Caitlin had watched her father die.

It had happened slowly, due to multiple sclerosis. She'd watched him struggle every day for years through his condition, watched her mother fight and fight and fight to keep him going, to make him well again. Young Caitlin had been left in the dust, in the corner, in the shadows, as Mrs. Snow ate up every second of their lives searching for a way to fix Mr. Snow. At the time, Caitlin had dismissed the neglect, focusing only on her daddy and what it would take to make things normal again, but after a while life became lonely. Her father was too ill to play with her the way he had before—his muscles weren't the way they used to be, her mother had explained.

Though being ignored for so long in the wake of the tragedy had estranged Caitlin from her mother, getting older, she could better understand the weight Mrs. Snow had had to carry for so long. Caitlin had experienced that weight briefly, when they'd been trying to discover a way to keep Ronnie separated from Stein on Earth-1, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever have the same man as her fiancé again. Then she'd gotten the full effect of what her mother had suffered—she'd lost him, and the pain was enough to keep her locked away from her loved ones forever. She couldn't be angry with her mother anymore, even if she knew some of that hurt would never go away. Because now she knew what it was like, to an extent.

Maybe that was why she was so devoted to helping Professor Stein save his wife. Caitlin had seen firsthand what it was like to fight to keep someone with you, how fragile the hope of making things right again really was. If she had the ability, the resources, to help keep Clarissa alive, how could she pass up the opportunity? How could she leave Stein to work it out for himself? Never mind the fact that she had known him on a parallel Earth; attachment or not, she wouldn't have been able to stand by and leave well enough alone. She could help. So—she would help.

And they were so close!

She'd analyzed the gas sample as thoroughly as humanly possible—no thanks to Savitar, of course, whose missions and measuring looks from across the room did nothing but interrupt her, or at least cause her to lose focus. Nimbus' DNA here, the components of his 'mist', were not unlike that of his Earth-1 counterpart's. She'd conducted every test possible, and now that they had the general code to the gas' makeup itself, they could begin work on a cure—another code, a new one, that would fight and defeat the gas'. Nothing like a pill, she'd decided—maybe a liquid, a serum. But she'd need Stein's opinion first.

Caitlin was on her way out of S.T.A.R Labs, headed to the bus stop outside the parking lot, to meet the good Professor. But as soon as she turned the corner, seeing the street a few yards away, she spied someone else in the lot—someone familiar, heading straight for her.

"Wally?" Caitlin stopped in surprise, fumbling with her bag.

Wally reached her, breathing hard. "Hey."

Hey? The last time he'd been near this facility, it was because a man with flames for limbs had made him look like fresh bacon. The only reason he knew her was because she'd used her unstable winter superpowers to heal him, and to his knowledge it must have been on a whim, because this Earth's Wally had never encountered a Caitlin Snow before. And to top it all off, Central City's mystery hero himself had kicked the poor boy off these grounds upon recovery. Hey was kind of informal and alien when you rolled all of that together, looking at him.

"What—what are you doing here?" Caitlin stooped a little to level with him; he was bent over, catching his breath. Clearly he'd been running not moments before. "Are you hurt?"

"No. Nah, I'm good, I'm fine," Wally panted, straightening. His brown eyes searched hers, and she saw something like desperation in them. He shifted, a bit awkward, hands in the pockets of his pale red hoodie. "Sorry. It's not like I'm outta shape or anything, but uh…" He jabbed a thumb backward, indicating the long distance he'd crossed. "Running—I'm not the best runner."

Caitlin nodded, slightly impatient. Her intrigue over Wally was minimal compared to the Stein problem. And she would be late. "But—I don't understand, what…"

"I need your help," Wally explained quickly. He looked past her, over her shoulder, toward the double-doors into the lobby. "Where's, where's the shadow—the guy, your friend? We have—"

He took a few steps toward the building, clearly under the impression she was going to follow him, but she slid into his path, eyes wide and maternally stern.

"Nooo, no no, you cannot go inside," Caitlin reprimanded gingerly, startled. Savitar was still asleep when she left, and for all she knew he was strolling through the corridors now, wide awake and not expecting visitors in his civilian attire.

Wally stopped short. "But—I need him, I need both of you guys." He smiled a little, as if to diffuse the tension, but of course it didn't do much. "Look, it's…" He licked his lips, hesitating, thinking something over. Finally, he seemed to throw caution and pleasantries to the wind and rushed out, "It's about Mick Rory."

