Chapter 3
Barry's feet pounded against the concrete, his blood pumping along to the rhythm of the music, a staccato of noise amplified in his ears. His problems drifted far behind him, kites on a string, harmless on their own but always at risk of being struck by lightning.
He'd needed this, the freeing feeling that came with running. Barry didn't really mind the feeling of the summer hot sun bearing down on him, it didn't compare to the feeling of the wind on his face, his arms, his legs. It didn't register, not like the beads of sweat he could feel rolling down his back, making his shirt cling to his body. Not like the ache in his legs, muscles still twitching from the adrenaline.
As he ran, he took in the wheat fields to either side of the road, bright and golden, stalks dancing against a backdrop of cloudless blue skies. In the distance, he could see the windmills, blades turning and turning in the air. It reminded him of that small town from his childhood, the one they'd broken down near on their way to science camp.
He keeps running until the mills fall far behind and the oceans of gold come to an end. The road is silent and still and for some odd reason, when he finally stops, he gets the strangest urge to just lay down on it and stare up at the clouds.
The thought comes unbidden to him, making him flinch. Had Caitlin seen any clouds in the past three years?
In the days since his visit to Cisco, Barry had found himself filled to the brim with pent-up frustration. With no new forthcoming information from Cisco about Caitlin's research, he found himself once again at roads-end
In an act of desperation, he'd requested the initial letter of contact, the one that had blown Caitlin's case wide open again. He knew, objectively, that the lab had already run every possible test but he couldn't trust that they hadn't overlooked something. Not when Caitlin's life, her freedom, depended on it. When the results inevitably proved what he'd feared (they revealed nothing more than what the original lab results had), Barry knew it was time to get out of the office.
Joe would have dragged him out anyways. He and Eddie had been complaining that Barry was getting too fixated on this case. Still, they hadn't gone to Singh's to get him removed from the case.
He thought back to the letter, the hastily scrawled cry for help, each letter written in different strokes of ink, sometimes blue and sometimes black, as if Caitlin had composed it in stolen seconds throughout her captivity. Her fingerprints had been found all over the letter and she'd even gone as far as leaving strands of her hair in the ziplocked baggie they'd received.
The baggie itself had been found floating through a small stream, picked up by some couple on a hike. It seemed like such a big leap of faith for Caitlin, hoping her only cry for help would fall into the hands of some well-meaning citizen who would, in turn, contact the authorities…
Except it had paid off.
And yet, Barry felt no more closer to solving the case than the first officer on the case had been three years ago. The stream itself wasn't particularly helpful, so many offshoots and sources, smaller streams feeding into it until it eventually joined the Central City reservoir.
Barry had spent far too many hours on Google Maps, painstakingly trying to trace back possible routes.
A loud honk startled Barry from his musings, the driver yelling at him to get off the road. He apologized quickly, stepping off the road. Digging into his pocket, he fished out his phone, squinting at the 4 missed calls from Joe and 3 texts from Iris.
He checks his texts first, huffing at Iris' demands that he come to eat dinner with them at the house (or else she was coming over to drag him from the lab). He texts her back rather than calling Joe, telling her to save him a place at the table. With a sigh, he begins the long run back, the beginning notes to Isak Danielson's somber 'Ending' filling his ears.
When Barry arrives at the West home, Cecile is in the kitchen, directing Joe as he finishes up the potato salad. In the dining room, Eddie and Iris are setting the table, Jesse and Wally on the couch watching highlights from one of the World Cup matches.
"Hey!" Iris beams, looking up from her task, "There you are. What took you so long?"
Barry flaps a dismissive hand. "I was out on a run and I had to get washed up."
Joe pokes his head out of the kitchen, pointing at Barry approvingly. "Good. It's about time you got out of that lab and got some space from that case."
"Barry's working cases now?" Wally asked, turning his attention from the tv quickly.
"No," Barry interjects before Joe can speak, "Uh, it's just that I knew the girl so Captain Singh felt that would bring some comfort to the family."
Iris cocked her head, brown eyes wide and inquisitive, lips pursed.
"Did she go to school with us?"
Cecile cuts in then, bringing in the salad bowl and firmly shutting down any kind of shop talk. "You can discuss it after dinner. Food is ready."
Relieved to have been spared from answering too many questions, Barry follows Cecile into the kitchen quickly, maneuvering around her.
"Where's Joanie?" Barry asks, washing his hands at the sink.
"Some meeting for the club she chairs," Cecile replies, smiling at Barry over her shoulder. She pauses, her smile faltering as she scrutinizes him. "You okay? You look a little tired."
Barry shrugs, a wry smile on his lips.
Bracing himself on the countertop behind him, he sighed, closing his eyes, pinpricks of light appearing in sharp bursts against the black of his eyelids.
"What do you do when you're stuck on a case?"
The kitchen fell silent as Cecile considered his question, Barry trying to calm the racing thoughts in his head. A very small part of him, deeply frustrated and so so incredibly tired, wanted to cry. He opened his eyes, blinking quickly to get rid of the moisture that had begun to collect, Cecile watching him quietly.
