(Why is she always updating past midnight? you may ask yourselves. Because she procrastinates, Jell-O Squares. Because she procrastinates. Go to sleep! -Doverstar)

Finding Mick Rory had become their main focus.

Caitlin didn't know when they had switched from let's get you settled in to bring the pyro to justice, but though it proved more difficult than their original plan, she wasn't at all against it. Heat Wave was out there hurting the innocent, seemingly without cause, and if they had the ability to stop him, she held fast to the belief that it was their responsibility to do so.

She wasn't sure if Savitar shared her belief, but if not, it didn't stop him. In fact, he treated this manhunt like a game of sorts—running around the city, searching for clues to Rory's whereabouts, and in between, he'd stop to do your basic hero work wherever he saw the need. Cisco would say he was working his way up, level by level, to get to the big boss fight at the end. His one run had turned into many more since saving Wally. He went out and fought crime every day, whenever he was free—and as he was an unemployed former psychopath, he was always free. Though he refused to give himself any kind of title, he donned the suit and threw himself into the task of tracking down Heat Wave and stopping any additional perpetrators on the way.

Caitlin was baffled at first. She couldn't understand how his mind had shifted from adamant indifference to resigned, almost bored selflessness. The way he treated his sort-of-hero career was similar to the way Harry Wells had treated the "sub-par" tech of Earth-1—he'd tolerate it, wouldn't fudge the job, but in the end it wasn't anything to get excited about. So she didn't know why he kept it up. Not that she was complaining—this was one of the things she'd speculated could be the key to giving him that coveted second chance.

But as one week on Earth-66 turned into two and a half, she realized Savitar wasn't simply doing this because there wasn't a better option. He had a motive. It was unclear what that motive was, but it was there, and that alone was encouraging. She could tell by the way he was carrying himself lately. His hands were free of his pockets, his head was held just an inch or so higher. He didn't avoid eye contact quite as much. Caitlin wanted to believe it was the Barry buried in him, enjoying the sense of purpose. Somehow, though, that didn't quite fit.

Whatever the reason, there was no harm in letting him do a few good deeds around the city. This Earth could use it.

Unfortunately, he really was rusty. His skills, his abilities, were fine—almost perfect. It was his head that needed work. Barry Allen had jumped in without thinking multiple times in his early years, and still did sometimes, but Savitar was worse. Because not only did he not think about what he was doing; he seemed unwilling to learn how to be better. He just screwed up and impatiently dealt with the consequences.

A car spinning out of control? He got the people out of the vehicle, but neglected to stop said vehicle before it crashed into the nearest building, sparks and bricks and general unpleasant smells flying. A mugger in an alley? The perpetrator was on the ground before he knew what had happened, but Savitar didn't take the time to check for weapons and the offender had landed on the wrong end of the pocketknife he'd been brandishing. You name it—things that should have been so simple turned into an actual ordeal, just because the speedster had ignored common sense, logic, hadn't taken orders from anyone or helped any situation in too long, and now he was a sloppy hero.

And if he wasn't thinking too little, he was thinking too much. Savitar had turned Barry's scientific mind into an excellent map of strategy and cunning. He was used to obstacles, complicated schemes. There were few things more frustrating to Doctor Snow than the days he paused to plan when he could've gotten the job done in five minutes flat. Caitlin was constantly trying to help him to improve, dishing out suggestions, talking it through, but he simply wasn't having it. Sometimes he even switched off his comms, leaving her to watch his moves from the tracker on his suit, powerless in the Cortex until he got back to S.T.A.R. Labs so she could scold him. Which of course he completely ignored. She preferred the ignoring to the biting contempt, though, so she couldn't complain too much.

Today Caitlin had heard, after tapping into a police radio band, that a pair of robbers were escaping into the parking garage of this Earth's most prestigious jewelry company. She'd sent Savitar to stop them; he'd been halfway to Earth-66's version of Keystone before she'd called and he had to turn around.

"They're on the fifth floor," she told him, murmuring. Wally, still recovering, was asleep in the gurney up on the dais, and she didn't want to wake him.

Savitar didn't respond, but she saw his signature on the monitor slow when it came to the fourth floor, though he seemed obligated to speed right past it moments before.

"One is thicker-set than the other—his muscle count isn't very high, so it must be excess weight. He'll go down harder, but he'll be easiest to catch," Caitlin added, peering at the readings. Robbers were pretty average; she was grasping at straws, eager to help. She missed working with Barry on his missions more than she thought she would. "Try not to damage what they've taken. With a company like that, odds are whatever it is, it's invaluable." She paused. "They don't...have it in some kind of sack, do they?"