He fished his wallet from his back pocket, rummaging through and offering a blurry photograph between two fingers. Caitlin took it and squinted. It was difficult to make out, and if she hadn't seen him in person she might not have recognized the pyro. She glanced back up at West, who was watching her the way a dog might watch you while you ate. What on earth did Wally have to do with Heat Wave?

Of course. Caitlin nearly clicked her tongue aloud, chastising herself mentally for being so slow on the uptake. "Wally," she murmured, fighting to keep the familiarity, the worried aunt type, from her tone, "he can't hurt you anymore. He's long gone, the chances of Mick Rory coming after you again—"

Wally rocked a little on the balls of his feet. "No—Caitlin—I'm not worried about that, okay?"

Caitlin's nose wrinkled, tighter than usual. Completely blank now.

Wally looked at the Labs' roof, the gravel beneath them, anything. "Listen, I know you and him don't owe me anything. I mean, if it wasn't for you—I don't know where I'd be right now. Probably dead, right?"

Caitlin tilted her head, making a face, unwilling to confirm it.

Encouraged by her demeanor, Wally chortled a bit. "Yeah—I shouldn't need anything else, but…it's something to do with my dad." In that second, he looked younger than Caitlin had ever seen him, even on Earth-1.

The air seemed a lot colder suddenly. Images of Joe West and his kind eyes and bear hugs and coffee smell and fatherly baritone zipped through Caitlin's mind, and she wanted to shake Wally to make him go faster as he began to explain. She couldn't outright ask, Is Joe still alive in this universe, could she? He was awkward at first, but the more he spoke, the more passionate he became.

"My dad's a police officer."

Caitlin made a valiant effort to appear surprised, or at least interested, as if this were news to her.

Wally gestured aimlessly with both hands, sometimes fiddling with the drawstrings of his hoodie. "Dad and his partner were investigating a tip the station got, something about a crime family—they weren't s'posed to be there, it was gonna just be the chief, but Dad didn't want him to go alone…"

He sounded as if he'd told this story over and over, as if he knew it by heart. Caitlin got the feeling she was getting a condensed version; he was speaking as if in a hurry to make her understand, in a hurry to move on. He even rocked back and forth on his heels a few times, the picture of nerves.

"Dad's partner saw the whole thing. The chief was shot right in front of him—by Rory." Wally finally took a breath between words, and his eyebrows knit together. "He used my dad's gun, he framed him, and…nobody saw it but Eddie." He looked up quickly, explaining as an afterthought, "That's his partner, friend of the family. But see—Eddie can't prove it."

Caitlin had no trouble keeping up with Wally's story, relieved to find that Eddie's and Joe's history here didn't seem very different from the ones they had on her Earth. She felt a familiar clenching in her chest when she heard the word framed. "Why not?" she asked gently.

"Because nobody else was there," Wally sighed. "Just him. It's—it's his word against the evidence. It was my dad's gun—Eddie says Rory wore gloves, so guess whose fingerprints they found? A-And—and he had motive, that's what they said, and now…" He pinched the bridge of his nose, a trait Caitlin's Wally had never once exhibited, and her eyes followed the movement in fascination. "Anyway. He's in prison because of Rory, because of the same guy that toasted me at the EXPO. I mean," he let out a little breathy laugh, one that didn't reach his eyes. "Like I didn't hate him enough before, right? And now—"

"Wait," Caitlin held up both hands to still him. "What do you mean, he had motive?"

Wally licked his lips, looking away for a second. The silence grew thick, and he broke it after a moment by saying, a little more slowly, a little quieter, "We need your help. Yours and—the—your friend's. You guys were there when Rory got me at the EXPO." An older look flashed across his expression, almost a stern one, one that warned her, nearly begged her, not to avoid answering him as he finished, "You gotta know where he is, you can't tell me you're not after him too. Eddie said he saw him at the bank, but your shadow guy got in the middle of it and stopped him." He let out a long breath. "Please. You're…the only ones I can think of to help us break this thing open. I know my dad did not kill Chief Singh."

Caitlin stared at him, listening to the cars on the highway, distracted by how cold her nose and nails had become, standing out here motionless for this long. How could she refuse him? How could she tell him, sorry, we can't help you, there's just too much you shouldn't know? It wasn't fair. It wasn't even logical. Wasn't he one of her top choices in a team for Savitar? An engineer, a familiar face? Trustworthy, eager? She couldn't keep him in the dark anymore. Not fully, anyway. Not after this. Caitlin Snow knew what it was like to live without a father. If Joe West was locked up for a crime he didn't commit, and there was something she could do to help him, to help Wally, foreign Earth or not, there shouldn't have been anything stopping her. She had the means. What else did she need?

