Chapter 8
Caitlin doesn't sleep that first night at Cisco's.
When she'd been at Central City General, it was the noise that kept her up. The light that filtered in from the streets below, the sound of cars passing by, the loud voices of party-goers shouting into the night as they stumbled down the street. All of it seemed so different from the isolating silence she'd become accustomed to over the past three years.
But at Cisco's, the house nestled amongst the suburbs, far removed from the ever busy streets of downtown Central City, the silence hit her in a different way. It was too quiet, she thought. There was no babbling brook of water running through her space, lulling her into gentle sleep, perhaps one of the few comforts she'd had in her captivity.
The bed too felt big and unfamiliar, the sheets around her soft and warm and fragrant. In the darkness, the unfamiliarity of it all felt more suffocating than it felt comforting.
For a long time, she lay there, trying to will her body into sleep. Rationalizing to herself that she was safe now, she could afford to let her guard down. Instead, her mind supplied her with memories of Hunter and his ever-constant vigilance over her. The look in his eyes when he'd said they were the same, both full of darkness; it had been a look of pure conviction… and perverse longing... longing to be understood, to be loved… to be feared.
Feeling ready to throw up, Caitlin shoves her blankets away, swinging her feet over the side of the bed to touch down softly onto the floor. The wood beneath her feet is cool to the touch and for a second, she can almost imagine it's the cool metallic floor of the basement lab.
Shuffling into her slippers, she creeps from her room and down the stairs. Quietly, she eases open the front door, shutting it gently behind her as she steps onto the front porch.
She settles onto the front steps, shivering in the cool night air as a gentle breeze stirs. The street before her is silent in the pre-dawn. She'd always been an early riser but it wasn't often she allowed herself to bask in those peaceful moments before the rest of the city awakened, mind always looking ahead to her day, her projects, her patients.
Now, she allows herself that time. She sits, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the neighborhood slowly start to wake around her as the sky lightens.
Her mind wanders as she sits there, reflecting. It wasn't too long ago that her future had seemed so certain, so clear. She'd built a reputable career, she was respected in her field and by her peers at Mercury Labs. She'd found love, lifelong friends and, when she pictured her future, she envisioned a family with Ronnie.
How quickly it had all fallen apart.
It always did.
Shutting her eyes, she lets out a shaky breath as uncertainty floods her system. She didn't know what the future held for her now. But, as she opens her eyes, she resolves not to let it scare her. She'd lost enough time as it was.
This was a new beginning. A second chance.
A new day, she thought wryly, glancing to the east where the sun was beginning to rise.
By the time Cisco finds her, the sun has long risen, creeping its way across the morning sky. She turns, hearing the front door open behind her.
"Hey," Cisco greets, closing the front door gently behind him. He hands her a mug, settling himself beside her.
The smell of coffee, strong and sweet, wafts up to greet her and somehow she knows, even without tasting it, that Cisco still remembers how she takes it. When she takes a sip, she smiles, her hunch proven correct.
"How'd you sleep?"
"I didn't," she replies. Cisco nods, seeming to have expected that response.
"You going to be okay today, on your own?"
Last night, Cisco had started apologizing, lamenting the fact that he hadn't been able to get time off to help her reacclimate. Caitlin had waved away his apologies, appreciating the sentiment but finding the notion ridiculous nonetheless.
She knew that healing… moving on from what she'd experienced, it would be a long and arduous process with many setbacks. A journey she could hardly do alone and she didn't mean to. Do it alone, that is.
But she didn't care to be treated with kid gloves either, every conversation a delicate dance of walking on eggshells. She'd been through that before, after her father's death and again, after Ronnie. She'd hated it.
This time, she thought, it would be different. She refused to be ruled by her grief, to be defined by the time she'd been robbed of and denied. She'd thought about those things only far too often, in the past three years.
"I'll be fine, Cisco. I promise," she muttered, nudging him with her shoulder. He glanced at her, lips quirking into a lopsided smile.
"There's that headstrong personality I missed," he teased. Caitlin laughed, leaning into his side.
They finish their coffee in companionable silence, grateful for the other's presence.
Despite any initial feelings of guilt he'd felt over looking through Caitlin's belongings, Barry admittedly struggles when the time comes to return them.
He'd already packed away most of Caitlin's things, determined to swing by Cisco's place before it got too late. But when he comes across the photo album, he can't help but pull it onto his lap, looking through the pictures one last time.
Barry was glad, of course, to be returning Caitlin's possessions to their rightful owner but in a way, their absence signaled an end to the connection he felt with the case, Caitlin's belongings had given Barry the opportunity to get to know her. To understand her life after high school, understand all that she'd lost and suffered and been denied.
Barry had found echoes of himself, his life in her.
He wasn't keen on losing that connection… though he realized it was tragically one-sided.
Sighing, he tucks the photo album into the box and finishes packing the rest, careful to leave her engagement ring resting atop the album as he'd first found it.
By the time he's finished packing and is ready to head over to Cisco's, it's four in the afternoon. Central City's streets are bustling with people, despite the heat that rises off the streets in a simmering haze. It makes him glad for the air-conditioning in his car.
