A/N: This one shot assumes Caitlin didn't fully become Frost, but does have powers, and Savitar took the help offered to him, a little earlier than on the show so HR is still about. However, they still used the speedforce bazooka to free Jay, meaning the Speedforce storm happened just like at the end of S3 and Barry had to go away to stabilise it. Some minor spoilers for 4x01 included.

It's sort of angsty (also warning for PTSD mentioned), plus angry interactions, with eventual hurt/comfort-ness. More of a friendship/pre-ship piece but I do hope people enjoy.

Climbing The Walls

She tells herself she's okay, but there are times when she can't pretend for a second longer and it overwhelms her.

Barry is gone and everything is not okay.

Cisco's been going on missions with Wally lately, fielding the crimewave that's sprung up since people realised the Flash isn't around anymore, and when he's not out, he's working non-stop on a way to get Barry back. Iris is barely holding on, she'd tried to step up, helping coordinate with Wally and Cisco out there, but having Savitar skulking around is not helping her cope with the loss of Barry.

It's not helping any of them in truth. He looms in the background, his figure cut almost exactly like Barry from a distance, like he's haunting them. It's a painful tease; if he actually let them get close enough they'd be confronted with the evidence that he's not Barry. He's a broken shadow of a man, who barely interacts with the team now that his speed is gone. Losing his powers was the price of fixing the paradox and he resents them for it. Some days she sees the way Iris looks over to him and wonders if Iris resents him for being the one who got to stay, who has to play at Barry for them to keep up the pretense that he is alive and well enough.

HR's transmogrifier does its job to make him look like his former self – not that he uses it at the labs - and he turns up to CCPD dutifully doing the part-time work negotiated after they'd fabricated a medical setback to explain his abrupt change of persona. PTSD, surfacing years after either trauma they could legitimately pin it on – his mothers murder, the lightning strike. There was his fathers death too but that had been considered inexplicable, rather than the murder it was, because they couldn't risk tying Barry too closely to Zoom in case people cared to ask why. It's an irony that there's so much else that has happened to Barry unofficially, off the radar of what they could admit to Singh, and even more to Savitar, to actually explain it. The PTSD probably isn't even a lie at this point.

She tries to dampen her emotions, retain control, so she can keep her powers that way too. Even with tears brimming, threatening to fall any second, she attempts to modulate her breathing, counts to ten, then twenty – anything to stop herself from properly falling apart. If that happens she might have to get the necklace on in a hurry and she doesn't want to lose the progress she's made so far in staying in control for so long. It means something and she doesn't want to give it up, she needs to be strong, just like the others are trying to be as well.

As she takes a slightly stunted breath, she finally feels the tears well over, tracing down her cheeks. She takes another shaky breath and attempts to quell the urge to sob outright. That's when she hears the footsteps, relatively quiet but distinctive in the silence of the lab. She turns around to find Savitar striding through the door with an unusual level of intent, though she has no idea what he means to do, why this is when he chooses to come out of the darkness he's generally so keen on sticking to.

He stops on the other side of the lab bench from her and picks up one of Cisco's devices as if he's studying it, though only with vague interest, yet it's more interest than he's showing her. He is pointedly not looking at her and she wonders if he finds her crying unsettling. If he does, why is he here?

She knows Barry Allen so well but she's so far from understanding Savitar. Most of the time he engages people in conversation he puts everyone in a worse mood. It's hard to reconcile the man she knows – knew - with this version of him. The only thing Savitar seems to have in common with him so far is that, just like when she'd first met Barry, he brings out her anger. The difference is, this time, it isn't because she's worried about him.

"I miss him," she says, somewhat spitefully. He's chosen to be here, so if he can't deal with her being upset then she hopes he'll leave soon, let her be.

"And all you have is me," he replies, tipping his head to the side as he takes the time to scrutinise her visage, managing to catch her defiant glare and failing to react to it even an iota. He never seems to care about anyone except himself. "Ordinary, little, old, me," he continues with, bitterness definitely creeping into his voice. Despite her annoyance with his presence she doesn't miss how self-deprecating his words are, the implication he's second-best and he knows it.

She uses the back of her hand to wipe away the evidence of her weakness, not comfortable feeling vulnerable in front of him. She half-expects him to mock her too. Maybe that's why she pre-emptively strikes at him, questioning his motives instead.

"Do we have you? Do you want to be here?" she asks bluntly, diverting all her emotion into the frustration he so easily inspires. She can't let herself get too worked up about him either, but it's a welcome distraction from her grief for the time being.

"I don't have anywhere else to be," he says, going suddenly more sullen than before. She sees him clench his jaw in response to his own admission and somehow it feels like it pains him to confess that but she still finds it hard to sympathise given what she knows about him. It isn't like her to lack in sympathy – he's unique in that regard.

Ever since they'd reached out to him, he'd acted entitled, like they owed him for some future trespasses they would never even make anymore. They'd saved him and it appeared he thought it was the bare minimum they could do. Getting him to agree to anything else after that, to help them in return, had been such an uphill battle, only made fractionally easier by his transparent desire for his previous life back. She isn't sure if he's ever going to forgive them for taking his powers, let alone any of the other things he remembers from his timeline, and she hates they're being held accountable for actions they have no control over – wrongdoings that exist only in his head now.

His attitude makes her second-guess whether forgiving him is the right choice, but she still wants to believe in him because she sometimes, very occasionally, sees a hint of her friend in him, however briefly. When she thinks of everything he has been through it does cause her distress, theoretically. It's just that every time he opens his mouth, what she hears fail to feel like Barry; he's been too far twisted from the man in her memories. When he's in front of her - scowl on his face and ever ready to lash out at them for the hurt he perceives they've done, or will do - the rational part of her that says he's suffered, that she should be at least a little considerate, flies out of the window and her hackles are raised.

Today is no different. She's hurting, and she doesn't have the patience for his long nursed pain, nor is she willing to stand his adding to her more acute one. There is a touch of coldness that drives her to confront him, stalking around the lab bench to square up with him, hands on her hips and staring straight at him unrepentantly. She recognises the danger as she does it, and she quickly works to lock her icy fury away, turning the thoughts around and making sense of them under the guise of this being logical and a long time coming; something he ought to answer for, rather than his constant questioning of them.

"But you don't have to be here, and maybe you shouldn't be, unless you want to be. We chose you. Now it's your turn - do you choose us?"

She expects him to either let loose the start of a verbal volley between them, or to sulkily extract himself from the situation. He does neither.

She's stunned as she feels his arms close around her. He may not be fast anymore but it feels like it happens very quickly to her, rapidly enough her brain can't catch up with his gesture. The embrace is slightly awkward as she doesn't know what to say or do, until she lets herself relax a little, realising his movement is unexpectedly friendly; she's not under any threat like her mind has come to expect from him.

Everything she knows to be true says he isn't Barry Allen, but as she lets instinct take over and she hugs him back, blinking back fresh tears as she does, it feels so very much like she is hugging one of her best friends. He might not be the friend she remembers holding her like this, but this feels like the first step he has taken to move forward to being one, opening up the possibility they could be friends again some day. With the way he reacts to her habitual reassuringly stroking his back - tightening his embrace, tucking his face close against her hair - she honestly doesn't know which of them needed this more.

She scarcely hears what he whispers into her neck as they stand there clinging to each other, but she could swear it sounds like, "I've missed you."