(Author's Note: You guys only had to wait a week this time! Okay, I'm sorry, work has been dumb. Love you guys! -Doverstar)
The generator made the engineer's wing hot.
Caitlin and Wally rushed into a wall of heat the moment Wally opened the door. Doctor Snow scrunched up her face, eyeing the generator as it hummed and rattled like a washing machine in the corner. Yes, it was autumn outside, and midnight was cold in S.T.A.R. Labs, but this was unnecessary. Warmth at this time of year and night should have been pleasant, but she felt suffocated.
"Are you sure it's not overheating?" she checked, pulling and pulling at the collar of her pajama top to try and get some air against her skin.
"The blueprints included a cooling system," Wally replied distractedly. He didn't seem to notice the temperature, though Caitlin could see now why he had been so drenched in the Cortex. "It just needs a second to kick in. Generator's only been on a couple minutes."
"And it's giving off that much power?" Caitlin made a face. "It's practically a sauna in this room!"
"Well—I mean, it's either that or the whole city goes dark." West knelt beside the generator, checking a few levers and a small screen attached to the right side. "Cisco was pretty specific about the schematics on this guy. Anything goes wrong and we could get a huge blackout, or…"
He paused and kept his head down, near the machine. Caitlin noted his hands were no longer moving.
"Or…?" she prompted, arms folded.
Wally turned to give her a cute little grimace. Pure nerves. "Or we all go down in flames."
Caitlin raised her eyebrows, pulling her mouth down at him.
His grimace wilted. He looked the way her Wally did when she tried to help him with his chemistry homework afterhours in the Cortex. "You're not—lookin' freaked out."
"Sorry." She let her eyes flash wide once, moving around the generator to kneel beside him. "It wouldn't be the first good-to-worst odds I've faced."
"You guys blow stuff up for fun on your—other Earth?"
"No." She chewed her lip, then held up a finger as an afterthought soared into view. "But there was a black hole above the city at one point—"
Wally waved his hands hard, trying not to laugh. "You know what, uh, let's forget it. I don't wanna know. No black holes. No…" he flicked another switched and the rattling stopped, "…big explosions, none of that. Seriously. I am too tired and too hungry for this not to work."
Caitlin looked at him sideways, caked with sweat, and decided not to mention the many times she'd offered him food while he worked.
He opened a small compartment on the side facing the breach-creator's frame. Then, suddenly, as if he'd just remembered something: "Oh oh oh, Caitlin, check this out, look at this." He waved her closer with a hand, pointing.
Caitlin leaned down. Encased in the compartment by blue-stained glass was a large, scarlet…
Wally's grin made his eyes bigger. Browner. "It's literally a big red button."
She couldn't help chortling, lifting a shoulder in a halfway shrug. "Well, what happens if we press the big red button?"
"It's supposed to power up the breacher." His grin froze, but not in the way smiles do when someone battles them. It was still a positive expression, just a more serious one. "If it works…you won't be stuck here anymore."
Caitlin's laughter died in her throat at the thought. Fragile hope put a lump there instead. She'd hoped for a lot of things in the past five years. A lasting marriage with a pizza-loving structural engineer. A promising career in scientific advancements. A life without nightmares. That Barry would make it back to S.T.A.R. Labs in one piece—every time. That she would finally do something that mattered on the team. That she'd be rid of Killer Frost for good. That Savitar would have the best life possible, most recently.
She'd watched plenty of those dreams fall flat, had been met with disappointment more often than satisfaction. Ronnie died. The particle accelerator failed. Killer Frost was still in there somewhere. Nightmares plagued her every night. Her trip to Earth-66 had become a slight disaster. Savitar seemed more confused than content.
Caitlin was almost afraid to hope for this. To hope for something as normal and relatable as being able to just go home. She didn't know if she could withstand one more plummet, one more heartbreak. Especially this one. Not being allowed to return to her family, to the world she belonged to, might be too much, after everything she had lost in life. She was always losing the battles. How could she line up for yet another fight?
Wally was watching her, as if trying to read what was probably a mixed expression.
Stop focusing on you. The boy in front of her had worked tirelessly, desperate to please. Chewing her nails over getting her hopes up could wait.
