(I broke my laptop's wifi card by dropping it unintentionally in the driveway, so I'm having to manually hook it up to a router at the house every time I want to upload a chapter. On the bright side, no wifi means no tumblr, which means no distractions from writing! Enjoy! -Doverstar)

When he'd been about to turn twelve years old, he had gotten the stomach bug. Or the flu. Whatever had been going around school that month, no matter how much orange juice he'd loaded up on or how much medicine he took to prepare, he still managed to catch the virus. It turned out to be terrible timing.

He'd been living with Joe and Iris for a whole year, and his birthday would come with the morning. But instead of lying awake in anticipation of the festivities, he was throwing up all over his bed in the middle of the night. The sickness made his muscles hurt and the fever made him cold all over. The blanket had been bright green and the pillowcase was from the house he'd lived in before everything went wrong, when he still had two parents instead of an adoptive detective and hadn't been one room away from the girl he'd had a crush on since elementary school.

He remembered the smell making him sicker as he vomited the pot roast they'd had for dinner. He remembered crying because he could feel himself about to heave again, and he had been hoping desperately that he was finished now. And it was dark, and he was alone. And he did not feel good.

The light flicked on. "Barry!"

It was Iris, her pajamas pink, her hair frizzy, her right arm tattooed with corduroy lines. She'd been sleeping hard, but not hard enough to drown out the sounds from her friend's room. He would have been embarrassed by the mess surrounding him and the tears on his cheeks—he was going to be twelve in a few hours, this was not how a middle schooler should react to the stomach bug—but Iris didn't laugh or slowly back out of the room.

Instead, she said, "Gross—I'll get Dad!" and ran into the hall.

True to her word, she returned with Joe a moment later. The detective took one look at the boy's chalky face and bent over, pulling the soaked blankets away. He lifted the sick child bodily out of the bed.

"Come on, son, let's go."

"M'sorry, Joe," he sniffled, arms held awkwardly away from his dirty pj's.

"Nothin' to be sorry about, Bar', you can't help it."

Iris followed them out. "He can sleep on my floor, Daddy."

"Nuh uh, then I'm gonna have two kids throwing up and missing school. You get back in bed, Baby."

Joe ushered him into the bathroom, where he knelt before the porcelain throne, hands shaking as his body tried to empty a stomach that didn't have anything left to toss up. He could feel tingling in his cheeks. The bathroom floor was freezing. The Wests were arguing out in the hall.

"But it's Saturday tomorrow."

"Iris, go to back to bed."

"Where's Barry gonna sleep?"

"He'll sleep on the couch downstairs, don't worry about it."

A moment later, after the boy had taken a quick, very hot shower and changed into one of Joe's tee shirts. Detective West led him down to the living room, where he'd covered the sofa in a bedspread, quilt, and throw pillow.

Joe helped tuck him in. "You gonna be all right, Bar'? You don't feel any more coming, do you?"

He shook his head, face warm, eyelids heavy.

"Want me to stay up with you for a li'l bit, or you think you can fall asleep on your own?"

A flicker of movement in his peripherals showed him that Iris was on the stairs, just barely visible around the corner, watching them. He nodded hard, though his throat was sore and the fever reminded him vividly what had happened in another living room around this time last year.

Joe rubbed his leg gently. "Get some rest, son. I'll see you in the morning."

Then the lights were off, and it was late, and he was shivering by himself. The neighborhood was still outside the window, and an airplane was soaring past overhead. He could hear it, it rattled the photos on the mantle. The rattling sound put his heart into his mouth, the heat in his skin and behind his eyes had him terrified to see a flash of electricity anywhere in the dark.

"I want my mom," he whispered into the empty room, after glancing back up to see if Iris was still hiding on the landing. His cheeks were wet again. "I want my dad."

It was too hard to be just him in that living room. It was too dark and he could still taste the pot roast and his feet felt like they were going to tremble right off his legs. He sat up. The corners of the room seemed to get darker every time he looked at them, and he did so often, checking for a hint of lightning, for red eyes and a towering figure in yellow.

"If I turned this light off now, would you be scared? "

He pressed the back of a hand to his right cheek. His skin felt hotter than ever, it hurt to touch it. The plane was gone, but he could swear there was still roaring. He could swear the rattling hadn't stopped. He twisted around, staring wide-eyed at everything he could see. He couldn't turn fast enough, he couldn't make sure there was nothing everywhere at once. His eyes stung and the couch was balmy beneath both palms.