When he arrives at Cisco's place, he brings the boxes out from the car and sets them beside the front door. He knocks and waits. A minute passes, the house inside silent and still. He knocks again, brows furrowing. He'd asked Cisco just yesterday if today was a good day to come by.
A few seconds trickle by, Barry detecting no movement in the house until finally, he hears a voice call out, footsteps coming down the stairs.
The front door swings open, revealing Caitlin. With sleep-mussed hair and the left side of her face marked with pillow creases, she looks soft and vulnerable, yet another side to her he'd never expected to see.
"Barry, hi," she breathes, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Sorry, I was napping and didn't hear the doorbell ring the first time."
"Sorry for waking you, I just came by to return your stuff," Barry says, nodding his head towards the boxes piled next to the front door.
Her gaze follows his, staring incredulously at the small pile. A laugh bubbles out of her, humorless and sharp.
"My entire life fits in 7 boxes," she observes quietly, more to herself than Barry. He doesn't know how to respond to that. Or rather, he has plenty to say in response, he just doesn't know whether he has a right to tell her what he thinks.
When Caitlin glances back up at him, eyes carefully scrutinizing his face, he shifts uncomfortably.
"Although I guess it's probably for the best, if it helped you find my clues easier," she continues, her fingers picking at a fray in her cuffed shorts. She pauses, seeming to debate something with herself.
"Would you mind joining me on a walk?"
Barry's heart leaps into his throat. He nods, fearing whatever mess would come out of his mouth if he were to respond with words.
Together, they move the boxes indoors and then Caitlin heads upstairs to grab her shoes and Cisco's spare keys. They set out side by side, Barry following Caitlin's lead.
Around them, the neighborhood is full of life, kids splashing around in inflatable pools, people gardening, sunbathing or simply enjoying the fresh air from their front porch. Out of the corner of his eye, Barry can see Caitlin taking it all in, how she draws in on herself almost unconsciously.
Social withdrawal, Barry thinks. Common for people with PTSD.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, partly to distract her from their surroundings but mostly out of concern.
She turns to him, frowning. She opens her mouth, her lips beginning to shape words that never come. After a moment of silence, she tries again.
"You know that feeling you get when you look up at the night sky and remember there's an entire universe out there? How small and insignificant you feel, how humbled you are to be a part of it all… Reintegrating feels a bit like that."
She falls silent after that but Barry can sense she's not done yet but rather, simply gathering her thoughts.
"I knew that things would be different, coming back. I'm different," she continues. "But knowing it and actually seeing it, seeing how the world continued on without me, how it failed to stop simply because my life did… it makes me feel small and insignificant all over again. I mean, you always hear it: the world waits for no one but you never really think it's going to apply to you."
She pauses, biting her lip as she blinks excess moisture from her eyes. "But for the first time in years, I'm no longer staring at glass walls. This morning, I got to drink coffee with my best friend. Right now, I'm talking to someone who isn't that monster."
She inhales sharply at her own words, flinching as she remembers Hunter. Her eyes shift to him and suddenly, her hand is on his wrist, tugging him to a stop beside her. Her voice breaks halfway as she chokes out the rest of her words. "All of that is because of you, Barry. You saved my life."
Barry's shaking his head before she can even finish. The words are poised on his lips but they fall silent as she cuts him off.
"You did. I'd lost faith in hoping I would ever get out of that basement. You say that you would have never been able to solve my case without all the clues I left behind but Barry... you cared enough to look for them. You aren't the first person to have been assigned to my case."
It's a guess, Barry knows. She can't possibly know that but she says it with such conviction, eyes burning with so many emotions, that Barry almost believes she is privy to such information.
He wipes at his eyes with his free hand, touched by her words. She couldn't possibly know how much it eased his heart to hear them, after weeks of beating himself up for failing her, failing his parents, the DeSantis family and countless others in his career.
Her thumb rubs a soothing circle onto the delicate skin of his inner wrist. It's an anchor, her touch, rooting him in reality even as his emotions threaten to pull him inwards and under. It reminds him of their very public surroundings.
Clearing his throat, he swallows the lump in his throat and averts his eyes, looking at anything but her. Her hand falls away from his wrist and as they turn to continue their walk, he can see her brushing tears from her own eyes.
Small and insignificant…
How could anyone who felt so real, so alive, even through the tiniest window afforded by her possessions, ever feel small?
He must speak the words aloud because suddenly, Caitlin is staring at him, expression unreadable. Feeling the need to explain himself, Barry steels himself. He didn't think he'd ever have to discuss this with her.
He'd expected her to just move on with her life, forget about him, the stranger who'd solved her case, the man she'd gone to school with once upon a time. After all, they weren't friends. They were simply two people brought together by circumstance.
"I became a CSI so I could help people, solve the unsolvable cases. Bring closure to the victims and their families and loved ones. It's not an easy job but usually, I can maintain that professional distance… With your case, I couldn't," Barry admits quietly.
When he glances at Caitlin, trying to gauge her reaction, her eyes are bright and questioning. Why?