"Wally," she began, realizing she hadn't praised him enough, "getting this generator built, without any outside help—getting this far in a job that should be completely impossible for—well, for anyone but Cisco—" Caitlin bit her lip. She was rambling. She narrowed her eyes at him. "You know how you keep saying you want to be like Savitar? Make a difference?"
He nodded.
"This is what that looks like." She threw a hand out, gesturing to the generator and the frame. "You just built an incredible machine with secondhand blueprints from another world in a couple of days. For someone you hardly know—because you wanted to help." Caitlin nudged him a bit with her shoulder. "You officially qualify as a hero." She rolled her eyes. "And I can spot that kind of talent a mile away. Trust me. I've worked with several."
Wally looked almost embarrassed, ducking his head to hide a big smile. "I owed you one."
Caitlin wanted to shake her head, wanted to reprimand him for downplaying his hard work, but he didn't give her the chance.
"Okay. Let's see what we got."
There was a loud WHIRRR as Wally pressed the big red button.
She almost wished he had waited a moment. Long enough for her to get her thoughts together, at least. But she came to the conclusion that the longer she waited for this to happen, the more time she'd have to fret. Another Keep Doctor Snow Busy list wouldn't have been enough. She should be grateful he'd done it the Barry Allen way—fast and careless.
The orange extension cord running from the back of the generator actually wobbled a touch on the floor as energy raced through it. Caitlin thought she smelled something burning, but a moment later it was gone, and she realized she'd just been expecting it. All in her head. The frame did not shake, however. Wally had managed to get it fully standing—no longer leaning against a wall, polished and dormant. It stood immovable as the generator worked its magic, pumping power into the machine.
Caitlin stared almost pleadingly at the open circle of air the frame surrounded. A spark. A flicker. Anything. Anything to signify success.
There was a slight rush of wind behind them, and Caitlin turned in surprise—any disturbance should've been coming from in front of them, where the frame was, not in the opposite direction—but it was only Savitar. He had joined them, this time in full costume. Caitlin couldn't judge his expression with the mask on.
Wally glanced at the speedster when he came in, but that was all he did. At this point he seemed too nervous to greet his hero with that same friendly energy. He devoted the rest of his attention to his work-in-progress.
"Is it working?" Savitar asked bluntly.
"We'll see," was Caitlin's quiet, distracted reply.
A roar, like lightning dancing with a windstorm, consumed the room. Caitlin felt her heart shoot skyward as a blinding light flashed and twisted in the frame. A breach. She heard, over the din, Wally make some kind of exclamation, but whether it was more akin to choking or laughing she couldn't have said.
The shade of blue the portal held was familiar and possibly Caitlin's new favorite color. Around it, a cloud of electric white churned, with a kaleidoscope of brighter and darker blues darting in and out of the center. The heat in the engineer's wing seemed to be dissipating as the light grew stronger, and the smell of metal became overcome with a scent sort of like mountain air and asphalt mixed together. Caitlin recalled thinking Cisco began to naturally smell a bit more like this in the first few weeks of discovering his vibing abilities.
Her hair whipped around her, in her eyes, across her back, over her shoulders. Caitlin felt an almost cautious smile straining the corners of her mouth. "Wally—" she shouted, "You did it!"
Wally said something—he might have cursed, actually—but as he was closer to the breach than she was by this time, she couldn't hear it. He did turn to look at her excitedly over a shoulder, though, teeth bared in a grin even larger than her own, and stagger a bit. She got the feeling he would point to the portal like a child at a balloon if Savitar weren't in the room.
Speaking of the speedster…
Caitlin glanced back at her friend, suddenly desperate to share her relief with someone close, and saw Savitar looking into the portal intently, as if trying to see anything through the haze of blue. For the first time, Caitlin considered the possibility that he missed the Earth he remembered as much as she did. The thought of him visiting it, even after she'd returned home, was a welcome one. But he didn't seem happy, or hopeful. The most she could glean from watching him was a guardedness she had mastered herself a long time ago. His mouth was drawn, and between the black leather of his mask she could see a kind of shadow in his eyes. He didn't meet her gaze.