So she met his desperate gaze and said, "Come on. Let's see what we can do."

Caitlin shot a quick text to Stein that they'd need to reschedule by a few hours, and Wally followed her into S.T.A.R. Labs at a near bounce.

She was telling him about the Pipeline—about where they'd last seen Rory—when the monitors beeped, and Caitlin jumped a little.

The speedster was not in the building any longer. Somewhere between her breakfast and meeting West outside, he'd gone for a run. At least, that was what the scanners stated.

Wally was leaning against the white winding desk, hanging on her every word, wearing the same huge, warm look that had splashed into his brown eyes since she'd agreed to help him an hour ago. She'd been doing some explaining of her own. In order for them to catch Rory, they had to understand what made him more dangerous than your average criminal, she'd proposed. So she began explaining metahumans to him—as if she needed to; he knew about superhuman abilities. Being burned by one meta and rescued by another gave one basically all the knowledge one required. But Caitlin could never resist a scientific debriefing, and Wally did look more interested than, say, any of Professor Stein's students when she described the particle accelerator's effects on the human code. Wally knew Rory could literally become fire (partially, anyway), but not how, or that it was containable. Which, Caitlin reasoned, would be important information if they wanted to see him behind bars again any time soon—or in this case, glass. And a huge, titanium door bowing beneath a palm scan.

She'd almost finished, fielding his question about Heat Wave's ability to breathe fire without ruining his lungs and other various innards, but the beeping on the monitors startled them both into a brief silence.

Caitlin darted for the trackpad. The comms system told her that Savitar had tried to call her half an hour ago, but she'd been so busy wrapped up in Wally's predicament, she hadn't noticed. To be fair, they hadn't been in the Cortex the entire time—Wally had gotten sidetracked on the way in by the engineer's wing.

And the suit's tracker said Savitar was entering S.T.A.R. Labs now. Caitlin glanced at Wally, who had come up behind her curiously. "He's back," she explained, biting her lip.

Wally's posture immediately improved; his hands came out of his pockets and his eyes glittered with sudden excitement. "The shadow?"

"That's technically not his name," Caitlin began fussily, making her way to the exit. "But yes. You—" She whipped around, holding out a hand as he started after her. "—stay here. Please. It's just—I-I need to explain to him first." She cleared her throat. "The two of you didn't exactly part on good terms last time you were here."

Wally practically flushed at the memory. "Yeah—uh—I know. But I figured…I mean, I should probably be the one to tell him what's goin' on, right?" His eyebrows rose hopefully. "Just cuz…it's my case and all. You know. My dad?"

Caitlin saw right through the poor boy. He wanted more face time with his idol. Yes, it was his case, his father, and ultimately his tell, but he simply didn't understand Savitar. He couldn't know what Savitar saw when he looked at Wally, why he sent him away the first time.

"I'm sorry, Wally," Caitlin murmured. "But it needs to come from me. He's…he's not used to everyone else—yet."

Confusion swallowed West's expression, but he nodded, still warm in the eyes, and sat conformingly in one of the chairs behind the desk, spinning in it a little. Caitlin gave him a sympathetic smile and quickly moved into the corridors. Savitar could come flashing to the Cortex any minute, and she meant to reach him before that happened.

She found Savitar in the med bay, more due to the noise than her intuition—she'd tried his room first, but the racket coming from the opposite direction told her exactly where he was.

The speedster was rummaging through the room, a blur, but Caitlin could tell he was still in his suit.

Before she could begin with Wally, she found herself asking, "What are you doing?"

Savitar stilled long enough for her to actually see him. "Looking for ice."

Caitlin's head titled so that her hair swung a bit against her cheek, eyebrows pinched. "For what?"

He took off the suit's hood, and his hair was slightly messy in the aftermath. Savitar turned to her, and his right eye was squinting slightly—it made him look a little off-kilter, but otherwise he seemed fine.

"I don't know, Caitlin, for what?" He exhaled sarcastically, gesturing with a palm to his face.

