The next day, Iris came by with Big Belly Burger for their dinner. Caitlin surprised herself by eating all her french fries and rooting around the bag for more. Iris was beaming at Caitlin like her bubbe beaming at a cleaned plate when Barry whooshed in.
"Iris," he said.
"Barry," she said.
Caitlin almost checked her sensors, the temperature dropped that fast.
"What are you doing here?"
"Seeing my friends."
"Iris, I told you, I don't want - "
"Yes, I'm in so much danger," she said sarcastically. "This French fry here, it's going to develop metahuman abilities and jump up and attack me." She waved the fry at him. It broke in the middle and drooped sadly in her grip. "Would you just retire that sad old argument, Barry?"
He scowled. "You don't have any powers that'll protect you."
"Neither does Cisco!"
Out of the corner of her eye, Caitlin saw Cisco look down at his tablet.
"Cisco's been here since the beginning. You haven't."
"That's not my fault, now is it?"
Barry made an inarticulate noise of frustration and whooshed out again. Cisco tipped up his tablet. "He's running laps around the city," he reported to Iris.
"Maybe he should run out to sea and soak his head for awhile," Iris growled.
"I would think," Caitlin said, pouring herself coffee from the giant pot that was always going in a corner of the lab now, "that you'd be a little nicer to your meal ticket. How many bylines did you get out of him?"
Iris's eyes narrowed. Caitlin let her mouth curl up at the corners.
Iris let out a snort of breath and sat back. "Okay. You've already figured it out anyway."
"The outlines," Caitlin said. "A sketch. How long have you known each other?"
"Twenty years, give or take." Iris fiddled with the wrapper from her burger.
"So, long before the explosion."
"Long, long before." Iris looked up. "We were friends when we were kids. Then, when we were eleven, his mom died and his dad went to prison for it."
"He didn't do it," Cisco said quickly. "Barry's dad. He's innocent."
"Who did?"
Iris and Cisco carefully didn't look at each other. Caitlin added that to her rapidly growing list of the secrets of Star Labs. Something about Barry's mother's murder - something they weren't going to let Killer Frost in on.
"They thought they had the killer, so they never bothered looking further."
That didn't sound like the Barry Allen Caitlin was getting to know, but she didn't pursue it. "So - ?"
"Anyway, when that happened, he had nobody, so my dad took him in. We grew up together."
Caitlin nodded, turning over the passive aggressive jabs and mysterious comments she'd heard. "He didn't tell you," she said. "When the explosion turned him into the Flash."
"He was in a coma for nine months. Nine months! And one day, he just woke up and picked his life back up like nothing had happened. But it did. He had these powers. And everyone knew. My dad, my boyfriend, Cisco - it was just me. He just kept me out of the loop."
"To keep you safe," Caitlin said. "Or so he thinks."
"Got it."
Caitlin hummed and swirled her coffee. She hadn't gotten to the pot in time and Cisco had made it. He still made terrible coffee - like scorched tar water. She went into the medical lab and dumped it down the sink, then dug out her hot-water kettle. Bringing it back in, she said, "Well, you're certainly making him suffer."
Cisco put in, "Iris, you forgave me a long time ago. Isn't it about time to let up on Barry?"
"I forgave you because he made you part of his lie. It wasn't your choice."
"And," Caitlin said, "because it's much easier to forgive somebody you don't have any history with."
Cisco, reaching across his worktable for a tool, went still and looked up at her. She looked back steadily. He broke the staring match first.
Iris seemed not to have noticed. "I think that's it," she was saying. "It's strange, you know? Someone that you've been that close to, for that long, and then you find out they have this whole other life that you didn't know about. I mean, I'm angry. I really am. Don't get me wrong. But - " She flailed a hand. "- he's my - he's Barry. Cutting him out of my life would be like cutting off my arm."
The kettle clicked, and Caitlin rooted around in the desk until she found a teabag. "Did you two ever - ?"
"No!" Iris yelped. "No. No. We never. I - He's like my brother."
Caitlin paused, halfway through doctoring her tea with copious amounts of sugar, and slid her eyes sideways at Iris. Then she gave Cisco a is-she-serious-right-now?! look.
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and gave her a little nod. Yep. That's what she thinks.
She snorted soundlessly and stirred her tea. "Is he still charging around the city?" she asked Cisco.
"Yep."
"Call him back," Caitlin said. "He wanted to be here for the first test, and I don't feel like waiting out his temper tantrum."
Barry came back in about ten minutes, carefully avoiding looking at Iris, who avoided looking at him, so really they were equal. He asked what he could do to help set up, and Cisco sent him out for a couple of last-minute things that they needed. Iris just kept out of the way, tucked into a corner, smiling encouragingly at Caitlin every time she caught the other woman's eye.
Iris was excited for Caitlin, even though she barely knew the other woman. She liked her, though, liked her razor sharp intelligence, her prickliness and her scowl and the way she'd said, You don't have to talk about it.
Everybody always wanted to talk about Eddie, even when Iris didn't.
And when Iris did want to talk about Eddie, Caitlin listened, without mouthing platitudes. Which really had saved Iris's sanity over the past week or so.