He stopped when his eyes reached the dining room behind him. Something had caught in the moonlight coming from the window, and he flinched when it glinted at him—then he saw that it wasn't yellow or red, it was blue.

"See, you're not afraid of the dark, Barry. You're afraid of being alone in the dark."

He got up, cautiously feeling for the switch on the wall. When the dining room had been illuminated, all the fear went out of him. And it wasn't because he'd turned on the light.

A big, plastic blue banner had been stretched across the doorway, and in vibrant paper letters it read, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BARRY! all in gold. There were stickers of Dragonball Z characters slapped on every visible surface of the room, all at Iris' maximum reach. Coils of kitchen tinfoil were taped to the ceiling and curled around the display case. A real, professional microscope with a purple ribbon around its base sat on the table, beside three other fully-decorated gift bags and boxes. A tape roll was on its side on one of the chairs, and Joe's favorite mug still had cold coffee sitting in it, weighing down a roll of scarlet wrapping paper. Iris had left one of her hair scrunchies on the floor; she always took them off at the last second before bed.

"And that goes away when you realize something—you're never really alone."

He climbed back onto the couch, tugging the blanket right up to his chin, eyes on his name in gold hanging behind him. He may not have his mother or father anymore, but he wasn't alone. He had people who would offer their bedroom floor if he was sick, people who cleaned him up in the middle of the night after puking all over their clean sheets. Someone to give him their shirt and rub his legs and call him Bar'.

Even the fever couldn't make him afraid anymore, and he fell asleep smiling.

That memory didn't belong to Savitar. He could recall every detail and feeling, but the people who had been closest to him once would swear it hadn't happened to him, that it wasn't his. He didn't know why it was the first thing he thought of on the run back from the bank. Maybe it was the same feverish ache he felt after a bullet had just torn through his body.

The only thing more agitating than being shot in the shoulder—twice—was having to run back to S.T.A.R. Labs with Heat Wave in tow seconds later. Not only was he heavy, smelly, and very angry, but even after they arrived he would not shut up. He wasn't raging about how he was going to escape. He was mocking his captor. Currently the thing that had wrought the most fascination was Cisco's Flash suit.

"Fancy getup you got there, freakshow. How much, uh, how much superglue you use to stick those little lightning bolts on your head? They fly off a lot?"

"What is that, leather? My cousin wears leather. He's in a gang. 18. Thinks he's hot stuff. You two'd get along."

"Too bad you didn't think to make it with a little Kevlar. They make it in black."

Savitar dragged him to the Pipeline, slowing when he reached the first empty cell. Really, he'd been moving slower and slower ever since they'd arrived at the building due to his injury, and his prisoner was not improving his mood. Neither were the too-bright emergency lights coming from every wall, or the ridiculous shade of blue inside the cell they approached.

"So much metal..." Rory breathed, staring around him. The whites of his eyes were turning pink. "What I could do to this structure..."

Savitar raised his eyebrows, not impressed. "You could die in it," he offered, deadpan.

The meta did not seem at all fazed. Rory jerked, as if he hadn't learned that his parole officer would only grip tighter every time he did. "Me die?" he hissed, a huge smile playing about his face. "I'm not the one with a chunk taken outta my casing." He nodded to Savitar's bleeding shoulder. "Can't outrun a hole that big, speedy."

"You're right," Savitar nodded, thinking it over. "I've got accelerated healing properties, though, so—" He hit the side of his head with the heel of his hand. "Sorry, big words—I get better fast."

Rory actually growled at him. "When I get outta this place, it's gonna melt on top of you. You'll choke on your own clubhouse."

"I've been through worse," Savitar countered, tapping the necessary keys on the wall to open Heat Wave's cell door. He tossed the pyro inside and sealed him in, clutching his shoulder.

"Feeling that bullet now, are we?" Rory called from behind the glass, noticing the movement. "Blessed with fire...I keep forgetting guns used to be my favorite."

Savitar winced, glancing at the glove of his suit as he let go of his shoulder. More blood to clean out. He only had the one costume. "Like I said—I've been through worse."

Rory stared at the speedster, face a picture of delight at his enemy's pain. His eyes lingered on the raspberry red color mixing with the charcoal of the costume, as if drinking it in. The cuffs still tied his hands together, and his legs were visibly shaking with the obvious effort of trying to melt them off and getting nowhere. Sweat trickled down his forehead.

"Besides," Savitar went on carelessly, smirking over at the pyro, "I've got a quick fix. Watch this."