"Why does it matter?" came the thudding reply.

"It doesn't," Caitlin said quickly, feeling foolish. "I just—as a kid, I used to watch cartoons where jewel thieves would put...the—it doesn't matter." She cleared her throat and smoothed her blouse. "'Hem, keep running."

She could see his marker coming closer to the two making their way to the elevator. Savitar made a nice, clean stop right in front of them. Unlike her Barry, he didn't often make quips when encountering baddies, he simply waited for them to pick the fight. He was never disappointed in the amount of time it took for someone to start panicking.

These two gentlemen were apparently the sort to ask curious questions, which was a nice change of pace.

"What are you supposed to be?" Caitlin could hear one of the criminals' voice spiraling high with amusement. He sounded less seedy than she expected a felon to sound. There was even a hint of a Southern accent.

"A god," Savitar replied, as casually as if he were making small talk in line at Subway. His vocal cords vibrated, distorting his tone. "But something came up."

The time remnant was not the sort to ask curious questions, and he bored easy. Caitlin watched Savitar's little green dot on the screen dart toward the red ones that represented the robbers, in and out, in and out.

There was too much noise, too many grunts and groans. Feeling her stomach twist, Caitlin decided to use a little trick Cisco taught her. With a combination of keys and a click or two, she hacked into the parking garage's security cameras, hitting the right-hand arrow until the screen gave her the right floor.

The image was grainy, but the cameras were far away enough that she could distinguish what was what without trouble.

Caitlin gasped. One robber was already on the ground, clutching his chest and making an especially horrific rattling sound when he inhaled. Savitar had the other one on the run; clutching a duffel bag—not a sack—the overweight blonde man was scrambling for the elevator, which looked to be about five feet from him at this point.

Savitar was in his path in a blink, and the robber ran smack into him. The speedster moved without any hesitation, first clouting him underneath the chin, and when his opponent didn't fall down, Savitar reached down and gripped the handle of the duffel bag, using it to swing the man off his feet and across the garage at high speed. There was a crunch when he landed; she recognized the sound of broken bones and tasted her breakfast.

"What do you think you're doing?" Caitlin snarled into the mic. The tail of every word was barbed, as if she had released a mouthful of stingrays.

Savitar, still holding the duffel bag in one hand, reached to switch off his comms with the other.

"You cannot just ravage the people you stop," Snow went on rapidly, before he could do it. "That's not the way this job works, Savitar." She hadn't always checked to see how he physically dealt with the ne'er-do-wells. Maybe she should have. How many more had suffered a penalty that didn't fit the crime before she'd seen him do this?

"Don't try to tell me they don't deserve it." His posture onscreen was so steady, his tone so saturated in scorn, as if her answer wouldn't make any difference to him anyway, that it made Caitlin's teeth hurt.

"You deserved to be wiped from existence, and look where you ended up thanks to people who know how important it is to have mercy," Caitlin countered, trying and immediately failing to control the amount of venom spewing from her. It didn't matter who it was, it didn't matter how it happened, nothing could make her angrier than senseless violence, the defacing of human value. "How you do things matters just as much, if not more, than what you do."

Savitar slid the strap of the duffel bag across his shoulder, allowing the first robber to struggle to his feet, still breathing oddly.

Caitlin took a deep breath. One...two...three..."You got the jewels back. Just—drop them off and move on to the next crime. Please."

When she saw him turn his back to the wounded crooks, she let the breath out in relief, switching off the security feed and scanning the city for further disruptions.

Then the sound of a gunshot rang through the speaker.

Caitlin snatched the mic. "Savitar?"

There was a pause, and she glanced guiltily at Wally, who still hadn't stirred. She'd spoken too loudly that time, but he didn't seem to have heard her, sound asleep.

Finally, a dull "Didn't know they had a gun," crackled out from the other end of the comms and Caitlin closed her eyes. This never got less stressful.

"Are you—"

"I'm fine." He never let her get a full are you okay into the air on these missions, though the opportunity to ask had presented itself plenty of times since he'd first donned the black and blue. She didn't know why, and it didn't stop her from trying to get it out anyway."Bullets are slow. Just grazed me."

Caitlin dropped down into her chair, palms clammy. He was intensely not Barry Allen, but when she didn't have the video feed, the sight of the scars and the cloudy left eye, only exposed to his voice, she couldn't stop herself fretting when he was on the field. It was difficult to listen to someone with Barry's tones when they never seemed to be in a good mood, but that was multiplied by at least eighty percent when there was danger in the area.

