A/N: Some important notes for this fic:
1) There is no update schedule so if that bothers you you should probably wait until it's complete but expect that to be quite some time. Ideally, I'd post a chapter every one or two weeks but I am not in a position to promise that. Rest assured this fic is pretty thoroughly planned out - I've been chatting to shyesplease about it since May 2018! - so I know a lot about where it's going, have a chapter plan and a number of key scenes are already written. I just have to put in the hard graft of filling in the other scenes. Hopefully having the encouragement of feedback from posting will help with motivation there. :)
2) The mature rating isn't relevant to most of the fic but it is generally going to have fairly dark themes and whump of several sorts so most of it is more like Teen rated, slightly darker than the show I'd say. There will also be a few key moments of violence during it, as well as a sex scene near the end of the fic though I don't expect that to be explicit.
3) Things will not be hunkydory for a lot the time. Savitar doesn't play well with others, not even once he gets to truly trying to because his methods are very different to what Team Flash expects. There will be a lot of emotional conflict going on at times and occasionally physical conflict. I do promise cute moments too, as the road for the ship starts to smooth out, but that won't be for a while. It's a slow burn for sure.
4) I originally planned this out after watching S3 and for that reason Frost isn't a separate persona here like she is in canon these days. Some canon elements I plan to keep but I am sticking to Frost as more of an extension of Caitlin that came from her bottling up her emotions, her darker side.
5) Savitar and Caitlin are the main focus but it's kinda ensemble in places and will also deal with Savitar's relationships with the other characters too over time, like Iris. I'm aiming for a modified canon style, so do expect background Barry/Iris.
There's several people I need to thank - firstly, massive thanks to shyesplease for her help talking through the plot and betareading this chapter. Also thanks to thestarkswillendure and Ballycastle_Bat for encouragement. Lastly, big thanks to the vidder anatomyst for making awesome Savitar/Caitlin vids, it was "Caitlin Snow + Dark!Barry (Savitar) | One Way or Another" that inspired the idea for the fic.
Chapter 1: Until The End
Song for Chapter 1 - "One Way Or Another" by Until the Ribbon Breaks
Caitlin sits up in bed and tries to find something, anything, to take her mind off what is currently happening. She's not meant to get up and back to work following the surgical procedure she had less than 24 hours ago, she knows that. It's exactly what she would tell her patients, for those without superspeed healing at least. The problem is, it's harder advice to follow, particularly when her thoughts are with her usual patient – Barry.
Despite his declaration when he decided to go to the future that he'd return to the moment after he'd left, he hasn't. She knows time travel is tricky. Coming back to an exact moment might be harder than he'd made out. He's out there years ahead of them, trying to find out anything he can to give them an advantage over Savitar, to stay ahead of his enemy. Barry simply couldn't be dissuaded from going by any of them, too intent to stay ahead of Savitar by whatever means necessary.
Savitar knows all about them, and they've barely scraped the surface of what effect he's had on their timeline, like changes Julian's suffered. They don't know the first thing about him apart from the legend, the claims of godhood, and the blame he places at Barry's feet. She isn't going to pretend she isn't worried about Barry being in that unknown future, possibly without anyone on his side, but the unknown is what's held them back in this fight. If Iris does die, what will the future be like? Not to mention, Caitlin is scared of what her future holds.
It feels selfish, but she's still terrified she's going to turn into Killer Frost. As it gets closer and closer to May 23rd, Caitlin feels it gnawing away at her – when is it going to happen? She wants to say she doesn't believe it will. She wants to believe what Barry and Iris say -and they say it so much more convincingly than Cisco, who has seen with his own vision who she could become – but it feels somehow inevitable. Like nothing they do has really changed anything. Her fear says Iris will die and she will be partly responsible. Even before she was medicated for her pain, which caused a rumbling nausea, she routinely felt sick to her stomach at the possibility.
What if Barry is taking so long because he's stuck? No, she can't sit here. She can't just wait for bad news. Or for lack of bad news, because they'd never know what had happened to him if he doesn't come back. Not unless Wally or Jesse or Jay got involved... She has to do something to stop her mind from running rampant with what-ifs. The medbay got turned over during her treatment, and Cisco and Julian only mostly set it to rights. If she could just slide out of bed onto the visitor's chair, she might be able to gently shuffle closer to the cabinet and drawers to sort the items there without disturbing her wound too significantly...