Caitlin moved closer to the breach, taking it one slow, restrained step at a time. She wanted to reach out and put her hand in, feel the cold and the rush she had the last time she'd walked back into Earth-1 for a visit and some pizza. To make it real, to make the hope solid.
But just as she lifted a hand, as suddenly as it had come, the breach was gone.
There was a kind of electric buzz, and the frame shook at last. Then it was empty, and the portal had disappeared, and Caitlin faltered as though walking in new heels.
The generator was still going. Unlike the frame, it bore no change. The hum was the same. The heat levels began to slowly return to the room.
Caitlin couldn't form words. But the speedster could.
"What happened?" Savitar asked, voice still hard but with a curious tint to it.
Caitlin, heart slowing, blood draining from her cheeks, turned to Wally for answers, who looked as if he might throw up. His chest was heaving; both hands laced behind his head.
"I-I don't…" Wally's sneakers squeaked on the floor as he rushed back to the generator, checking the extension cord, checking all the switches. "I don't know, I didn't…" He trailed off, too preoccupied with fixing whatever had gone wrong.
Caitlin joined him beside the generator, dropping into a crouch, watching his hands fly over the equipment. One…two…three—three—four…three, four…five… It wasn't working. What came after five? She couldn't count. It made her even more frustrated, somehow. It stressed her out. She abandoned the practice, inhaling through her nose. Wally was almost shaking next to her.
But before two sets of panic could break out—Wally's and Caitlin's seemed to match one another's—a new, quietly awed voice sounded from the doorway.
"Forgive me for the intrusion," Professor Stein stood there, arms limp, eyes glued to the dormant frame. "But would anyone care to explain what I just saw?"
Apparently, at 1:45 AM, Professor Stein had arrived at S.T.A.R. Labs to retrieve his briefcase. He'd left it in the med bay when he and Caitlin had been securing the Nimbus antidote, putting a nice sturdy check-mark on the Keep Doctor Snow Busy list while Savitar had been missing in action. He had only remembered his mistake—as plenty of creative people do—when trying to get some sleep for the night, well-exercised brain slower to exhaustion than the rest of him. According to Stein as Caitlin sat him down right there in the engineer's wing to demand what he was doing there at this ungodly hour, he had important documents Clarissa's hospital would need to see in that briefcase, and couldn't sleep knowing it wasn't safe in his home. In her concern to remain preoccupied, away from Savitar's obvious absence, Caitlin hadn't even seen the briefcase yesterday.
The result of all this? The professor, on his way to the med bay, had heard the commotion coming from the breach machine. Stein had entered the room just in time to see Wally's and Cisco's joint creation explode to life and then, to the surprise of all watching, fail much too quickly.
And now, renowned scientist that he was, Earth-66's Martin was foaming at the mouth with intrigue.
As Wally checked and quadruple-checked the breach machine, Stein sat in the little metal work chair Caitlin had ushered him into, working up a sweat that was probably more due to his excitement than the room's overenthusiastic temperature. Question after question shot from the old man, to Caitlin's dismay and Savitar's obvious impatience behind them.
"That energy, that-that-that rift that just—appeared—am I correct in assuming it was a vortex, perhaps…er, something transdimensional?"
At this, Caitlin stammered, "It—it is, but…" she faltered, unsure where to begin, and Stein's eyes lit up with the confirmation. He went on, clearly encouraged.
"I knew it! But—isn't this all a bit too Stephen King to be authentic? He took off his glasses, squinting at the frame. "The characteristics, that crackling pattern—the hue—and what kind of containment is that, the substructure? How is it able to maintain the raw power I saw?" A sharp brown look. "What other experiments are you conducting here, Miss Snow?"
"I'm not—"
"Illegally, without a doubt. I-Is this some kind of exploration, a test of the natural human curiosity? How did you manage to achieve something like this with such limited resources? Just the three of you?"
Several times Stein tried to stand, tried to get a closer look at Wally's breach machine, but Caitlin, expression slack, kept him from it.
"And, and Savitar—" Stein waved a hand toward the speedster, whose head tilted back a tad in exasperation at being dragged into the nerdy monologue. "Your abilities, your speed, in theory, could create just such a highway—what need do any of you actually have for something like this?"