Caitlin gave him another once-over. Black-and-yellow hero suit, a little beat-up, tangled—slightly-sweaty—dark hair, mismatched gaze. Average posture, he wasn't favoring either leg more than the other, his arms hung loose and intact at his sides. Nothing. "Okay, you are going to need to be a little more specific—"

Again, more air hissed out of him, very quickly. He pointed to the squinting right eyeball, jaw set in annoyance. "Black eye."

"Black eye?" Her voice rose a little, frustrated. There was no black eye.

"I don't have time for this." Savitar muttered it under his breath, turning back to one of the tables, shoving aside a small case holding dusty medical tools.

"Savitar—"

He turned back around, jerkily. "Are you saying I don't have a black eye right now?"

Caitlin's eyebrows shot up. "No, you don't."

Savitar's expression and posture didn't change; it was the only sign she'd ever seen him give that he was confused. Nothing else showed it. Barry didn't freeze when he was confused, his eyes got wider, his brows dipped. Sometimes he pressed a fist to his mouth. Savitar was doing none of this, he was just standing there looking at her, still squinting one of his eyes. The quiet for those few seconds was almost comical; they stared at each other, equally bewildered.

"What makes you think you have a black eye?" Caitlin broke in.

The left-hand corner of his mouth twitched up, telling her he was exasperatedly amused by the question. "Pretty sure I can feel it when the socket of my one good eye is bruised." He showed her his palms, though they were still at his sides. "But hey, I'm no expert."

Something in Caitlin's brain clicked then. One good eye. To her, just now, his face was completely normal—Barry's face, with different-colored irises, one green, one blue. But that wasn't really the case. She had to be sure, though.

She walked up to him, torso ducking a little, to look straight up at his eyes, examining them. "The right one?"

"What?"

"This one?" She reached up and put a hand just below the eye she meant.

He moved backward as if she'd slapped him, back hitting the counter behind them, and the clanging of several instruments being jostled seemed to agitate him further. "Yes," he confirmed. His right arm was dropping back down, she noticed, and Caitlin wondered if he'd nearly used some of those superhuman reflexes to bat her hand away—another sign. Cornered animal again.

"Wait." Caitlin grabbed his hand—the leather glove was cold—and pulled off his costume's ring, pressing the little stud on the side. This allowed his chemically-compressed civilian clothes to shoot out and inflate back to their normal size.

She picked up his black jacket and felt around the pockets until she found what she was looking for.

"Here—" Before he could do anything, Caitlin used H.R.'s Cisco-ed transmogrifier on his face.

Blue light zapped between them, and when it died away, Savitar's scars and milky eye had returned. He watched her sharply, expectantly, and she would have bet money he was waiting for her to flinch or look away, maybe back up—any sign of discomfort. But she was surprised to find that she was used to it by now. To both versions of his face.

There was one new detail, however. His right eye was definitely beginning to develop a purplish-pink mask, the skin around it tender and rankled.

"Ooh," Caitlin winced for him, showing her teeth for a moment. "You were right."

"Great." Savitar snorted lightly, a tiny smile gracing his features.

The smile made Caitlin a little less on edge, and the frustration of all this shiner confusion went out of her at the sight of it. "Let's get you some ice."

"Genius, Caitlin," Savitar croaked. "Why didn't I think of that."

She could feel him watching her as she went right to a little cooler in the corner, pulling out a ready-made bag of ice. She'd filled it out of habit last Wednesday, and could admit to being a little startled when she'd first opened it—she wasn't used to a dusty, completely-empty cooler in her med bay. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time Earth-1's had been low on ice. Just a little reminder that this wasn't truly home. Not even the cooler really belonged to her.

Savitar grunted. "Why do you need that?"

"The ice?" Was he being serious? Caitlin paused, then looked at him and deliberately squinted just her right eye, pointing to it. "I thought you could feel it when the socket of your—"

He was shaking his head a bit before she'd finished, and interrupted without raising his voice, "The cooler, why do you need the cooler?" He took the ice from her and held it unflinchingly to his eye. Her nose wrinkled and his gaze fixed on it.

"What do you mean?"

He used his left hand to grab hers, holding it up to her line of vision. "If you want ice, you can make ice. If you want to keep it cold, you don't need a cooler."

She pulled her hand away, the comfort his little smile had brought disintegrating. "No."

He tilted his head against his right shoulder, pulling the ice away but keeping that eye closed. Watching her.

"I can't use my powers," Caitlin murmured. "And you know that. I told you to stop trying."

