Thanks for all of your reactions to the last chapter! I was definitely waiting for that one for a long time.

Now, an extra-long chapter today, and one more after that!

Enjoy!

Barry had been staring at a cold gray expanse for minutes before he realized that he was awake. When the awareness did hit him, he sat up slowly, stiffly. Everything, even the dull pain that had sprouted in his body, still seemed eerily detached.

The gray walls of the room he was in matched the gray floor. Gray cement floor. Gray cement walls. Cold. Though not cold enough to produce the level of shivers he now experienced.

Even though the place felt awfully foreboding, something out of his nightmares of General Eiling or Zoom's lair, he couldn't quite bring himself to be scared. Still, he dazedly watched a fly circle the one yellow light in the ceiling and wondered who it was who had taken him and when it would be his time to die. There would be no rescue attempt, he was sure. Not after what had happened in the cortex.

However, when the heavy lock clicked and the door squealed open, the face that appeared wasn't menacing, or even angry. It was Joe. And he looked more exhausted than he had in years.

"You're awake, good." Joe stepped into the room and shut the door behind him but didn't make a move closer. "How do you feel?"

Barry swallowed thickly. "Where am I?"

"A temporary metahuman detainment cell at Iron Heights." Joe never had been one to linger on unneeded questions. "As soon as you appeared in the streets with Eliza, Cisco started feeding me your tracking info. I was lucky enough to catch you with the Boot as you left STAR."

Barry flinched, tried to pretend it was because of the fresh pain in his leg.

"Right, probably don't want to be reminded of the name Cisco now," Joe said, with the air of someone who was absolutely going to remind him.

"How is he?"

"About as well as you'd expect." Which answered precisely nothing. "You screwed up big time, son."

"I know."

"Good." Joe's gaze lingered on him—Barry could feel it, even though he'd averted his eyes long ago. "Listen, I know it's not entirely your fault, so I've convinced the DA to let you off the hook this time. Told her you were…possessed. You're lucky it was me who got you."

"You should keep me here."

"Maybe," Joe said. "But I also think the best place for you to heal is with friends." What friends? "Besides, that mask won't stay on long in Iron Heights." He gestured at Barry's costume, which was still drawn up over his eyes. "Like I said, lucky it was me. Anyway, Caitlin's here. She'll drive you back to STAR."

Barry's throat grew so thick he could hardly suck in breath. But he nodded. Silence. Joe let out a heavy breath that could have been a sigh, then exited the room.

Another minute passed before the door opened again, this time quieter. The footsteps into the room were also gentler, more hesitant. They paused in the doorway, perhaps waiting for him to lift his head. He didn't, so they came closer.

"I'm just going to give you a quick look-over and then we can go, okay?"

He didn't respond. Caitlin waited. Then reached for him.

"I treated your leg when Joe brought you in—fractured tibia from the Boot, and the speed you were going—seems like it's healing nicely." Her hand ghosted over his forehead, urging his face up, but he kept his eyes down. "Also mild abrasions on your face from hitting the concrete, though those should heal quickly as well. A concussion, though nothing to worry about."

Medical talk. Her default. That fact alone clued Barry into the fact that she was still shaken, still lacking the personal confidence beneath that hardened exterior.

"Look into the light."

She had produced a pen light, which she now shone into his eyes, forcing him to at last look up. She checked his pupils thoroughly before clicking it off. In the space that followed, they finally made eye contact, but no words could broach the space. He noticed, guiltily, that she had a large bruise and a butterfly bandage on her forehead from when he'd thrown her backward into the table.

Finally he looked away.

"I'm going to drive you back, alright? I don't think you should be running about on that leg just yet."

Wordlessly he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Now that he was standing, the world felt a bit more solid, and the jolts in his left leg were more noticeable. Caitlin kept one hand on his arm, perhaps as support, or perhaps to keep him from running away again. Either way, he was glad for it.

Together they limped out to the parking lot. Caitlin didn't even attempt small talk, taking cues from his wordlessness, though she did interject a few mild comments about the weather when Barry became too fixated on the stares leveled at him by the guards at the entrance to the prison.

While he couldn't necessarily call the car ride chilly, it certainly didn't alleviate his uneasiness. When they pulled into the STAR parking lot and Caitlin helped him limp to the door, Barry finally broke the silence that had permeated the space between them for fifteen minutes.

"Are you okay?"

"Don't worry about me," Caitlin said.

"I am."

In response, Caitlin squeezed his arm.

The building felt stagnant, like it had been thrown in aspic since Barry's rampage the previous night. Their footsteps sounded muffled, and the hallway still smelled vaguely of heat.

When they rounded the corner, Barry froze. At the computer bank stood Cisco, who looked up suddenly at the noise. He and Barry stared at one another across the expanse, statuesque. Caitlin released Barry's arm.