Caitlin opened her mouth to start combatting some of the questions, but she found nothing would come out. Her brain had frozen (no pun intended). All she could think of was how quickly the breach had gone. She could feel the eyes of Earth-66's Fastest Man Alive boring into her from behind.
There was a flash of light as Savitar sped from the engineering wing and back, returning with an expensive black briefcase. When Stein didn't take it from him, he set it down in the scientist's lap.
"There. You got what you came for. Time to go back home, Professor." Savitar's tone was calm, almost like a mature young nephew guiding grandpa back from a doddering sleepwalk.
Stein scoffed, blowing out his cheeks. "Excuse me, but I just witnessed the unraveling of time and space as I knew it. I think I am owed an explanation."
"You haven't stopped talking since you showed up," Savitar replied, undaunted by the teacher-reprimanding-you stare Stein was giving him. "You shouldn't be here."
"I believe your young friend there doesn't belong here either," argued Stein. He nodded to Wally, whose back was still turned to the three of them. "Surely it's past his bedtime?"
"He was invited."
"I-I fail to see how that bears any—"
"Stop," Caitlin huffed, shutting her eyes. She could feel another headache coming on. It was too late in the night—no, too early in the morning—for this. "Professor, he's right. You shouldn't be here."
Stein gaped at her, looking very offended. His knuckles grew white where he gripped his briefcase.
Caitlin stared down at him, willing herself to tie this problem up in a nice box and store it away. The way she'd tried to do with everything. The way Team Flash was always so good at. Prioritizing. But without her Cisco there, her best friend, without Harry or Joe—or Barry, with his quick thinking and his ability to pick the next right thing over everything else, every time, without his level voice and the determined set of his jaw—she wasn't sure how to start. She couldn't focus. Did she come clean to Stein, all at once, at 2 o'clock in the morning? The poor man might never sleep again. If he was anything like Earth-1's version—and experience suggested he was—he'd be up late for the rest of his days, writing calculations and scheming on how to travel through the multiverse himself. All in the name of science and productivity and more science. And if that wasn't the way to go, how to dissuade him? How could she distract him from the colossal failure he'd just seen? From such an out-of-this-world attempt? It couldn't be done. And none of that mattered—because she couldn't go home!
But Savitar anchored her.
All at once, he was at her shoulder, bearing down on Stein quietly, talking in a familiar tone. One she'd just been wishing she would hear.
"We need to know we can trust you."
"Trust me? What is this, a late-night showing of CSI?"
Caitlin jolted back to the present. Back to logical thinking. She glanced at Savitar in surprise at what his words implied.
Savitar looked back at her, gaze questioning.
Suddenly she could read him. The way she and another very fast young man with intelligent, clear eyes could communicate from across a room. She could practically hear his rough undertones. It was easy, so easy, so familiar.
What do you want to do here?
A slight purse of her lips, a quirk of her eyebrows. What do you want to do?
Tiny shake of his head. Do we have a choice?
She nodded, just barely.
We tell him.
We tell him.
This felt good. Caitlin hadn't been that in sync with someone else since her last trip home for pizza and a transmogrifier. She'd met her friends at S.T.A.R. Labs and she and Barry had happened to be wearing the same shade of blue. Teammates did make decisions together—doing it with Savitar was as natural as blinking. He hadn't even seemed to think about it when he'd glanced at her. He could read her, too.
"Professor Stein," Caitlin began carefully, crouching across from his chair. Trying not to look at the silent breach machine. "I'm going to tell you what I told Wally. But you can't repeat it, and—I need you to wait to ask questions until I'm finished."
Looking as though he were swallowing indignancy, Stein lowered his eyelids and made a great show of closing his mouth.
Savitar had to actually get used to the sound of Stein's voice all over again.
Barry had read several books by the other Earth's Martin Stein. He'd followed all of Stein's websites, had seen several interviews. He hadn't been quite as highly ranked in Allen's mind as Harrison Wells once had, but he was definitely up there. After having met Stein on Earth-1, following the particle accelerator accident, Barry had rewritten what he'd thought of the genius and had counted him as less of an idol and more of a friend. But he'd had to become acquainted with a different kind of scary-smart babble than the rest of his companions'. He'd had to learn that all the stammering was due to Stein's brain moving faster than his mouth could. He'd had to gauge the lack of expression on the old man's face as he went on a scientific tangent, finding emotions in his tones rather than his eyes or his hands.