And just as she leverages herself up on her arms to push up further, there's a fluttering of the papers she can spy in her view of the Cortex's main desk. She can just about make out Barry and Cisco having words. Without her. She squelches down the feeling of being left out, relief he's okay covering over that minor annoyance. From their body language as they walk into view, it must be good news. They both enter the room with smiles on their faces – Barry's wide with hope and Cisco's more satisfied. They must have something good to work with. Cisco's smile drops at spying her poised to get out of bed, switching to bemused annoyance once he sees her step one of attempting an escape from the bed again.
"For Merlin's sake," he says throwing his hands up and rolling his eyes at her before he looks towards Barry for support. "If the last day has taught me anything, it's that doctors make the worst patients. I'm gonna remind you of that repeatedly next time you hassle me for not following doctor's orders. If it's good enough for the master, it's good enough for the padawan."
"I don't think it works like that, Cisco," she says fondly, knowing he only has her best interests at heart. He's making her follow her own instructions after all. "This is a do as I say, not as I do kinda situation I think you'll find."
"Excuses, excuses. You will be reminded. You owe me. This is like my own personal get out of medbay free card."
She throws Cisco a look, not as stern as it could be perhaps, intended to imply he should know that will in no way be true - there's no getting out of medbay if you need it. There's definitely going to be a future battle to be had over this, probably next time he wants to wave away the toll his powers sometimes take on his brain.
For all the bluster, it's easy to tell Cisco is overcompensating with the nonchalance he's showing today, still concerned about her nearly dying when she threw a blood clot in the night. She still isn't happy with Julian's suggested solution to that situation, there will be more words had with him at some point, but no harm was done in the end. Cisco hit the panic button and Barry came to the rescue, quick thinking to phase the blood clot out of her artery. Right now, she's just grateful she'll get to have words with Julian. Or anyone. She swallows hard at the thought, sobered by it. But they have other matters at hand to deal with.
"So what did you find out, Barry? Did you find out who Savitar is?"
"No," Barry says shaking his head, a dip in his mood at the admission of his failure, "But I did get a tip about who helps put him away. He can be stopped. Dr. Tracy Brand helps create the Speedforce prison. All we need to do is find her a few years earlier than my future counterpart did and put Savitar away now, before he can hurt anyone."
"That's great."
"I know. I already told Iris and Joe before I came back here, they're looking up Dr. Brand as we speak. I took Savitar down in the future, we can do it again. Before. Whatever. Point is, he isn't gonna win."
Cisco isn't really paying attention at this point, he's looking at her chart, going over the patient checklist attached that she made for this kind of situation. She hadn't imagined herself being the patient, but it was designed for when she wasn't around. Since she designed it, she knows what's next.
"Can you stomach real food yet?"
"Sorry, the pain meds are still making me nauseous."
"Then you know what time it is - jello time," Cisco says with glee. He seems to enjoy it more than her, but then again he does like lime jellos, which is the only flavor they're left with most of the time given Barry's appetite for every other flavor and his frequent rate of injury. She makes a face as Cisco exits with a spring in his step.
Barry lumbers around the bed, looking stiff, and she wonders what injuries he sustained in the future he's not revealing so as to not bother her. Nothing too awful probably, yet it bugs her he would keep it from her. Based on his expression, there's something else bothering him too. He has a vaguely guilty look, the way his mouth tenses and he can't quite meet her eyes as he sits down in the chair beside her bed.
"You know, last night, I was so worried about doing it wrong," he says, indicating to her torso, "with phasing organic matter out of organic matter-"
"Can't say I've been called that before specifically, but don't worry, I don't take offense," she teases, hating how the mood shifts at the memory of the blood clot she threw unexpectedly.
"I... sorry. I couldn't think of it any other way. I was worried we were gonna lose you. I was trying to keep a clear head, just think of it like any other problem."
"Like a scientist?"
"Yeah."
"I understand, believe me I do. I've been where you were standing so many times. Trying to just breathe, to think, problem-shoot one of my best friends hurting right in front of me."
