pre-relationship Barry/Caitlin, 2122 words, pg-rated
written for anon, who asked for a story about the anniversary of Ronnie's death. hope you like!
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I'm Bound By The Life You Left Behind
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They somehow manage to tiptoe around it all day.
Coming in to work that morning proves especially difficult; she was awake half an hour before the radio alarm kicked in and all that time she stared at the ceiling, one arm outstretched over the side of the bed Ronnie once occupied, and blinks, once, twice, three times, wondering if somehow she could blink the past year out of existence, no explosion, no meta-humans, just a honeymoon on Tahiti sipping mai tais with a husband who never discovered his inner hero; … quickly realizing that wishful thinking isn't her usual candor, and a do-over isn't in her future or the realm of possibilities.
She dragged herself out of bed, spun her engagement ring around her finger a few times, a nervous tick she tries to control in front of others, but when it's her alone in an apartment grown too big, she lets herself go. She sat at the breakfast table alone, got dressed in absolute silence, and upon reaching for the knob on the front door she almost backtracked straight into some sweatpants and then her bed, because if she never got a do-over it all seemed so futile.
In truth she'd run through this same routine the past 364 mornings, even Saturdays and Sundays, even on days off and all the holidays that'd fallen in between – every day was a test, every morning brought a fresh set of challenges she hadn't prepared for; pictures of their time together, Ronnie's clothes on the bathroom floor, his favorite mug with the moustache on the side, even those god-awful portraits they paid for on their trip to Niagara Falls. She'd cried for hours in the comforting presence of these objects, things that merely served to underline Ronnie went missing from her life, and he wouldn't come back.
She'd drowned herself in her work, got up every morning and avoided staring at the empty spot beside her, worked diligently at every new project Dr Wells threw her way, found a quiet and reassuring routine checking on Barry's vitals once he got transferred, and labored on.
She came home every night and boxed up another item of her and Ronnie's life together. Pictures. Clothes. Mugs.
And after only fifty-seven of those nights two things remained.
Her ring. His ring.
And the memories.
Cisco and Harrison don't mention it at all; they both deal with the fallout of the explosion in their own way, the consequences of their actions, the colleagues they all lost. Sometimes she has to remind herself more people lost their lives that day, it wasn't just Ronnie, but in her most selfish heart of hearts he's all she sees.
It's quiet all morning, she runs some tests on Barry's blood and the samples she took from Kyle Nimbus, and the familiar routine unspools any anxiety she might've felt at her front door this morning. She's not sure what she'd be doing if she stayed home; wallow in bed, cry tears that ran out months ago, curl around a mystical presence on the wrong side of the bed, but she's glad she came in.
She can feel Harrison's eyes on her every so often, but once Barry comes in asking for help with a mysterious bank robbery they're back to their same old dynamic, and for a few infinitesimal moments they all forget about the terrible things that befell them here exactly one year ago.
They tiptoe around it, even Barry, pretend like it's the same day pasted to the previous 363 ones.
"Caitlin." Harrison has a way of sounding her name both grave and caring. "If you ever want to talk–"
It's the first time he suggests it; his guilt had always stopped him.
"I'm okay, Harrison," she answers. "Really."
After 364 days her grief still moves inside her like a living thing, it messes up her metabolism and sometimes she can't eat at all. These past few months, however, the last three to be exact, work has changed, familiar routine interspersed with fighting crime and patching Barry up, and even though she'd be much more comfortable without the constant threat of danger and Barry risking his life, she found a sense of purpose.
Harrison might think of it as his penance, but she thinks it might have been her salvation.
"What are you still doing here?" Barry asks late that night, changed into some sweatpants and that S.T.A.R. labs sweatshirt he likes so much. Cisco left a few hours ago to go see his mom, and Dr Wells disappeared to a remote corner of the building. She didn't feel like going home, spent as little time there as possible, and when she did she often leafed through the newspaper for hours, circling ads for new apartments with a red marker, even though she had no intention of moving. But she liked that she had the option.
"I work here," she says, and pushes past him tablet in hand, scrolling through some interesting DNA results she should discuss with Dr Wells in the morning.
"Yeah, no. I just thought you'd be–"
Barry's hesitation is more telling than anything. She finds his lack of filter a particularly charming trait of his, not that she'd ever let him know, though something tells her she won't like whatever he meant to say.
Still, she pushes. She's not sure why. "I'd be what?"
Barry releases a breath, hands buried deep in his pockets. "At the cemetery."
Oh.
She sits with her back turned to Barry so he doesn't see her facial expression shift, the sudden dread in her eyes because for a moment or two, three, four, she'd forgotten all the horrible things that happened, she forgot she stood next to Ronnie that fateful night, no two feet from where she sat now, and he kissed her goodbye. She forgot about running down there, heart beating in frenzy, and how she never got a chance to say goodbye.
"None of my business," Barry adds quickly. "I'm sorry."
She swallows hard, rubbing her thumbs and index fingers together while her hands hover over a keyboard. She forgot what she was going type. "I don't go there."
Barry settles down in a chair next to her.