Here, with this not-too-different Stein having just been handed the possibility of another universe—by visitors from said other universe—it was ten times harder adjusting.
Caitlin's inability to shut up was contagious on this Earth. Everyone she brought into the building just would not stop talking long enough for things to get done.
At first, Stein had gone through a few skeptical stages. He couldn't behave as if what Caitlin was telling him was false. He had witnessed the breach opened; everything she was saying was easily proven with the sight of the portal alone. But Savitar could see him just itching to disbelieve any of it, all of it. Scientists thought so much about the impossible—they spent as much time trusting in it as they did trying to debunk it. But what could he say, in the face of his unassuming discovery just thirty minutes earlier?
Caitlin had been deliberate in her explanation. She'd started with Barry—she always seemed to. In everything.
She'd started with Barry and she'd ended with hiring Wally. A young man on another Earth, struck by lightning, saving the world. Countless losses, leading to the introduction of Savitar himself—Caitlin didn't seem to think the words evil doppelganger or the Let's Murder Iris West 2017 agenda were important enough to mention, though she went through his origins lengthily enough. When she finally arrived at the present, Stein's questions were actually slow at first.
He wanted her to explain him again. To explain Savitar, where he came from, what events had transpired to create him. Savitar had cut in, giving Stein a non-emotional handbook version of the novel he could've written about 2024, along with his plan to become a god. Once Stein had heard it from Savitar, it seemed to make more sense. He didn't even need a whiteboard.
After that, a few questions regarding Cisco Ramon, the creator of the blueprints Caitlin handed him. The breach machine blueprints. Savitar, eyes moving faster than any of them could breathe, looked each page over thoroughly as Caitlin spoke. They confirmed what he'd already suspected about this potential lifesaver Caitlin had hooked so much hope into. He'd built his own suit of armor; he could predict what kind of pieces it would take to create a doorframe for the gateway to Earth-1. But he wasn't an engineer—the metal suit was one thing. Something like this, something so obviously suited for Ramon, was different. He remembered a timeline where he, despite the knowledge of millennia backing him, couldn't turn the Speed Force Bazooka into what he'd needed without Cisco's help. Barry Allen was above-average where intelligence was concerned; so was Savitar. But he wasn't a mechanic.
Relieving, though, to see he'd been right about the schematics of this thing. Still got it. He allowed himself a boyish quirk of a smile in the half-a-second it took to read the blueprints on his own.
When Stein was finished asking questions, Caitlin offered to take him to the Cortex.
"We both know no one's getting any more sleep tonight," she'd sighed, pointedly turning away from the generator, the breach frame. "We might as well make the most of it."
"I don't want to impose," Stein protested, standing and following her to the exit.
"Too late," Savitar muttered, pushing past the two of them and opening the door.
Caitlin glanced back at West once before they left. "I'll be right back, Wally," she called, in a too-controlled voice.
Wally didn't look around.
Stein cleared his throat. "Really. I can curb any more questions, er, theories, regarding your tale I might have for now, if that's what you're worried about. Were I you, after such a harrowing disappointment, I'd want the chance at some rest."
But Caitlin shook her head as they walked through the corridors, Savitar trailing behind them, not feeling much like running. He felt more like catching his breath. A rarity. The sound of the breach erupting to life was still making his head pound.
"I don't think rest is possible for me, after all this," she repeated hoarsely. "Besides—we still need a battle strategy for getting that antidote into the hospital."
Her smile was forced. Savitar could see it; Stein could probably see it too. And she had forgotten to do away with her lipstick before heading to bed hours earlier. A pale peach color. It suited her. She always went for subtle. Though, Savitar decided with a slight twitching in the corners of his mouth, it was doubtful Stein had noticed that too.
The old man hesitated, then seemed to give in. "I won't say no to progress," he admitted. "Lead the way."