Barry flushes a little, rubbing the back of his neck at the reminder, looking sheepish about getting hurt so much. Hopefully Barry realizes she doesn't mean anything by it except to try to put him at ease over their now shared experience.
"I know full well it's not easy. But you came through," she continues, grateful he's come close enough she can reach out to touch his arm. "Even though you hadn't done it before, I knew you could. You saved me. You all saved me yesterday. You, Julian, Iris, Cisco. I wouldn't be here without you all looking out for me."
Barry stills, leaning forward with his arms bridged together resting on his knees. He lets out a deep sigh and she sees then how tense he is, how he's no less on edge about what happened than Cisco has been all day.
"I was so worried we were gonna lose you."
"I know, you said." She can't help but reach out to touch his arm again and his eyes snap to her, but there's something off there with how he's looking at her.
"What is it?"
Barry shifts in his seat and she senses he's holding back something – something he knows from the future surely. With her future held in so fine a balance between her powers and her fractured identity, she needs to know, practically more than anyone.
"What? Are you worried you'll change the future? I thought we wanted to do that."
She tries to tease a little, lighten his mood along with hers. But her fear filters through anyhow, and so she decides soon enough to drop the pretense, her voice raw as she asks, "What did you see, Barry?"
He gapes at her briefly, hesitation evident, but he doesn't deny seeing something to trouble him. Closing his mouth, lips set in a hard line that is worrying, the silence looms in the room and she thinks he won't tell her any more. Her stomach plummets at the possibility of yet another secret to box them in their places, how they so often end up alone with their burdens. Finally, he takes a deep breath and speaks.
"In the future... it came true, you became Killer Frost. You sided with Savitar."
The rush of the words, once he was past the first hurdle of her fate confirmed, makes it seems like he needs to say it, and there's the puff of Barry's astonishment there too as he expresses this strange statement. She doesn't think he can quite believe it and she wishes she could tell him Killer Frost wouldn't.
She doesn't understand it, so how can she refute it when this is an incomplete picture, when they don't know who Savitar is and what he could offer Killer Frost... She feels like there is more he's holding back, but she doesn't know if she wants to know now. That alone is enough to fuel her nightmares for days along with her near-miss. It makes her itch to ask Cisco to vibe her future again, even as she knows no good can come of it; it didn't last time.
"I'm trying to tell myself it won't happen. That future isn't our future, not anymore. I changed that," Barry says, growing agitated as he tries to justify his half-hearted optimism. This year has taken its toll on them; it's become so much harder to bounce back from each blow that sometimes it seems like she's not the only one who feels a shadow of her former self.
"But you're still worried, aren't you?"
He looks back at her with sad puppy dog eyes and she forgets about her own worry momentarily as she sees Barry take the weight of everything on his shoulders like he is prone to. This time there's nothing she can think to say that is going to make it better. She can't promise to him their fears won't become reality however much she wants to.
"I thought we'd saved you, but it isn't over yet, is it?" Barry asks but it's clearly a question he doesn't need an answer to, he already knows it's true. They're nowhere near done with the hard part, with changing anyone's fate.
The reason she's far from where they expect her to be stems from her reticence to talk about the struggle she's been facing. Denial had been infinitely easier. Only Julian, abrasive but astute, had dared question her and he hadn't wanted to rock the boat too much so even he hadn't asked exactly what was needed to properly deal with the situation. She'd wanted to spare Barry and Cisco and Iris from worrying more about her problems. No one would have wanted to hear what she ought to have been telling them, that her the abilities weren't out of mind the way they might have hoped but instead slumbering just underneath her skin in a fitful sleep.
"Whatever Frost is, she's a part of me. The dampening helps but she's never gone. I can always feel it there." Like a threat, she thinks, but she doesn't admit that to him. They all need hope now and she doesn't want to overstress her struggle, even as she confesses it is still there, not defeated like he'd thought it was.
"I'm okay though," she adds.
Barry looks to her seriously, a determination in his face. She worries about the cost of what he must be intent to do, what it will take away from everything else he needs to do, stretching him too thin.
"We're gonna try harder, to save you both. It has to be possible."