Savitar clicked his tongue, a sort of aww gesture, but devoid of actual sympathy. The way he was looking at her wasn't just searching—it was sort of like he was hungry, like he was looking for something he was pretty sure she had and was being deprived of. Thirsty and she was hiding a water bottle behind her back.

Caitlin fought to control the temper rising within her. She'd thought they were becoming friends—they were friends, a team—but friends should know when to quit. When to stop if the other person wasn't enjoying the joke. He had Barry's memories. He knew what she was afraid of, he knew how against her abilities she actually was, and he still pushed her. The original Flash's anger when she'd visited Earth-1 was infecting her now—a kind of how could he? feeling.

"With your accelerated healing properties, that eye should be gone by tomorrow morning." She turned around to close the cooler, now that he had his ice.

"You're not cursed either, Caitlin."

Why did he have to have the voice of her friend? Her back was turned; her subconscious could barely tell the difference when he spoke like that. Almost kindly.

"Don't do that, please," Caitlin said stiffly, not turning around.

"What?" It came out raspy and quiet—confused?

"Don't try to sound like Barry." She held up a hand, just a little, turning to look at him over her shoulder.

The shadow that passed over his expression was a familiar one. He had been sitting on the counter; he slid off of it now, setting the ice down fully, letting go of the bag and leaving it on the counter.

"I guess you want me to stop breathing, too, huh?" Savitar suggested, in an almost helpful tone, practically whispering, but the way he rushed it betrayed his irritation. "Or how bout I stop running? Does that sound good?"

"What?" she practically spat the word, actually angry now. Sometimes his satire was a bit much.

With a smack and a rattle, he snatched the transmogrifier off of the counter and flicked it on. Blue, then his face was unscarred, no black eye, clear of any injury and full of Barry.

"I can't not sound like Barry, Caitlin," he hissed, leaning closer. His voice rose a bit as he went on, "I'm sorry, but I can't. You're just gonna have to deal with it, because I can't turn it off. I know we don't use this word a whole lot, but it's kind of impossible. For me." There was a dangerous kind of frustration in the way he spoke. "Okay?"

Caitlin met his gaze defiantly for a moment, then took a step backward. The anger drained away. Maybe it was his one green eye—but she was trained on the blue one. No. She was being childish, simple. She'd asked him not to use his voice. How was he supposed to do that? And this time—this time he hadn't been antagonizing her. He'd sounded like Barry because he was trying to help. Barry was always helping. And she'd actually picked up a needle and stuck him with it in response. That wasn't exactly progress.

Before she could apologize, she caught sight of the bag of ice over his shoulder. "You left it in front of the heater."

Savitar followed her gaze. He had indeed set his bag of ice down in front of the small, high-powered heater attached to the wall above the counter. It was pumping hot air into the room, of course, due to the climate outside, and Caitlin liked to keep the med bay the most comfortable temperature she could in case of emergency treatments or long stays.

Now the bag of ice was a little bag of water.

Savitar didn't seem to care much about this, and turned back to her, probably to continue their argument. He stopped short when he saw her dampening necklace in one hand, the other hand conjuring a small block of ice, roughly the size of a fist. She snapped open a new plastic bag and dumped the block in, eyes glowing crystal white, just for a moment.

Caitlin felt Killer Frost in her outline, in her lungs, but this was only for a second. A second. One, two, three…four…five… She fastened the necklace, taking comfort in its chain against her neck, and the cold fled to the depths, disappearing as the pendant took effect.

"I'm not cursed," she said, relieved to hear her own voice echoing back at her, not Frost's. She handed him the bag. "But it's not a gift yet either. Not in my case."

He was looking at her eyes, and she couldn't tell if he wanted them to revert to white or if he liked the brown. His expression was closed.

Then he smiled again. It wasn't for too long, but it was bigger than the last one, and though his sleepy eyelids made it look a little halfhearted, she could see in his relaxed shoulders that it was genuine.

"Thanks for the ice," he said quietly.

"You are welcome."

There was a moment of comfortable silence. Caitlin cleared her throat. She couldn't hope for a better chance now. "That's not what I came in here for, actually. There's—something you need to know…"

She led the way to a wall monitor. Savitar watched from over her shoulder as she tapped in the necessary keys, showing him the security feed.

"Wally's back."

(Author's Note: A little earlier than Monday this time! Whew! If you liked the chapter, tell me why, guys! The reviews you Jell-O Suqares leave are the best. They keep me writing this monster. Update coming soon! ~Doverstar)