"I'll be in the medical bay," she said loudly, so both Barry and Cisco could hear. "I'm going to prep some lines to get you re-hydrated."

Barry murmured his acknowledgement, and Caitlin scurried away. Cisco kept staring.

Barry swallowed. He was suddenly very aware of a twitching muscle in his leg, the moistness on his palms beneath his gloves. His Flash suit was sticky, constricting. Self-consciously, he reached up and finally removed his mask. Cisco looked away.

"I…I don't know what to say." Barry leaned to the side to ease up on the pressure on his leg. "I'm not sure an apology is good enough."

"Mm." Cisco, gaze still turned down, began shuffling through papers.

"What do you need?" Barry tried again, desperate. "I can bring you pizza from Keystone, or…or those churros you like? Alcohol? Maybe that's better?"

Cisco tucked the new stack of paper close to his chest. "It's not about what I need, is it? It's about what you need. What you need so desperately you'll do anything to get it. Right?"

On that, he turned on his heel and walked stiffly from the room. The move was like a slap to the face.

In Cisco's place, Wells stepped through the doorway with an expression on his face that told Barry he had heard everything.

"Welcome back, Mr. Allen. Seems you've had quite the night."

"I don't need to hear this," Barry said, limping to a chair and sinking heavily into it.

"No, I think you do." Wells strode forward and took Cisco's place at the computer bank. "I don't think you've ever needed to hear anything more."

"I know I screwed up."

"Good. What did I tell you? What did I warn you specifically against?"

Barry leaned forward, put his head in his hands. As much as he felt the instinct to lash back, to defend himself as he usually did against Wells' remarks, he couldn't. Because Wells was right. He deserved every word of it.

"What do I do now?" Barry said. "How do I possibly make this right?"

"I'm not sure you get to ask that." Wells' lips pressed together in a thin line. "Ramon is going to need time to heal. I know you think you're better than time, than slowness, but I guess you're just going to have to suck it up this round."

Barry said nothing, just pressed the heel of his hand harder to his forehead. Wells' footsteps echoed out of earshot. A moment later, they were replaced by Caitlin's.

"Are you alright?"

"Does it matter, honestly?" Barry said, trying desperately to stave off the headache that had flared behind his eyelids. He took a breath. "Did you hear all of that?"

"Mm." Something knocked against his arm, and he looked up blearily to find Caitlin offering him a glass of water. He accepted it gratefully but realized as he took the glass how badly his hands were shaking. "I won't lie, this isn't going to be easy. You're going to need to stay here for a bit. So we can keep an eye on you." Then she added quickly: "And help you."

"Good," said Barry. He chugged his water and grimaced. "But there's one place I need to go first."

Caitlin stopped the van in the alley behind Jitters. The same alley they'd been in when General Eiling had tried to kidnap Ronnie. When Caitlin and Cisco had extracted Barry from danger while metal spikes were embedded in his chest.

That past seemed so far away. They were separate people. The Barry of then had been helped so easily by Caitlin and Cisco; now he wasn't sure his friends would be so ready to extend a hand. In a way, he was again lying in the cold of that alley with spikes in his chest, though this time it was not Eiling who put them there, but himself.

"Are you sure about this?" Caitlin asked as he extracted himself from the passenger seat and opened the door.

"It's something I need to do," said Barry. "I'll be back in a second." He paused. "Not…literally. But soon. Soon."

Caitlin gave him one more skeptical look, but his mind was made up. He slammed the car door shut behind him and turned his back on it. Then he took a long, deep breath, adjusted his mask, and started running.

The small burst of speed sent a chill down his spine, reawakening the part of him that had taken over the day before, but the run was deliberately short enough that he didn't have time to dwell on it. Central City Picture News was just a few blocks down from Jitters—close enough for him to almost observe his self-imposed rule of No Speed, but just far enough that he could make a Flash-like entrance.

This time he flashed back to his first disastrous confrontation with Zoom, which had found him dangling here at the front of the news station, as good as dead. The gasps now were similar, as were the rustlings of dozens of people reaching for phones, video cameras. He planted himself at the front, exactly where Zoom had stood a month ago, and blinked into those cameras again.

"I have something I would like to say."

Out of the crowd, Iris stepped forward, her face questioning in a way that none of the others were. He so desperately wanted to ignore her, but he used her instead as an anchor point. The glare of the camera lenses around her, the blinking red lights, told him that all eyes were focused on him.

"To the people of Central City," he began, "I would like to issue a sincere…apology."

Even as he swallowed it, the word tasted bitter. But also not strong enough. Not right.

"The altercation between myself and the metahuman known as Trajectory is one I deeply regret, and I am sorry to everyone who was present at the scene."

He picked his words carefully, not wanting to stumble or come off insincere.

"Listen," he tried again, taking a step forward. The reporter closest to him stepped back, pupils blown with fear. Barry's blood ran cold. "You have every right to be afraid of me. What happened out there, it was…unforgivable."