A rustle sounded from the right of the Cortex. Wally was awake, rolling onto his back, blinking around the room.

Caitlin was eager to return to a situation she could control—the progress of a patient. She headed for the ointment she'd picked up a few days back, soaking it in a rag and starting on his arms.

"How did you sleep?" she checked, forcing a smile.

Wally nodded, as if that gave her all the detail she needed. Since he'd arrived and regained consciousness, he was fond of asking as many questions as he could possibly ask in one breath. He was ridiculously curious about his predicament, and Caitlin had had a tough time fielding his inquiries, trying to make sure he didn't know too much. Suffice it to say, he knew he was at S.T.A.R. Labs, which she and "a few colleagues" had taken upon themselves to restore from the ground up. He knew this was a top secret deal, kind of like "an underground charity project", and had agreed reluctantly not to probe further. He knew she worked with his rescuer, but he didn't know Savitar's name and hadn't seen him since the rescue had taken place. He knew she was Caitlin Snow and she was there to help, and that he would be good as knew in just a few more days. Sometimes this was enough information for him. Most of the time it wasn't.

"Hey Caitlin?" Wally's throat sounded dry; he reached for the glass of water she offered him. "How long was the longest time you spent in a hospital?"

"About four hours," Caitlin admitted, cocking her head. "I was nine. I had a broken wrist and the waiting room was full. Why?"

"Cuz it's literally the most mind-numbing thing I can think of right now," Wally groaned, pressing the heel of a hand against his closed right eye.

Caitlin chuckled. "That's the price we pay when we're in the wrong place at the wrong time." Satisfied his arms were thoroughly treated, she moved to his legs. "What were you doing at the EXPO, anyway? You said you had a booth there?"

Wally's fingers traced the fragile, healing skin on his right cheek. "I work with this new engineering company. We're trying to get off the ground—my boss thought the EXPO was kinda like the best way to get our foot in the door."

"The other day you told me you work with cars," Caitlin recalled, careful about what she revealed. Really, she knew Wally West's tendencies, his interests, but this Wally had not shared much of anything with her, and if she made one wrong move, he might start asking the kinds of questions she couldn't wave off.

"Uh huh."

"Is that...is that the only thing you dabble in? I mean, mechanically?"

Wally chortled, probably at her choice in vocabulary usage. He did that a lot back on Earth-1. "Uh, no—no, I mess with all kinds of stuff. Mechanically. I like finding out what makes stuff tick, you know?"

"I do," Caitlin grinned at him. "But I doubt the chemical makeup of the human body is as interesting to you as it is to me. I know it can be boring, resting up..." She moved to the white desk, turning on the wall monitors that were facing him. "So it's a good thing we have TV here, huh?"

But Wally shushed her suddenly, waving a hand for her to come back to his bedside, eyes on the screen. Caitlin complied, eyebrows knit, wondering what was so important.

Sandra Peterson was at it again. "Does Central City have its own guardian angel? Rumors of a masked vigilante continue to pop up all over the downtown area as witnesses trade stories of returned belongings, rescues in the dark, and a mystery blur speeding by. There are no known photographs of this rising phenomenon, but it's clear that it isn't just a few overactive imaginations. Security guards at the Central City museum report seeing a blue-flecked 'shadow' in the building just three nights ago as convicted amateur thief Leonard Snart attempted to steal a priceless painting."

The camera flicked to footage of one of the night guards, in full uniform, gesturing with both hands as the museum's patrols filed by in the background. "I say to my partner, I tell him, 'Call the department, tell 'em Snart's back for more,' and I look away, and when I look again there's this—there's the shadow, and Snart's on the ground, all tied up and ready for prison. And then it's gone, shadow's disappeared again. It was unbelievable."

A moment more and Sandra had returned to the spotlight with a different story. Wally turned excitedly to Caitlin, slapping the bed with his right hand. "That was him, wasn't it?"

Caitlin bit her lip. "Who?"

"The shadow! The dude who pulled me out at the EXPO. He was there at the museum, he's here in town still."

"He is," she confessed, handing him a cup of strawberry Jell-O and a plastic spoon. She avoided eye contact, but he didn't take the hint.

"He's a hero, Caitlin. He saved my life."

"I know he did," she assured him, smiling. "And you're right, he—he's definitely on the right track—"

"You know who he is." Wally didn't touch his Jell-O, round brown eyes burning into her.

