good hand over the keyboard.
"Do you know that I don't remember when I last talked to her? I mean, I assume it was before he took her. Maybe it was around Christmas of last year. Or maybe around the time that that bastard Jay, or who we thought was Jay, died. But I don't know. It's all jumbled up in my brain, bits of a conversation here, moments of us laughing there, but nothing concrete. I even tried vibe her. She's just gone. And there's nothing I can remember, nothing for me to hold onto, of the months before her death. I ask myself why? Why? Was I so caught up in my own world that I couldn't take break to talk to her for even a minute? What I wouldn't give for a minute right now."
By this time Cisco had sat down in front of her computer, looking at its monitor blankly. Iris grabbed the chair beside him while Barry chose to stand in front of them. Cisco looked up at Barry then.
"I blame myself too. I don't know how to stop. I know she wouldn't want me too, I know she'd call me an idiot," Cisco let out a humorless laugh at that, "but I can't help but feel like I failed her. I let that monster take her, and now she's gone. And I have no idea how to live with that."
It was astounding to Barry that in all the time he put into thinking about what exactly about Caitlin's death caused Cisco to be so closed off, he never thought that it would be because of this. Cisco thinks he failed her too. He hated seeing his friend, who was always filled with so much optimism, so sad.
"Cisco, Cait knew that you loved her, you guys were best friends. We all had a lot on our plates back then. Casual conversations were hard to come by." Barry tried to reassure him. As much as he finds himself at fault for the things that transpired, he wasn't going to let Cisco blame himself in anyway. Caitlin would never forgive Barry if he let Cisco keep on thinking this way.
Iris grabbed Cisco's hand in one had hand, and Barry's with the other. "It isn't your fault. The two of you are not responsible for her death, and I'm going to keep saying it until I get it through your thick skulls! We'll get passed this together, like she would have wanted us to. We move forward together."
"Yes, but how? How do we do that?" Barry asked her, almost desperately, his own anguish resurfacing while tears were running down his face. "How do we even start? It's been six months and we still don't know how to move past this. How do we make peace with a ghost? I can stop feeling like I failed her and I don't know how to change that."
"I don't know, but we will. We always find a way. " stated Iris, looking at both of these men that she cared so much for, trying not to show on her face how disheartened she actually was.
'Oh Caitlin, I wish you were here. I have a feeling that you're the only one who could possibly get through to them now,' Iris thought as she was exiting Stat Labs 10 minutes later leaving Barry to help train Wally and Cisco to his gadgets. "God I hate Zoom."
Okay so what did you think?! Caitlin is my favorite character on the show and I feel that she is greatly under appreciated. So I had to kill her off. What's that saying, "You don't know what you have until you lose it?" I just feel that they could be doing so much more with her. But worry not, I promised SnowBarry and WestAllen. I will deliver. Caitlin will make an appearance in this stroy, I promise. The question is, how? Also, when Iris is referring to Barry going back in time, she's talking about the end of season 1, not 2. Since Henry is alive in this story, it doesn't make sense for me to have Barry go back in time to save him mom since he made peace with it in the speed force. Also, time-travel confuses me so I don't want to deal with writing about it!
On a side note, as I was writing Cisco, I realized how utterly heart-breaking it is for him to lose his bff and I almost resurrected Caitlin from the grave for him. Is it normal to tear up while writing your own dialogue? Anyways, please leave me your thoughts! I would love to know if it's ok and what I should try to improve. Please don't benegative for the sake of being negative. That's not cool.