Savitar was in and out of the Cortex periodically as Caitlin and Stein brainstormed. He had no interest in hanging around while they calculated and re-calculated. Their little plan to save Stein's wife had led to many such debates in the most popular room in the building, and frankly, Savitar was tired of walking in on them. And he was hungry.
Caitlin would have restocked the mini fridge in the med bay. She acted like he'd never think to look there for her own, new, personal stash of strawberry Jell-O. New in this dimension, maybe, but if memory served, Caitlin had the same secret stash on the first Earth. In the same spot. Every weekend it was replenished, and every weekend Barry and Cisco would go and raid it. Then they'd put on cute little puppy dog faces when she stormed in and demanded to know where it had all gone.
He didn't race to the med bay; he could use a walk. He'd been dashing around for a full day and a half, trying to shake familiar, irritating friends like frustration and anxiety that kept threatening him with their company. His argument with Caitlin—the day Eddie had helped catch Snart—had made outrunning those friends harder.
Savitar found the fight going out of him more quickly these days, when at odds with the bioengineer. Before, he'd felt the need to take her down a few pegs, to get some sort of non-noble response from her. It was entertaining, and it felt good. Then, when that need went away, sometime between Nimbus' attack and his 84th coffee run for her, any other sort of provoking comment was just natural for him. He wasn't happy-go-lucky Barry Allen anymore, racing to keep everyone else happy and safe. More often than not, he woke up in a bad mood. That happened to disposable lives. They got up angry.
He didn't rise to the rage that was always sitting inside anymore. It didn't all magically go away just because Caitlin batted her eyes and treated a few bullet wounds, of course. It was still there—he simply didn't keep trying to use it for everything. He didn't call upon it when trying to find the right answer to a question, or when Caitlin was nagging him, or when a meta interrupted one of his runs. All he'd had, for eons, was anger and bitterness and pain. He'd depended on it. He couldn't be Barry Allen anymore—so where else could he find his identity but that mountain of hurt? Golden boy Barry could be pretty cutting if he just gave in once in a while.
He hadn't needed to lean on it for some time now. The hole Team Flash 2024 had created was slowly being filled, and suddenly it wasn't as easy to dip into that pool of fury.
But Caitlin had given him a reason to, the day Lisa and her semi struck. Ever since she'd discovered she was unable to return to Earth-1, she'd had tunnel vision. It was all she wanted to focus on.
He couldn't blame her for wanting to help Stein, to help Wally and Eddie. It was in his nature to be surly, and it was in hers to give herself away—give up her time, her efforts, her brainpower, to those in need. She'd always wanted to help people. So had Barry.
Running for a full day with nothing but his thoughts, he'd come to that conclusion. Her desire to help people was not what made him so upset, what made him fight her. It was the idea that, once she'd figured out how to go home, she would completely toss him aside. Throw him at the three pet projects she'd taken on and never finished while she went back to her real life. That she'd forget all about him.
It had only been made more poignant by the words temporary teammate.
She was always supposed to leave. She was never supposed to stay on Earth-66. But this softer version of him—the mud she'd made of the road he'd paved clearly to get to where he wanted to be—he wasn't sure this new, fuller Savitar would be able to live with that outcome.
He didn't have to think about it now. The breach machine hadn't worked yet, and writhing inside over Caitlin's eventual departure could be put on hold. Nobody wanted to worry about what hadn't happened yet. That was her department.
Savitar had nearly made it to the med bay when he ran into Wally.
Before the boy could physically collide with him, the speedster stopped short, and Wally faltered in step too, barely looking around. Savitar vibrated, just enough to become unrecognizable. Wally was the only civilian on this Earth that had seen him outside his suit, and though he was wearing it now, he didn't care for the theatrics should West discover they'd already met. Savitar wasn't sure if it was because he missed the worship he'd gotten back in the Stone Age, or if he just didn't have time for all the blind reactions he'd recieve.
Wally didn't seem to mind the secrecy, though Savitar knew he was aware of Earth-1, of where he and Caitlin had come from. Seeing the hero's face shouldn't have made that much of a difference. Actually, he didn't seem to have much care for anything at the moment. He was limp; his shoulders nearly reaching his ears; his head was bent so low. Savitar could hear, before West had halted completely, the soles of his sneakers dragging along the ground as he walked, not bothering to pick up his feet. He smelled like sweat and oil—in short, like an engineer. His orange hoodie was tied around his waist, 6th-grader style.