Day four after Ronnie died her dad drove her to the cemetery; there was a short ceremony, Ronnie's mom hugged her and his dad couldn't bring himself to meet her eye. Cisco remained at the hospital watching over Dr Wells and she'd never missed Ronnie more than that day, alone in a crowd of people, wounded on the battlefield.
"At all?"
"We buried an empty coffin."
A solid pine casket, white satin interior, simple, dignified. She didn't choose it.
"I don't really see the point."
The room fills with the subtle metal creak of Barry's chair, while his eyes dig holes in her temples.
"What?"
"Nothing," Barry says, but knows it's anything but. Barry has this way of sounding his words both innocent and judgmental, even though he means no harm – Barry often thinks of people in direct relation to him, like he should be able to predict behaviors or otherwise those people are out of line. She didn't smile too much, as if smiling was a prerequisite to being human; Cisco didn't trust him and built a weapon that could hurt him, as if they could've predicted how he'd turn out while still in a coma.
Barry reads people really well, but trying to understand them isn't always an effort he chooses to make.
"I think about him every day," she says, her eyes going out of focus, the words on the monitor blurring into black stains on a white background. "I haven't taken off his ring since the explosion. There's not a day that goes by where I'm not reminded that he's gone. I highly doubt staring at a stone with his name on it will change anything."
The universe never grants do-overs, not this one nor any of the parallel realities she dreams up in the loneliest hours of the darkest nights.
"I'm never closer to him than I am right here."
It's almost touching, in an awfully morbid kind of way – any sane person might try to get away from the place that ripped a chunk out of her heart. But S.T.A.R. labs is all she's known for a long time, it's where she met Ronnie, it's where she lost him, and she, Cisco and Dr Wells are working on undoing all the negativity the explosion saturated the city with. Her place is here.
"I'm sorry," Barry says. "I didn't mean to–"
And when the same hesitation follows on Barry's part guilt trips through her chest – Barry's trying to help, he's learning that understanding can only come when he takes the time to get to know people, take others' advice, let himself be taken care of from time to time.
"Do you go see–your mom?" she asks, her own effort at understanding Barry's reasoning. He pulls closer when he knows she's in pain, which is flattering in a lot of ways, a nuisance in a lot of others. But she thinks he's so attuned to it because the eleven-year old in him needed someone to see his pain all those years ago, needed someone to believe in him. He spent the past fourteen years screaming for anyone to hear him that he hears others cry out for the same.
"Whenever I need to."
She turns her chair. "What do you do?"
"I talk to her." Barry shrugs and leans forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, fists underneath his chin. She tries to picture it, this tall gangly boy alone in the cemetery, a bouquet of his mom's favorite flowers clutched in one hand, tears staining his cheeks. "I tell her about my life, what I'm going through. I've told her about you."
Her eyes go wide, reduced to a height of about three feet. "Me? Why?"
Barry smiles softly. "Believe it or not, Dr Snow, you're important to me."
Her mouth sets in a crooked line to the right with the faint hint of a smile.
Barry stands up. "You wanna get a drink?"
She glances around the lab, now left cold and abandoned and thinks yes, she should get away from this tomb today, she shouldn't need this place to function, shouldn't tether herself to one single location or the back and forth between the lab and her apartment. Ronnie wouldn't want her to get stuck thinking about the life she could've had; mai tais in Tahiti is a thing of the past. Drinks with Barry Allen, however, that's in her immediate future.
Barry takes her to a hole-in-the-wall bar Iris told him about and winks, "My treat," before they settle at a table for two, some kind of smooth jazz playing in the background.
She orders them both mai tais with little umbrellas sticking out of the glass. "For Ronnie," she says as they make a toast in his memory, and explains their plans for the honeymoon, how she got her way when Ronnie wanted to see Italy, and how she'd bought a white dress to travel in; her wedding dress would've been too inconvenient.
Barry talks about his parents' disastrous honeymoon to New Orleans, and soon Ronnie falls away completely. They talk about Barry's childhood, not hers, and how he'd once considered following in his dad's footsteps and become a doctor. She divulges she went to med school for exactly a year before changing majors, and how proud her dad had been when she graduated; he still kept a picture of her in her graduation gown beside his bed.
It's the first time in 364 days that Ronnie doesn't play in the back of her head, that she can be herself with a guy who knows exactly what she's going through, so Barry does her the courtesy of avoiding the topic. Maybe it's what he'd wanted people to do for him all those years ago.
Barry Allen is quite something, and it took her far too long to see that.
(A few months from now Barry will find her by Ronnie's grave, begging her forgiveness for being kind of a jerk when all she'd done was ask a friend for help. She'll forgive him because her heart has well thawed around the idea of letting go of Ronnie, the way he'd asked her to, the way he'd sort of forced her, too.
They'll hold hands and stand over Nora Allen's grave, a single red rose resting on the gravestone, and they'll swear, "Together", they'll find who killed her together.)
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fin
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(the final paragraph will, ideally, be worked out in another oneshot, perhaps more. i'm going to ambitiously try and set a lot of these oneshots in the same universe. thoughts are welcome!)