"I—I wouldn't—"

"I wanna thank him."

"You already thanked him, Wally."

"I know," Wally scoffed, agitated. His hand went to massage his forehead. "But—for real this time. I was all jacked up on pain meds then, I-I can't even remember what he looked like. I gotta see him."

Caitlin sighed. "I told you, he doesn't want that." Wally's mouth tightened, he tried to say something more, but Caitlin persisted. "He's—he's in a difficult place right now. When he does visit you...he'll need to do it on his own time." She rubbed Wally's shoulder, the way she'd seen Iris do multiple times back home. She felt him relax at the touch instinctively. "Eat your Jell-O."

"It's not like it's good for me."

"It is when I mixed it with your medicine," Caitlin retorted, walking back down to the main floor of the Cortex. "Eat!"

The next stop was her quarters. It was a simple metal room with two standard, iron-framed beds and one window. This sort of place was made to accommodate employees of the Labs who had to pull an all-nighter working on a project, or those who had to monitor an experiment for a full 24 hours. Caitlin went to change clothes, pulling out her multidimensional walkie talkie. She wanted her friends.

"Calling Team Flash," she chanted amiably into the bluetooth speaker, clipping it to her ear. "Come in, Team Flash."

Static. Then, "Caitlin?"

"Joe!" Caitlin grinned. "How are you?"

"I don't—know—how to patch this thing through to the whole room, hon, gimme—"

"I got it. Here." There was Barry. The frozen autumn sunlight coming from the window shone brighter.

"Can you hear me?" Caitlin tested, pulling on her silver, cotton-knit sweater and slacks. It felt good to kick off her high heels.

"Loud and clear!" Cisco sounded distracted; his voice was coming from somewhere far away from the walkie talkie.

"How's it going over there?" Barry demanded. His voice was raspy. "You find Savitar a Team Flash of his own yet?"

"Not quite," Caitlin sighed. "The good news is, he's improving on the field flying solo. But—he seems—Barry, he's aggressive with the people he catches." She hadn't realized how much the earlier confrontation had shaken her until that moment. Somehow, knowing Barry was on the other line made it all easier to acknowledge. "It's like he thinks it's his job to punish them, not just bring them to justice."

Barry was quiet for a moment. "He can't just turn off the villain thing right away, Cait," he murmured.

"That doesn't give him an excuse to beat the crap outta any perp he feels like," Joe argued, and Caitlin's hands wrung together.

"I know, I know," Barry huffed. "But you can't forget what he was like before. Where he comes from. It's not like all that's gonna disappear in two weeks."

"It's like he's a druggie." Cisco was chortling in that corner he must've been working in. "Maybe he needs some group therapy."

"Not helping." Iris had entered the fray; Caitlin heard her heels clicking on the floor. "Hey, Caitlin."

"Hi, Iris." Caitlin exited her room, moving down the corridors. "Oh—I forgot to mention—this Earth's Wally is nearly fully recovered," she reported proudly. "He should be headed home any day now."

"That's a relief," Iris sighed. "Has he seen Savitar yet?"

"Not yet, but he's dropping hints. I just don't think it's such—"

A sound, a puffing like a locomotive further down the hall, made Caitlin stop dead.

"Cait? What's wrong?" Trust Barry to read her mind all the way from another Earth.

Caitlin prowled forward, cautious, turning a corner. What she saw made her fingernails grow cold. "I—I have to go."

"Cait—"

"It's okay, I have to—I'll call you back."

She ripped the bluetooth speaker off, stuffing it into her pocket and rushing forward ten feet, toward the east wall. Savitar was still in his suit, hood down, coiled in a sitting position against the aforementioned wall and breathing with great effort. His right shoulder was caked in blood, his hair soaked in sweat.

"What did you do?" Caitlin gasped, kneeling beside him.

Savitar backhanded her arm away as she reached for his suit's zipper. "I'm fine," he croaked. "I heal quick."

Age-old anger swelled in her throat as she stared at the red spreading down from the shoulder to his chest. "You said that bullet grazed you!"

"I lied." He clutched his shoulder with his left hand, eyes shut tight. "Not like that's a new thing."

"You do not lie to your personal physician about bullets," Caitlin snapped, moving to unzip the suit again.

And again he jerked out of reach. "You're Barry's personal physician," he spat at her through gritted teeth. His legs wound across the floor with the pain, curling in toward his body and out again as if he were pedaling an imaginary bicycle. "You and I don't have a contract."