When Savitar didn't blast past him, Wally finally looked up, face blank. Or impatient.
Savitar raised his eyebrows. Obviously West was expecting something. So he rasped, "You look like Hell."
Wally nodded, scratching at the bridge of his nose. "Been a long day."
He pursed his lips, nodded halfway, and continued down the corridor, moving like he should've had a cane to support him. He wasn't carrying the equipment Savitar had seen him with the past couple of weeks. He must have left it in the engineering wing.
"You're leaving," Savitar called after him, turning slightly. It was only halfway a question.
Wally glanced over his shoulder, slowing down. "Yeah." He exhaled—not exactly a sigh. "I'm just…really tired."
Savitar watched him for a moment. There was a desperation in those eyes. He'd seen it in Barry's memories too often. The Wally Savitar remembered had grown up with a loving mother, but he'd been missing half a life. The result of an absent father, of only a fraction of a family, could turn most kids sour. It gave them an excuse to try and make everyone around them feel just as lacking. But never Wally. Wally had inherited the West I Have To Help People gene, and he'd always tried. Tried everything to be more. And this Earth's Wally seemed to mirror that, if for different reasons, and with an even sweeter, more energetic temperament. He, like Earth-1's Kid Flash, was constantly moving, attempting to become something better than what he was. And when he failed—when he came close but fell short—his eyes were the same way every time.
Savitar tilted his head, just a peppering of surprise in his tone. "You don't wanna stick around, figure out what's wrong with the breacher?"
Wally stopped, squinting. He licked his lips. "I mean, I don't know what else I can do. It's busted, I can't…"
He trailed off, shaking his head. Giving the speedster another second to study him, in a way that took regular people a few minutes of concentration and glassy stares as their minds drifted. The second was all he needed.
Since Savitar had arrived here, he'd been looking at Wally-66 and seeing the wheelchair-bound student of 2024. He hadn't wanted to see him differently. It effortless to watch him trailing after Caitlin, talking passionately about his dad or his new job, and to see someone else in his shadow. Someone who had been basically a human vegetable since his sister's death—but had been able to come out of it long enough to turn Savitar away like everyone else. Seeing the Wally on this Earth grinning and having it morph into the dead-eyed sag of the Wally on 2024 was easy.
But this Wally was not paralyzed. He wasn't against Savitar. He had never known Barry Allen. And for some reason, the words I can't coming from the mouth of a young man who, from what Savitar recalled, had been overly confident in himself since day one—it made them two separate Wally Wests in his eyes at last. Savitar had once preyed upon the original Wally's pride. It was essential to his plan, to getting him out of the Speed Force. But the Wally slumped in the hall here was independent of that.
Savitar didn't need the kid to fix the machine right away. Not like Caitlin did. That wasn't what made him turn and ask questions. Something—something in that softer section Caitlin had pulled out of him—was stirring. Something Barry used to feel, looking at his sidekick, looking at his brother. For a heartbeat or two, Savitar wanted to quell it, wanted to blink and see a wheelchair and a broken boy instead, but it wouldn't come.
"You're giving up," he concluded.
Wally rubbed an eye. "Look, I—wanted to help, but I'm not Cisco. I'm not this expert mechanic Caitlin thinks I am. I fix cars."
"So?" Savitar grunted, unmoved.
He wasn't in a rush to have the breach machine up and running again. The hungry way Caitlin had looked into that blue swirl was burned into the back of his mind. But something about Wally's stance, his tone, was nagging at him.
Wally faced him, as if irritated he wasn't getting it, but too polite to really make an outburst. Taking a few steps back toward the hero, he tried to explain, voice gravelly and getting harder. "I'm an intern, man. I've got literally no experience. I thought I could figure it out and do something—that mattered, and it didn't happen. I wasn't the right guy for the job. 'Course the stupid thing didn't work, you know?" He scoffed, almost smiling, one of those ironic, unhappy smiles Savitar himself was fond of using. Then he pointed to the speedster. "You were right about me."