It's meant as a reassurance, and she smiles and nods, but it isn't as reassuring as it should be. Of course Barry believes it's possible. He's prone to believing in the improbable, where others only see impossibility. In their line of work, impossible isn't what it used to be, but she's much more worried at the improbability.
Can she be saved? If they save Iris and she hasn't turned into Killer Frost by the end of that fateful day, will that mean she's truly safe or simply deferred, a postponement of her fate? Is it inevitable?
Barry doesn't seem to pick up on her doubt. She's gotten fairly good at hiding her feelings this year, so maybe that shouldn't be surprising, nor disappointing – she doesn't want to worry him further.
"I think this would be where I'd hug you usually. Is that a good idea with you..." he asks, motioning to her wound.
She scrunches her face up in response as she quickly contemplates the pros and cons but sides on a cautious approach, a little sad to deny a hug. "Not really. High five's are out too, Cisco already asked."
He sidles closer to give her a gentle side hug she can't return. It's nice. It's something meaningful, that he tries. To reassure her, to comfort her. For now, at least, she has her friends. She hasn't pushed them away like she'd been trying to for so long since she'd first found out about her powers. Maybe it can be okay somehow.
Barry jumps up at a vibration from his pocket, a text message from either Iris or Joe, "Oh, we got a hit on Tracy. I need to -"
"Go. The quicker you find her, the sooner we can all rest easy."
She's left alone again with her thoughts in the medbay, wondering what is taking Cisco so long. Her suspicions are confirmed as he walks in not ten seconds later, that he'd been leaving her and Barry to themselves for a talk.
"What?" he asks as he comes in, lays down her spoon and pot on the table he swings around in front of her. Caitlin fixes Cisco with a look that she knows gets results.
Cisco more or less crumbles under her scrutiny but does a little one-shoulder shrug, deflecting it as much as he can.
"He mentioned he wanted to tell you something. About the future."
Cisco doesn't say anymore, but she knows he's seen the future too – can see glimpses further than he's looked so far, if he so chose - he must know what Barry meant to talk to her about and that itself is a chilling thought. She digs into the jello, distracted enough to mow it down without much hesitation. She might've been hungrier than she was expecting.
"What have you done to the real Caitlin Snow?"
Cisco's stares at her, then at his own pot. "Do you want this too?" he adds, quick to accommodate her possible appetite returned. At least he makes a better doctor than patient. She accepts it a tad bashfully but eager for more food all the same, no matter the flavor.
"If you didn't have a big ol' wound to prove you're the same Cait, I might think you'd been doppelgangered. Though, this still doesn't rule out an invasion of the body snatchers scenario, especially considering who we're..."
Cisco trails off there, because considering nefarious schemes Savitar might do to them is a little too close to home to joke about, even for him.
It's been almost nice having Cisco looking over her today, if she could ignore the boredom that came with being bed-bound. The nervous banter as he tried to keep everything light wasn't ideal but it made a change from the way he'd often looked at her before, the wariness inspired by the future she's supposedly destined to have. Sometimes it seems ridiculous to her and other times she sees it too, with an uncanny clarity to what she could be.
Ever since her injury, there'd been the small voice in her head saying she could use her powers to heal it. She could be up and about and useful to the team in a matter of seconds. The temptation to use her powers is very real. What has kept her from doing so is the memory of how Cisco looked at her when he found out about their predestined fight. Also how Julian had looked at in that interrogation room, in the warehouse, when she'd done so before and risked losing herself to the bitterness. Julian had since gotten over her metapower induced faux pas. He'd seen past it – she still isn't sure if he should. He may have more or less forgiven and forgotten but she can't. She has to hold onto that fear, to stop herself from giving in.
"I actually think I need more food," she says, apologetic. "I could order some myself?"
Her none too subtle eyeing up of her tablet on the other side of the medbay produces a sigh from her friend. Cisco had already caught her angling for her tablet earlier and 'scheming', as he put it, to get others visiting her to give it to her. No work while ill was the rule of the medbay and he was being stricter about it than she expected.
"And you'll put the tablet down the second you've finished ordering?"
She nods earnestly, and Cisco clearly isn't fooled for a second, but he hands it over anyway.
"I'll believe that when I see it.."