"I step away from it and come back with fresh eyes." She paused and stepping forward, she rested a hand on Barry's shoulder. "It won't do your Caitlin any good if you aren't taking care of yourself first."
Barry releases a deep breath and nods, meeting Cecile's concerned gaze evenly.
"It also helps to familiarize yourself with the client's personal effects. People have the uncanny habit of leaving pieces of themselves lying around."
Barry gaped. Why hadn't it occurred to him before? Caitlin's possessions were just sitting in a box at Cisco's. He could ask Cisco for permission to examine them and get answers from the one person who actually had them.
Cecile pats his shoulder reassuringly, leading him into the dining room where everyone else has settled into their seats.
Dinner is a loud affair, as it usually is, everyone lost in their own conversations, the laughter and warmth pushing away Barry's troubles. Joanie joins them halfway through, bringing a box of leftover brownies and muffins with her from her club meeting.
Afterwards, Jessie suggests a board game, an idea Eddie immediately takes up and within minutes, they've set themselves up at living room table, Joe, Joanie and Wally joining them while Cecile keeps the peace. Barry takes the opportunity to slip out for some fresh air.
He finds the North Star easily enough, years of stargazing with his dad coming back to him. A lot of people believed Polaris to be the brightest star in the night but Barry knew that in reality, it only ranked about 50 in brightness. The rest of the Little Dipper was less visible, all the light pollution from the street and the city nearby making it near impossible to make them out.
He doesn't hear the door swing open behind him but he sees the light that spills out onto the grass before him, hears Eddie's laugh filter out from the living room, bright and loud.
"Hey," Iris calls out softly, settling beside him on the steps of the front porch.
He doesn't respond, ignoring her gaze as she turns to him.
"Talk to me. What is it about this case?"
Barry grimaces, something acrid and bitter building in his throat.
"I thought I could do this, find Caitlin, close her case… but I can't. I never could," he admits quietly.
"Because of your dad?"
Barry twitches, only slightly resentful of the fact that she knows him so well. Still, he nods sharply under her watchful gaze.
"I couldn't solve my dad's case. I still can't… and it's been 18 years. Caitlin's been missing for three years. What if-" he cut himself off, closing his eyes as a torrent of visions came to him. Visions of a future in which he failed to find Caitlin or found her too late. "What if I fail her too? What if something happens to her because I wasn't fast enough?"
Iris sighed, shuffling closer to him, her hand reaching out to grasp his. Her hand is warm and soft in his, small and familiar despite the years. He remembers how they used to fall asleep on the couch together, after Barry had come to live with the Wests, hands clasped between them.
"I don't believe that. Caitlin's case isn't like your dad's and she's still out there, fighting, helping the CCPD solve her case," Iris reasoned gently. "Besides, I have it on good authority that you, Barry Allen, save people. You changed our lives when my dad took you in. For the better."
Barry doesn't know how to respond to that.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Iris' face fall, a frown crinkling the smooth skin between her brows. She opens her mouth to speak and then hesitates, closing it again. Shaking his hand, she stands, pulling him up with her.
"Come on. Let's go watch Eddie lose at Monopoly."
Bright white lights flood the room, the overhead lights turning on as the automatic timer signals the start of the hour, illuminating finger-smudged glass walls and the lab beyond it.
8:00 am. Or was it 7?
Perhaps it wasn't even morning at all.
The babbling brook that runs through the enclosure is loud and cheerful, taunting the prospect of freedom as it comes through and leaves, hopefully into the wild. It'd been weeks now since the letter, sealed in its little baggie, had floated out through the crevice at the bottom of her cell. Months of painstaking planning just to write those few words with no guarantee that the letter would ever even see the light of day.
Day. It'd been so long since she'd breathed fresh air, felt the wind in her hair, felt the warmth of the sun on her skin. Sometimes, when the ventilators overhead whirred on, puffing air into the small of her room, she'd stand on her cot and tip her face to them, imagining she was standing on a tall mountain, where nothing and no one could harm her except nature itself.
But those were on good days. The days when she pushed herself to exercise, to tend to the plants inside her cell. The days she let herself hope that someday, this nightmare would be over.
Today was not such a day.
Today, the grooves she'd scratched into the glass with a nail from her bed frame in her earliest days, before it'd been confiscated, stared back at her, endless and ever-multiplying. The lumpy cot beneath her made her ache for her own bed, the paltry supply of reading material made her long for all her favorite books. She missed coffee, good coffee, and her laptop and her lab. She missed everything about her life and the fact that she'd missed out on three years of it made her angry. It made her want to scream until every brittle emotion, every sharp burst of fear from the past three years coalesced into shards and became a weapon.
Her eyes turned to the camera in the corner, always watching, always recording.
Anger was going to help her make it of here, help or no help.
NOTE: So this chapter was mainly a filler, just to really get into Barry's headspace and then introduce Caitlin's situation (which, if anyone watches The OA on Netflix, is inspired off that!)