"I think part of it was the fact that I actually knew you. I remember you, remember our interactions in high school. You were always so bright and witty and you laughed at my dumb science jokes…"
He chuckles and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Caitlin smile. He pauses for a moment as they come across a bench outside of a local park, Caitlin tugging him toward it. Once they're settled, side by side, Caitlin looking at him expectantly, he continues.
"Looking through your belongings, seeing how your life turned out… it felt real to me, personal in a way that other cases haven't been. It was almost like I really did know you."
"But this case also reminded me of my mother's. I was only 11 when she was murdered. They never caught the guy but they arrested my dad on suspicion of murder. I've been trying and failing to solve her case, to get the evidence needed to exonerate him, ever since."
By the end, his voice has become a whisper, a choked confession that crawls up his throat and scrapes past his teeth unwillingly.
He stares at his hands, clenching them into fists as he remembers the frustration, the helplessness he'd felt these past few weeks. The helplessness he still feels after 18 years.
Caitlin's hand enters his line of vision, soft fingers reaching for his. She opens up his right fist gently, smoothing her fingers over his palm before slotting them into the spaces between his. She gives his hand a soft squeeze and when he glances up at her, confused, she smiles encouragingly.
"Thank you for telling me that."
Barry nodded, eyes flickering over her face. The pillow creases had long faded, leaving her cheek looking soft and smooth. She'd taken out the butterfly stitches too, leaving the angry scar on her forehead on display.
Now that she sat before him, talking to him when he'd expected nothing of the sort, he could admit to it. That thought he'd shoved far into the back of his head at the start of the case, the one that nudged at him everytime he caught sight of her face in pictures, because he knew he'd feel guilty for even thinking about it while she remained missing.
The thing is, Caitlin Snow had only grown more beautiful since high school.
For a second, just a second, he wishes for more. Just as he'd wished for her friendship in high school, Barry wishes she were a part of his life now, he didn't care in what capacity. He just wanted to know more about this woman, this woman who had been through hell and forged her own escape, who had known loss as he had, who sat here comforting him when it ought to be the other way around.
He squeezes her hand in return and then pulls away, shoving his impossible wish into a box and locking it away forever. She owed him nothing.
"What will you do now?" he asks.
She turns from him, turning her attention back to the streets. With a rush of air, she replies, "I'm not sure yet. It's kind of overwhelming, starting anew."
Barry nods. She peers at him curiously. "What about you? What will you do now that you've solved my case? Moving on to the next?"
Barry flushes, scratching at the back of his head as he remembers the deal he'd made with Captain Singh.
"I uhh.. I'm actually taking a leave of absence from CCPD. The Captain was concerned about the workload I was taking on," he explains sheepishly.
Caitlin grins. "Bit of a workaholic, huh? Me too."
Barry chuckles lowly, thinking back to all those long nights he'd spent in the lab, wondering if Caitlin ever loathed going home to an empty apartment. If she ever stayed at work, long after everyone else had gone home. He supposed now, he had his answer.
Overhead, the clouds shift, the sun bearing down on them through the leaves. Caitlin makes a pleased noise, stretching out her legs before her, watching in contentment as light and shadow sway across them.
He watches her silently, enjoying how peaceful she looks. When she turns to him suddenly, eyes bright, he flushes, embarrassed at having been caught staring. If she notices, she doesn't comment on it.
"I was never a big outdoors person growing up but now, I feel like I could spend the rest of my life outside and never get tired of it." She smiles, cocking her head. "Is that weird?"
Barry shakes his head, feeling more fondness for her in that moment than he has any right to feel. "Makes perfect sense."
"What will you do on your leave of absence?" she inquires, gaze steady and appraising. He shrugs, imagining a long two weeks of lounging around the loft, eating pizza and listening to true crime podcasts. He doesn't tell her that though. Instead, his response is merely, "I'm not sure."
Without missing a beat, she leans in, her words soft and quiet in the space between them. "Well then, Barry Allen. I have a proposition for you. How would you like to be my guide in getting to know the new and improved Central City?"
Barry blinks, dumbfounded.
"What about Cisco?" he asks, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears.
"He couldn't get time off from work." She explains and then pauses, lips pursed in thought. "I refuse to spend all my time at home but I'd rather not be alone in the city. It's been a long time since I've been around so many people, so much noise. And… if it's alright with you, I'd like to know more about Barry Allen, the person he is today. I'd like to be your friend."
Barry can feel the uneven rhythm of his pulse against his ribcage, hear the sound of his own breaths loud and jarring in the sudden quiet that follows. He stares at her in disbelief, the words failing to register.
I'd like to be your friend.
Caitlin's face swims in his vision. He thinks of the few memories he has of her from high school: Caitlin laughing at his jokes from across the black marble countertop in the labroom, catching a glimpse of her in that stunning blue dress at prom, that one time she'd come to school with a streak of white in her hair.
I'd like to be your friend.
How he wished he'd had the courage to utter those exact words, all those years ago.
With his lungs feeling like they could burst from the pressure, Barry exhales.
"I'd like that."
Note: I'm backkkk! And we're nearing the end of this story. I know its been a while but I swear the updates for the last two chapters will not take so long. Thank you again for all your continued support, drop a comment and let me know what you thought of this chapter! Until next time xx