True to her promise, she orders Chinese, bringing up their favorites and remembering last minute to delete Barry's ¾ of the order they usually get since he's busy. But she does quickly check her email once it's done. The reply to Mercury Labs will only take a minute, two tops, except she needs to open a file to confirm some results, simply to look up a line or two, nothing serious...
"Caitlin! Don't think I wouldn't notice the updated timestamps," Cisco's voice booms from the other room.
Cisco appears, exasperated, and looking more tired than she'd realized. "You're such a bad patient."
He's thoughtful for a moment before he asks "Would you work if you were at home?"
"Possibly not?" she says, neither confirming or denying it. It's hard to say what she can keep to when work is the subject and she tends towards being a workaholic. "But enough about me, you mister, need to sleep," she admonishes.
"I don't see anyone else here who can look after you," Cisco points out, yawning right after. "Could you go home? Would that be such a bad idea?"
She takes a minute to consider it, more for his benefit than hers. If he insists on looking after her, they could do it at her house. There's more entertainment there at least.
"I've survived the first 24 hours fine. Chances are good I'm going to be okay. It would be nice to get into my own clothes and bed."
Cisco and her agree to a plan where he drives her home in her car so it's there for her to use when she's better and so he can babysit her at her place. The plan includes taking a monitor to hook her up to and alert him of any problems, which won't be comfiest, but considerably comfier than staying in the medbay. It seems a monitor is the only way he will be placated, his concerns soothed by the promise of concrete data to back him up. That way he can sleep in her guest bed, and if anything bad arises, he'll wake up and panic button Barry to her, much like the night before. She tries not to dwell too much on that.
Cisco insists on getting her into the basic push wheelchair. Not Wells' one - no one liked using that anymore after they associated it not only with Eobard but with Barry's broken back and Zoom. Plus, they weren't entirely sure it didn't have more secrets than the power source they'd discovered, no matter how many times Cisco went over it with a fine-toothed comb.
They get down to the parking garage and Cisco's car with minimal fuss once she stops protesting the wheelchair. Cisco insists that she stay seated as he loads the car with the monitor, so that he can help her into her seat once he's done.
"How do you think I'll get about at my place if I can't get out of a wheelchair on my own?" she tries to point out, but Cisco is having none of it. Her protests only trigger another round of complaining about how she's an awful patient and him threatening to not listen to her next time he's one to give her a taste of her own medicine or lack thereof.
He's unloading the bags he'd slung across the handles of the wheelchair when he swears, realizing he left her handbag downstairs, probably in the medbay somewhere. Cisco goes to fetch the bag, grumbling about car keys being necessary and how he should install high tech more convenient locks. He's also insisting as he walks away that she stay seated and not try anything on her own without him about. She's inclined to agree if only because the car is still locked.
So she concedes, sitting there bored as Cisco walks away and she hears the ding of the elevator arriving not long after that. With her phone in her hand, she's grateful she can watch cat videos or something else distracting. Though maybe she shouldn't watch anything that will make her laugh, or else she might pull her stitches. She's contemplating an appropriate search term when she gets this unnerved feeling cropping up as soon as the scrape of the elevator moving down to the lower levels is apparent.
Suddenly she's aware of Cisco's absence. There's a sense of deja vu making her panic and she doesn't know why until she recollects the reason – the same feeling from her run-in with Ronnie and Stein down here – the feeling of being watched. That and something else. The air has changed, it tastes different, smells different, charged ... Like a-
And then she's yanked from the wheelchair. Everything is a blur until she finds herself strung up, hands in heavy chains from the ceiling in a gloomy room, the cold metal of her restraints biting into her flesh. Her breath stops, choked at the abrupt pain that spreads out from her abdomen. The position stretches her uncomfortably, pulling at her stitches. She can feel the warm ooze of blood from her wound already and she's scared.
A spotlight is upon her, shining blindingly. Her only remedy letting her hair fall over her eyes to shield them. It does no good to help her see what's happening, there is only darkness surrounding her position. The deep black of the shadows that could be hiding anything she thinks, but then she spies an ethereal blue glow in her peripheral vision. The initially blurry lights advance on her and she knows from the horribly familiar pattern exactly who it is.
Savitar.
She feels the edge of cold creeping in with the fear that rises inside her and realizes she is not wearing her necklace.