Compliant or possibly just bored already, Rory pressed his nose to the glass, as if waiting for some epic display of superhuman abilities.

Instead, Savitar tilted his head back and whined as if tattling, unnecessarily loudly into his comms, "Caitliiin, I got shot again!"

It took about three minutes, but Caitlin eventually appeared around the corner in her white lab coat, face like thunder. She was wearing black slacks and a light blue sweater, and her hair was no longer the fluffy mess it had been just an hour ago. She held a fresh roll of bandages in one hand.

Savitar jutted out his lower lip to her, then made the same face to Rory, whose eyes were now trained on the bio-engineer with something that looked a little too intelligent to be ignored. But Savitar had turned back to Caitlin before noticing Rory's surprised expression, folding his arms with a slight wince.

"You, medical wing, now." Caitlin snapped her fingers and pointed to the exit. Her tone was biting.

Savitar, undaunted, wordlessly flashed out of the corridor. With a neutral glance at Rory, who grinned toothily at her, Caitlin slid her hand over the panel on the wall, allowing her palm to be scanned. The final metal door collapsed over the glass, shielding Heat Wave from all sights and sounds apart from the ones in his own cell.

"How?" Caitlin wrung out a rag she'd soaked in ointment, squeezing a little harder than she needed to to rid it of excess liquid. Her tone was icier than ever. "How do you manage to get shot twice within the span of three days? Why is this the second time I have treated a bullet to the shoulder this week?"

"I wanted a matching set," Savitar replied dryly.

Caitlin hardly heard him. She was on a roll. "You have to be smarter!" She slapped the rag down on his wound and he thrashed once, hissing through his teeth. "You're telling me the man who hoodwinked Central City's finest detective, three scientific geniuses and one experienced superhero doesn't think to make sure the only practical weapon in this situation was taken care of?"

The speedster made a wet sound in his throat before snarling, "I didn't 'hoodwink' you. I failed, you all won. Remember? That's why we're here."

Caitlin pressed harder as she cleaned the blood off of his arm. "That was the most basic of metas," she reminded him, ignoring his bitterness. "Fire powers? You've dealt with those a hundred times over."

"Yeah, my Speed Force nightmare was being chased through Pompeii by the Human Torch for an eternity," Savitar grunted.

She still wasn't listening. The rag was almost completely bright red now, and she didn't seem to notice. "All you had to do was apply the power-dampening cuffs and come straight back here. Simple physics, the basest strategy. That was the plan. Instead a bank is burning, Eddie Thawne could've been killed—again—and you screwed up and got yourself shot through the shoulder! Again!"

"I got the guy, didn't I?"

"It was stupid!" Caitlin wet the rag again, but it only got the ointment dirty with blood. She wasn't focusing on what she was doing. She went to apply the bandage, wrapping it too tightly, making that red too.

"Agh, Snow—"Savitar's teeth ground together, she was doing this wrong, his entire arm hurt. "Snow—"

"No! No, you can't talk your way out of this, it's too late! You never think, and I'm left behind to prepare for who knows what crazy damage you'll do to yourself next. If I weren't here, what would you do when people like Mick Rory—" Too much pressure, the bandage was too tight.

"Stop—"

"You take too many risks, Barry!"

"Caitlin!" Savitar grabbed her wrist, yanking it effortlessly away from his wounded shoulder.

The world went black and white for a second.

Her mouth stopped moving at last. Her eyes cleared when she looked at him, and he saw her pupils trace his scars. The color in her face went from fully saturated to practically nonexistent. He was probably gripping her too hard, but his brain was caught on what she'd called him, the way your shirt gets caught on a bramble.

It was too familiar. The scolding, the way he couldn't get a word in, even the color of the sheets on the operating table were the same. How long had it been since he'd made Caitlin Snow angry like this? How long since he'd returned from a mission just to have her in his face, patching him up with her hands and tearing him down with her electric looks and her tone?

Glaring at each other, for a moment he was Barry again, and he was in the Cortex instead of the med bay, and Cisco was watching awkwardly from his desk as they snapped at each other. The fight went out of his gaze at the feeling, and he let go of her.

"Sorry." Caitlin pulled her arm in close to her chest, turning away. "I'm sorry. I'll start over," she muttered, beginning to unwrap his bandage slowly.

Savitar nodded, leaning back onto the mattress. "Where do you go?" he asked suddenly, almost suspiciously. Maybe changing the subject. More likely dismissing the incident.

She was quiet, as if afraid to speak again. She might not think he deserved conversation after this latest stunt, and would stitch him up and click away in her heels. But after a moment she asked, voice like cotton, "What do you mean?"

