After he found the Earth-1, Jay was away even more often than before.
I now dared to speak to Jesse, although I still feared Jay's retribution. I didn't say much. I didn't know what would happen if I told her Jay needed a cure, and I knew he would be furious if I gave away his name. There was a measure of trust between us, tenuous as it was. I would not break it.
"Do you know if my dad's safe?" Jesse asked me one day.
Her cell was not like the masked man's. His was lined with glass-like walls, but Jesse's was composed of sharp iron bars.
"I know less of anything out there than you do. But I think Zoom needs Wells to do something for him."
Jesse gripped the bars, her large eyes on mine.
"And can you help me escape?"
"So he can catch you again? And beat you, without anything I do capable of stopping him. Stay put, Jesse."
I tried to mask my shame with reasoning. But how much was true an how much "logic" put in place so I wouldn't lose Jay's love for me?
How good was I truly, in the end?
"I'm sorry, Jesse," I said softly.
Later that day, I scratched another line on the wall. Jay didn't kill Jesse, true. But he destroyed her life all the same.
My own life was destroyed, in a sense. There was no going back to my old life. Not that there had been much anyways. I had few friends, no pets, no family. I had still been waiting on life to happen. And it did, in the form of a lair in a mountain and a large dose of Stockholm's Syndrome.
My entire life had become Jay. Trying to pull Jay out of Zoom, trying to limit Hunter's destruction. Waiting for him to come back from Earth-1. I spent hours watching the invisible portal, waiting for it to turn blue. I alternatively walked on eggshells to avoid possible wrath and stood up to the most evil villain any earth had experienced.
Everything about me was consumed by Jay. I lived for him, by him, with him, because of him. I was so entertwined with Jay that I even grew concerned for myself.
Until he called me Katnip and looked at me with blue eyes. Until he flinched at painful memories that reminded him he was human. Until his face twisted with a grin of insanity that made me crackle inside.
Jay always seemed surprised at my loyalty. For all his swearing that I would one day join him, he was genuinely shocked when I kissed him, or when he found me waiting on the other end of the portal after a long day away at Earth-1, and his only being able to stay for a few moments.
Still I waited. Still I loved.
In spite of loneliness, in spite of his terrible deeds. In spite of everything, even myself.
In spite of the duality of my cool, hardened hatred and burning, flaming love.