A reporter near the back raised a hand hesitantly. "Mr…Flash, sir. Was this Trajectory an evil metahuman?"

"No, I…" Barry's fingers twitched. "I don't think that's the right question. We've been divided so much on good and evil metahumans, when those distinctions simply aren't the case. Trajectory did some awful things, including threaten the lives of people close to me. But yesterday, when I confronted her, she was on her way to being reformed."

"So why did you attack her?"

This voice, marginally more emboldened, sounded from a place near Iris. Despite the proximity, Barry could no longer bring himself to look at her.

"I was acting irrationally. I never should have hurt her, or endangered the civilians at the scene."

"Were you mind-controlled?"

Barry thought back to Bivolo, what it had felt like to be whammied, what it had felt like to watch the news reports the next day. This was, undoubtedly, worse.

"No," he said quietly. "Just driven by a lot of fear, and a lot of anger. Like I said, we can't make those distinctions so easily. I am ashamed of the actions I took yesterday, but they were my own. So, to the people of Central City, I'm sorry. I am going to try to be better. I will be better. Because you don't deserve anything less."

The twitching in his fingers was becoming too persistent to bear, so he flashed away before any other questions could be lobbed his way.

Once back in the STAR van, he let out a huge sigh and pressed himself back into the leather. In the driver's seat, Caitlin had the news pulled up on her phone. She shut it off at his arrival and put the phone away, giving him a silent nod that told him she had seen everything. And that maybe, maybe, this was an acceptable first step. He buried his restless fingers beneath his legs and tried to focus on the hum of the car engine.

"Hey, Barry," Caitlin said as they stepped out of the van at STAR labs. "Hold on. I want to do some more tests, okay? We'll figure out some way to help you through these withdrawals."

So she'd noticed. He tucked his now-vibrating hands behind his back and nodded. Sweat collected at the nape of his neck. "Fine. I'll be inside."

The pounding of his heart, the way it stuttered unnaturally with the trembling in his limbs, terrified him. As did the deep, deep hunger in the pit of his stomach that had been slowly returning over the past several minutes. That, more than anything, was what compelled him to run into the heart of STAR, into the basement. Because even though he'd said his piece at Picture News, even though he was still horrified at the events of the previous day, it was returning—that craving.

So, just as he had days prior, what felt like lifetimes ago, he ran until he hit the back of a pipeline cell. Closed the door behind him. Waited with knees drawn up to his chest, vibrating out of his skin.

The headache had begun in earnest by the time Caitlin made it down to the pipeline. She crossed her arms and regarded him from outside the cell.

"Barry, you scared me."

"Sorry," he said, not insincerely, but fighting back such pounding pain in his head that his voice came off a bit monotone. "I wasn't sure I could make it back before I lost control."

"You have control," Caitlin said. "You're strong. I know you won't let anything like yesterday happen again."

"You don't know that," Barry responded, "and if you think you do, you're only putting yourself in danger. You need to keep me in here, okay? Until the drug is completely gone."

Caitlin's forehead creased. "What is this about, Barry? Why don't you want our help?"

"Because Wells warned me about this," Barry said. "Wells told me that the V9 was dangerous, and that I wouldn't be able to handle it. He also told me I was better than the drug, and, well…looks like I proved him wrong."

"It doesn't mean you can't become better." Caitlin crouched down at the glass. "I've been thinking about options, like I said. How to make this easier."

"I don't want anything," Barry said. "Nothing, please. Let me ride this out myself."

A forceful puff of air burst from Caitlin's nose. She shifted, leaned back in her crouch. Adjusted her slacks. "You're right. Maybe this isn't supposed to be easy."

Barry slicked off his mask, ran his hand through his hair. "I just wish none of this had happened. If Eliza hadn't hit me with that first shot…"

"Eliza may have hit you," Caitlin said, just a touch unsympathetically, "but what came after was all you."

Another tremor ran through Barry's body. "You don't think I know that?"

Caitlin remained crouched a few more seconds, contemplating, chewing a lip. Then, looking more tired than she had in a long time, she stood. "If you insist on doing this without any assistance, then I'm not going to get in the way of that. I'll be back down in a few hours with some food, maybe a book. I can read to you. Would you like that?"

Barry tried a weak smile. "Caitlin, you're…you're amazing,"

As Caitlin turned to leave, she returned the smile, tiny, exhausted, a bit sad. "You think I don't know that?" she echoed lightly. Then, with an almost-inaudible sigh, she left him alone in the dimness.

There's a lot of wrap-up for events like these. Stay tuned for one more chapter, where everything will be resolved...or will it?

Because of I am moving across the country this Wednesday, the last chapter may even be coming a bit early, on Tuesday! So keep an eye out, and, as always, thanks for reading-and I would love to hear your thoughts.

Till next time,

Penn