Once again, a continuation of last chapter. Enjoy, and please review!

Eventually, Barry tilted his head to stare straight into Caitlin's despairing, empty orbs. His own, by contrast, were full of emotions; sadness and friendly sympathy, of course, but most overwhelmingly, confusion.

"Caitlin, without you I wouldn't even be alive right now. And you lost your fiancé, for Christ's sake. You have nothing to be sorry for."

Caitlin broke their sweet hug and took a step away from Barry, hanging her head in shame as she whispered, "How the hell do you do it Barry?"

Cradling his friend's chin in one hand, Barry pulled Caitlin's head up gingerly, pleading for her eye contact. Flatly, he responded, "Do what?"

Cringing sarcastically, Caitlin quipped back, "Do what? Are you serious, Bartholomew Henry Allen? How do you do… everything? I honestly cannot fathom how you do anything that you do."

The doctor stopped to take a deep breath, creating a pause that Barry wished to fill but didn't, knowing that she still had more to say. He was right.

"You know, when you and other people say that you're the impossible, it's completely true. And, you're not just that way because you were struck by lightning. I mean, for the past fifteen years almost, you have been dealing with the loss of both your parents and watching the girl of your dreams just slip right through your fingers. I-"

Caitlin instantly regretted finally admitting her thoughts aloud when a faint gasp and quick turn of Barry's head let her know that she'd struck a nerve. His gaze averted, she remorsefully examined his eyes as they reached up into the night sky, then plummeted back down to earth and retracted behind their lids, like a frightened turtle hurriedly hiding in its shell. She then found that her own eyes were copying the actions of Barry's. Tears forming in all four, Caitlin quietly continued, "I'm sorry. I feel like I just cannot say that enough to you tonight. And, and I notice that you're constantly saying it, and I just want you to know that you don't have to Barry. You need to stop blaming yourself for every little thing that goes wrong, because it's not your fault Barry. It's not and you know that, so just please, do yourself a favour and say sorry to yourself."

Barry was fast growing agitated and restless, as he usually did, Caitlin had noticed, when he was emotional or someone was lecturing him on something that he didn't agree with. He'd been double-whammied with both this time, and it was really showing as he lightly hopped from foot to foot, moved his head about haphazardly and wrung his sweaty hands like sponges. When he finally settled himself enough to look her in the eyes again, the tears were still there in his red ones, waiting to be shed, but they were fast becoming laced with anger.

"Why do you have to do that, Caitlin?"

The tone of his voice was surprisingly neutral. His face was not, however, and it betrayed the impending punch that his next few words would pack. Hoping to get a word in before the inevitable explosion she'd just catalysed, his friend began to open her mouth, but was cut off the second that she did so.

"Why must you, and Joe, and the others always just treat me like I'm a child and like I don't know any better? Yes, my Mum died and yes, my Dad's in Iron Heights, and yes, it all really sucks balls but I'm not eleven years old any more. Only Joe and Iris have known me since I was that young, so what excuse do the rest of you have? And Wells, he's now likely to have been acting the way he does simply in order to manipulate me, but what about you and Cisco? And all of you act like I'm just this impulsive lunatic with no control over my emotions and who just goes along with whatever whim comes to mind. You all just think yourselves lucky that I'm not one of the bad guys. Even Iris still tries to run my life, telling me who I should and shouldn't date, for example, and she doesn't even know that I'm the Flash. And she only doesn't know because Joe won't let me tell her! So many people know at this point Caitlin, some of whom are criminals, and some of whom are 600 miles away. What's just one more person finding out? What's that gonna hurt? What is the catastrophe that letting my best friend know is going to cause, hmm? God, even her stupid boyfriend knows now! So in answer to your question, Dr Snow, even I don't know how the hell I do it all. I'm supposed to be the motherfucking impossible, like you said. 'Impossible', do you know what that word even means anymore? Because I sure don't. All I know is that, before I got struck by lightning at least, it meant, 'not possible'. As in, it would not possible for me to deal with this all on my own, except for the fact that I am the impossible. I'm possible."

At this point, both of them were panting. Barry was compensating for all the breaths he'd missed and completely exhausted during his angry rant, and Caitlin was simply too shocked for words to express, so her breathing did it for her. The last and only other time that she'd seen him this angry before was when Bivolo had 'whammied' him. This, however, was the very first time that she'd seen Barry actually, really, naturally angry. Anger was not what she, or anyone else who knew him would call a typical Barry emotion.

His display of this foreign emotion had scared and surprised her, but at the same time made her feel privileged, in a weird and twisted way. Weird and twisted in light of the fact that nothing she saw could really qualify to be called either of those words, considering what had happened over the past few months. She felt as though he had shown her the VIP room of his soul, a special and private place where few people were permitted and no one left feeling the same way as they had when they entered. Not only that, but she'd seen something special that was meant to be kept secret, lest it scare anyone away and prevent them seeing all of Barry's wonderful, more public characteristics. To her, it served as a reminder to one of his closest friends, and probably to him also, that the speedster wasn't invincible, nor perfect, nor even simply another metahuman. He was, above all else, human, even if he was also the impossible.

The doctor let one last stray tear fall before bravely responding to her enraged friend, adopting her professional doctor's air and maintaining her new found calmness as she spoke. "Once again, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get you so upset. I hope you feel better now that you've gotten that off your chest though. Thank you for running out and meeting up with me here. With that, I think we'd both best be on our way."

She briefly laid a calming and friendly hand on his shoulder, before stepping away to open her car door. As she got into her seat, she felt the familiar sharp breeze that Barry always left in his wake as he sped away. She ran her hand quickly over her sticky, emotionally and physically drained face before driving the rest of the way back to her apartment.

The next morning, she found that, what must have been not too long after he arrived home last night, judging by the time stamp, Barry had texted Caitlin:

Sorry about that little… outburst. BTW, you have nothing to be sorry for. Thanx for listening to me rant, & for the advice. I did mean wat I said, but as much as I hate to admit it, u were right. Ive taken ur advice and forgiven myself for it. I hope u will too.

In stark contrast to Barry's long text, Caitlin sent back a short and sweet reply:

Thanks, all g.

A few seconds later, however, she decided that that wasn't enough and decided to add something else:

We'll just forget that evr happened, k?

His reply, even shorter than Caitlin's initial one, came about half an hour later:

K, thanx.

NB: The spelling/grammatical errors in the texts were intentional, to make them seem more realistic.