"Remind me to write one up after I donate the last of your blood to the nearest laboratory," Caitlin grunted, trying to heave him to his feet.

A short, breathless laugh hissed out of him at that. His head rolled against the wall, he sucked in through his nose.

But the moment she put both hands on his right arm, trying to pull him up, he wrenched it from her grasp, unnecessarily using his speed so that she felt a jolt of electricity run across her wrists.

"I need some space, okay?" he growled, agonized spaces between the words, face just a hair from hers as she crouched beside him. His scars looked angrier than ever.

At first his malevolence—and her indignancy at both not being warned and not being allowed to treat him—was enough to keep Caitlin from trying again for the moment. She stared at him, brain struggling to catch up after Barry's voice had just told her to keep her distance.

Then, because she was herself, she got over it and grabbed his hand, taking him by surprise for the second it took to yank him forcibly into a standing position. The only reason he 'needed some space'—apart from the fact that he was himself—was because he was operating under the same knee-jerk reaction everyone had when experiencing extreme pain while someone tried to touch them. His brain told him that anything else touching him would cause more pain; he felt suffocated when another human being got too close. It was akin to that primal feeling that surged through wounded, cornered animals. Caitlin wasn't interested in his snarls.

Savitar half-yelled, half-groaned for a short moment at the sudden movement, but this time he didn't pull away. Instead, he glared at her, still talking viciously through determinedly clenched teeth. "I don't need you to patch me up every time I break something."

"Tough!" Caitlin's eyebrows bounced, once, and she led him to the med bay—not to be confused with Wally's corner of the Cortex. "You don't have another option."

She let go as he dropped onto the examination table, gripping the side of the bed hard enough to make a dent in the metal.

"I don't care if you heal quickly," Caitlin snapped, gathering her tools. "And—I don't care if you still think you're god enough to live through losing eighty-five percent of the blood in your body. You're not. You get shot, you get medical attention." She brandished her pair of forceps. "That's how this job works."

"That's...cute." Savitar choked out. He didn't move when she unzipped his suit just enough to uncover his injured shoulder. His eyes were shut once more. "You sure know...a lot about this job...for someone who's never—" he broke off, yelling again as she went in to find the bullet.

"Run as fast as you?" Caitlin finished for him, eyes completely focused on her task. "I wasn't talking about your job."

She worked steadily, knowing she didn't need to remind him that pain medication was useless on a speedster. Her heart was convulsing in her chest, but not because of the procedure. This wasn't her first bullet. It wasn't the first time she'd smelled this much blood. It wasn't even the first time she'd treated a shoulder gunshot wound.

Her heart was convulsing because of who she was treating.

She didn't harbor any not-so-far-fetched fantasies that Savitar would suddenly regain the all the strength and ice he'd had on Infantino Street. She didn't think he'd pulverize her the way he had those criminals after this was all over, just because she hadn't given the God of Speed his space. She knew that particular part of him had been weakened by now, because of the way his story had changed. Somehow. If she could believe it fully. Did she?

It wasn't any of that. No. No, really, no, it was because she was on his right side as she worked. She was operating on his right shoulder, so in her peripherals she could see the right half of his face, and it made her hands unsteady. The right half, the unscarred half, the green iris half, the right ear that wasn't burnt and disfigured.

Her brain was on autopilot, healing his injury, doing the sort of thing she'd done over and over again. And because Caitlin's brain was on autopilot, the non-doctor portion was recognizing that side of his face, the chemicals and hormones in her head were telling her Barry Barry Barry Barry.

Barry got shot.

Barry's losing blood.

Barry was being stupid again.

Barry will die if you don't get this right.

The Flash's life was in her hands, as usual, and that instinctive cloud in Caitlin's mind was making her lose her focus.

The speedster jerked, crying out suddenly, and Caitlin realized she'd lost her grip on the forceps and had actually poked the inside of his wound. Her eyes stung, you're hurting Barry, and she turned her head so that her hair shielded his face from her view completely. She needed to concentrate.

It took at least ten more minutes to remove the bullet, clean the wound, and stitch it up. Fleetingly, once she had regained control of her more fundamental thoughts, Caitlin recalled that she could try using her powers to close his shoulder up again. But even after Wally, she wasn't nearly comfortable enough in her own head to risk it a second time. Especially not this second.

Savitar had remained conscious through the whole process, of course—the original had gone through worse than this—and when Snow leaned over to make sure he was still awake, glassy mismatched eyes dipped into hers. She was shaking.