Barry was back in a couple of seconds with the last few things, and they could get started. For testing purposes, Cisco had mocked up something that looked like a nicotine patch, with a fat lump of electronics and a tiny needle in the center. It wasn't what she would wear in the end - and they were still fighting off and on about the final design, Caitlin stubborn about wanting a subdermal implant and Cisco trying to convince her to have a transdermal one. Iris wasn't sure what the difference was and anytime she asked they started bickering again.
Caitlin made Cisco wear heavy rubber insulated gloves to apply it. They looked like something reserved for Arctic researchers, and Iris had no idea how Cisco's manual dexterity suffered. From the face he made as he tugged them on, he wasn't a fan either.
Caitlin hopped up to sit on the same hospital bed that Barry had spent so many months in. Iris pulled up a chair at the foot, wishing she could hold the other woman's hand for moral support. She wasn't sure that Caitlin would accept it even if she couldn't flash-freeze Iris like a side of beef.
Cisco marked the spot with a surgical marker. "There?"
"Yes."
"Okay," he said and switched on the mike. He narrated the time and date, and then said, "Tester One. Core temperature is twenty-two point five degrees."
Iris did the math in her head and shivered. There were corpses warmer than Caitlin Snow.
Cisco used a set of tweezers to pick up the tester and position it between her shoulder blades. With the tip of one rubber-gloved finger, he pressed it against her skin until she jumped. Mist roiled out from her skin, and he stepped back fast. For a moment, it hung in the air, and dissipated.
"Needle's in," she reported.
"How is it?" he asked.
"Give me the tape."
He shoved the surgical tape in her direction, and she taped the tester down with a neat X. She pressed on it a few times, as if testing how it sat.
"Bare, how's the link?" Cisco asked over his shoulder.
Barry checked Cisco's tablet. "Data's coming through."
"Your core just went up to twenty-three. How does it feel?"
She breathed in and out. "Like - like somebody pouring warm wax down my spine."
"Okay, in a good way?"
"It's warm, Cisco. That means good." She turned her hands palm-up on her knees and stared at the sensors, watching the lights. Iris leaned over to see. As they watched, one of the lights blinked out.
Barry checked the data again and frowned. "Man, some of your gauges are going red, here." He turned the tablet so Cisco could see.
Cisco leaned over to take it. "Going full blast. Maybe I should - "
There was a pop, and a splash of sparks, and Caitlin shrieked. In a split second, Iris found herself across the room, under the workstation on the ground, Barry crouching over her. She panted a little, then shoved at his arms. He sat back and let her crawl out.
"What happened?" he asked Cisco, who was peering at the blackened, smoking tangle of wires and warped plastic stuck to Caitlin's back.
"At a guess? It couldn't keep up. Wow," he whispered.
"My shirt," Caitlin said sharply. The whole back of her shirt was burned away in a line down her spine, and she grabbed it as it started to slide forward off her arms.
Iris started to grab her coat, but Cisco was closer. He snatched the hoodie hanging off his chair and put it over Caitlin's shoulders.
"Thanks," she muttered. She reached back and peeled the blackened, smoking remains of the first tester off her back. She studied it, then dropped it on the workstation. "So - it worked. For how long?"
He checked his tablet. "Forty-three seconds." He stripped the heavy gloves off and tossed them aside, then pulled the tray towards him and swung his magnifier around to peer at the burn pattern. "Forty-three seconds of data is not shabby."
"Send me the anatomical data. I'll add my impressions." She zipped up the hoodie.
"You're taking this awfully well," Iris said.
"It's science, Iris, not magic," Caitlin said. Then, to Cisco and Barry, "If that's going to be a common reaction, I'll want some hospital gowns. I don't have so many shirts that I can sacrifice one every time we do a new test."
A few minutes later, Caitlin excused herself to make some tea. Iris went after her.
The Star Labs break room was down the hall, a spare room with a disreputable couch, a battered chair, and a TV with video games and DVDs stacked on top. There was also a kitchen area, with a fridge, a sink, and some cabinets.
Caitlin was curled in a ball on the floor in the corner formed by the counter and the wall. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her forehead pressed into her knees, her arms wrapped around her shins. Mist spilled off her skin, swirling in the air. It was weirdly beautiful.
Iris took a step into the room, her hand outstretched.
A hand closed around her elbow. When she looked back, Cisco shook his head at her. "Don't," he said.
"But - "
"I know, but don't," he said. He pushed past her and walked into the room himself, stopping a few feet away from Caitlin and squatting so they were at the same level. "Hey," he said quietly.
She lifted her head.
"This was just the first test," he told her. "Next time, we'll fail better."
She looked at him a moment, her face set and white. She didn't look as if she'd been crying, Iris thought.
She got to her feet, tall and cold. "I'm going back to my cell," she told him.
Still squatting on the floor, he tipped his head back to look up at her. "Okay."
"I need to change."
"Okay," he said again.
She walked past him, past Iris, past Barry who stood in the hallway, and down the curving corridor toward the pipeline.
Iris shivered as a bitter wind followed her.