"You're not here in the evenings," he grunted. "You don't have another job, and it's not because you don't know how to do anything else. What's had your attention while I was out looking for Rory? You and your team partying in the multiverse without me?"

If she was surprised he'd noticed her absence, she didn't show it. "Actually I've been...attending classes."

Disappointing. Savitar waited for elaboration. The bandage was almost used up.

"I met this Earth's version of Martin Stein," she explained, and her tone was stronger, as if relieved to be moving away from the mistake she'd made seconds ago. "His wife is in critical condition, possibly because of Kyle Nimbus."

"The Mist."

"You remember that?" Caitlin blinked hard, shaking her head a little as if wanting to kick herself mentally. "Sorry. Of course you do—anyway—he just...he seemed lonely, and I couldn't help it. I've had coffee with him a few times—"

"He's a little old for you, isn't he?" Savitar's lip curled up into something dangerously close to a patronizing smile and he turned to look at her at last.

Caitlin did not dignify that with a direct response. "He suggested I check out a few of his lectures. He's turned Earth-66's Hudson University into his own experimental corporation, but he still teaches night classes on nuclear fission and transmutation—"

"So you're feeding your science bug." Savitar's cup of care had emptied. He rolled his head back to the other side. "I know what you're trying to do."

"Excuse me?"

"Stein." Savitar glanced at the ceiling. "And Wally. An engineer, a genius. You wanna build me a little team before you run back to the real Flash."

She didn't deny it.

"There's just one tiny flaw in your plan." Savitar sat up, though pain jolted through his arm. "I'm not the Flash. And I don't need a team. I don't need you. I don't need Wally, or Stein, or anybody else."

Caitlin was staring at him, face emotionless. When had she learned to control her expression the way he did? Had she always been able to? He couldn't remember. It was probably conditioned for her doctor's practice, not to show alarm in order to keep the patient calm. She was remarkably good at it.

"No one can get by in life on their own," Caitlin told him matter-of-factly.

Savitar let out a long, exaggerated sigh, taking the clean gray shirt she offered him, one of the ones he'd packed. His wound was patched. "Here we go."

"Everyone—especially time remnants—has been dependent on at least two other human beings in order to survive during the course of a lifetime." She was going into scientist mode, he could tell by the metal in her words. "It's in our nature to lean on others. By ourselves we don't get far. I know you remember needing people," she added sharply. He didn't look at her. "You remember wanting people by your side. I know that's why you agreed to come here—and I know that's why you're being the Flash again." She had discovered his motive.

His eyes flickered between both of hers, went down to the small smile she was now wearing. Something twisted in his chest. He couldn't tell whether it was negative or not. He'd been so hollowed-out for so long, he wasn't sure how to name his own feelings.

"Or—whatever you're calling yourself," Caitlin amended, holding up a hand. "You said we abandoned you," she went on, folding her arms around herself. "That we...forgot you, in the future. You told Barry that was why you became Savitar. The 'God of Speed'. You recruited acolytes and followers so that you wouldn't be forgotten again, but..." She closed her eyes for a moment, as if searching for the right words. "It's better to help people—to feel their genuine gratitude and—and real love from the people you rescue in that suit...than to be worshipped as a god, just because they're afraid of you."

He tried to swallow, but he couldn't. Settled for looking at the Hammond Cuff still around his wrist, on the outside of the costume. She didn't get to do this, to probe him and try to clean him out the way she had his bullet hole. She was Barry's little nurse, Cisco's best friend, Joe's teammate, Wally's advisor. By extension, she wasn't allowed to understand. It felt like someone had signed their name on the inside of a journal he'd kept his whole life, without his permission, and he'd just opened the front cover to see it there, in contrast to his own handwriting. It didn't feel intentionally deleterious, but it didn't feel correct, either.

"You might not think about it too much when you're out there, but—you've been saving lives instead of taking them, or—or—corrupting them." Caitlin let out a small laugh, the kind you release when something is unbelievable, when it's ironic and there's a little bit of pain from the past barely mixing with the good that brings the laugh. "If you keep that up...no one is going to forget you in a hurry."

You're afraid of being alone in the dark.

"And you won't be alone anymore." She picked up the basin of ointment, the bloody rag floating in it, making her way out of the room. "Whether you like it or not."

(Next chapter coming soon, Jell-O Squares! Thank you for your continued patience and support, my friends. I love your reviews to pieces and often read them more than once a day! -Doverstar)