"You'll be back in shape by tomorrow morning," Caitlin informed him, her words all riding on one breath. "Don't get up yet."

Savitar grunted, shifting just a little. "I don't...want to owe you," he groaned.

"It's a little late for that," Caitlin muttered, eyeing the Hammond Cuff. "You were refusing my help because you didn't want to owe me? Honestly." She threw the forceps down onto the rack. "How childish can you get?"

Savitar leaned his head back. She didn't understand. To be expected. He had done enough. They had done enough for him. He didn't want anyone to do any more. He wasn't sure if it was guilt, or just the desire to ditch the past, run as far away from it as possible. It was all too much. His skull would explode with what he'd lost, gained, taken, wanted, tried. It was better to make sure she didn't do him yet another undeserved kindness. Then he wouldn't have to think of the list and how long it was getting.

"I'm trying to start over, remember?" he huffed, a sneering chortle stuttering out without his consent. It had kind of been over a thousand years since he'd been shot. He was allowed to whine a little. "I...don't need any more...favors."

Her back was to him. "You can't start over if you're dead."

You can't start over if you're dead. The Hammond Cuff was the same temperature as the bandage on his shoulder.

"Barry isn't...afraid."

He didn't know what made him say it. Maybe this was his way of thanking her. Saying the actual two words was becoming a kind of blockage in his mind.

Caitlin turned, complete bewilderment painting her face. It made her nose wrinkle. His good eye fixed on that wrinkle and didn't move. "What?"

"He's not...afraid," Savitar repeated, trying and failing to sit up. Caitlin moved to press a cloth to his bandage lest the injury open again, but he put a hand on her wrist, pushing it away with zero superhuman speed this time. "When stuff like this happens," he rattled out, head craning to gesture to his shoulder. "He's not—scared. Because he knows you're...gonna fix him." Another chortle, slightly bitter. Bitter because of the absence of that security Allen had had? All this time having passed by? His eyes went to the ceiling, the wrinkled nose was gone anyway. "Every time—"

"You need to rest," Caitlin muttered, interrupting him. His head wagged imperceptibly; irritation dripped in the back of his throat, did she never stop talking, why didn't he remember this much talking before?

"Every time...he gets hurt—if you're there, it's...like he's fine. Like—he's gonna be okay." Savitar forced strength into his tone, words coming quicker so he didn't have to pause so often. He was feeling sleepy. Probably the loss of blood. Healing factor or not, he needed blood, and losing that much of it was going to shove him out of consciousness soon. Maybe not for as long as it would an average person, but it was still basically inevitable. Talk faster. "You make him—feel—safe."

From her expression, you would've thought she'd just seen someone collide with a school bus.

Then her eyebrows pinched together. The nose wrinkle made a distracting comeback and she said, tone completely neutral, "What about you?"

The question threw him. What made her ask that? He wasn't Barry Allen. That was the topic of this conversation. Barry. She'd told him he wasn't Barry herself. It was drilled into every cell in his body. His mind flipped pages to avoid the answer to her question. He was sleepier than ever. Shoulder throbbing. It was too hot in this room. Where was his armor when he needed it? Why hadn't he counted on that stupid gun? He was faster than a bullet. Now he owed her.

She was waiting. He thought for a moment. There hadn't been any fear after she'd found him in the corridor. Had there been before? There had definitely been a certain level of stress. He remembered thinking, What happens if I can't stop the bleeding? as a flaw in his little plan to avoid her detection. Then she'd come around the corner, and he didn't need to come up with an answer. She'd stop the bleeding. He didn't want her to. But she would, and he was extremely aware of it.

The edges of his vision were going black. Her eyes were ridiculously brown. It wasn't realistic. Who designed them? That shade of brown hadn't been in the Speed Force. The black hadn't reached the brown yet. He was so tired. He couldn't feel any of the fingers on his right hand.

"I guess I'm gonna be okay too," he murmured, resigned. He said it so quietly, with the last of his energy, he held out a small hope she hadn't heard him.

Was that a smile? Smile. Who else had been smiling at him recently? No one else. And they shouldn't. Was she smiling? He couldn't tell. His eyes closed before she completed it. Caitlin said something, he heard it echo off the walls, but he couldn't actually make it out. She never stopped talking. He needed to rest.

The room went dark and Savitar fell asleep.

(I'm too squeamish to Google the actual treatment for a bullet wound. Sue me. He's alive, isn't he? How is this ship shaping up, I wonder? They're not even getting actually romantic yet. This is fun to poke at. -Doverstar)