The former God of Speed crossed his arms. Listening.
"I don't belong here." He dragged a hand down his mouth, as though rubbing a goatee he didn't have. It slapped down against his leg. "Maybe Stein can figure it out; he's supposed to be a genius, right?" Wally's voice kept dropping, deeper, quieter, the way Joe's did when something was really bothering him and he wasn't ready to communicate, doing so anyway for someone else's sake. "I don't know why I thought I could do something like this. It's way out of my league. I'm not like you guys." He licked his lips. "Okay? I'm average."
"Average," Savitar repeated, a vein of skepticism wrapping its way around the word. The kid had been able to create that machine on his own, in just days. A few little Skype lessons from Ramon and coffee-stained blueprints were all he'd had to go off of. Harrison Wells himself would have been impressed, which, if memory served, wasn't an easy feat. When he'd still been bent on becoming a god, Savitar knew, examining Wally from where he stood then, that this wide-eyed college student would have been an easy candidate for an acolyte. Someone resourceful. Above average.
But he was too caught in his own head.
"Yeah," Wally huffed. "I'm not real fast, I'm not super smart, I'm just—me. Normal. I came outta that EXPO thing—after you saved my life? And I thought I was gonna make a difference. I thought, like, This is it. No more messing around." He rolled his eyes. "But the first chance I get to help somebody…I screw up."
"It's not your fault," Savitar argued quietly, determinedly, running a thumb along his upper left arm absently. He said it almost immediately after Wally had taken a breath, paused in his teenage, self-critical rant. He blinked slowly, making sure his tone was level, even. He could do calm, but gentle was hard when the other person wasn't Caitlin. Not quite there yet.
Maybe it was because he'd said the same thing once himself. The first chance I get to help someone, I screw up. The real Flash had, anyway. Savitar recalled that feeling—a strained, agitated feeling of not being enough, no matter what gifts you wound up with. There was no doubt Earth-66's Wally West could relate. Savitar felt something old straightening his shoulders, lifting his head to look Wally in the eye, something nigh untouched for centuries inside him. Something very Barry Allen.
"Whose fault is it, man?" Wally countered. He was no longer the awestruck fanboy. He stood across from Savitar, really clearly frustrated with himself, heedless of annoying his hero, of losing face. "The machine didn't work because I built it."
Savitar shook his head, face a clean picture of exasperation. "Okay." He showed a palm, keeping his tone light. "Okay, fine. So give up. I mean, they can't say you didn't try, right?" He leaned forward a little. "You went for it and it blew up in your face. I guess Caitlin thought you had more than one shot in you." He pulled his mouth down, shrugging. "She's been wrong before."
Wally gave him an extremely Iris West look that said he knew what he was trying to say. "She said it's this kinda stuff that makes me a hero. But it was all a big waste of time. It didn't end up helping y'all, so I'm not a hero."
"Right." Savitar agreed casually. "Because heroes don't give up after one setback." He turned, focusing again on getting that Jell-O. "But don't quote me on that. I don't have too much experience being a hero."
On Earth-1, throwing West's words back at him had always worked during a training session in the Speed Lab. Nothing fired Wally up more than feeling stupid, and H.R. had taught Barry that sometimes getting under Kid Flash's skin was the best way to drag him out of his own head. In Wally's sense of foolishness about himself, he strove even harder to prove that sense wrong. To do away with it.
On Earth-66, the response wasn't dissimilar.
After a moment, Wally called out to him. "What if I stick around? And—say I do it all over again, right, and it still breaks?" A glance over the shoulder told the speedster his eyes were bloodshot. The kid was exhausted; the glance he gave was fragile. "It breaks again. What happens then?"
Savitar walked backwards, palms up. "Guess you'll never know if you give up."
There was something he did have experience with.
When he returned to the Cortex, having consumed each and every one of Caitlin's cartons of gelatin—save the one he was currently eating at his leisure—she and Stein were still talking. Savitar's eyelids drooped as he walked in, feeling sleepy simply from the atmosphere of the room. For science freaks like the two jabbering away on the west dais, the air was probably alive with possibility and plotting. But for speedsters who just wanted a moment with their uptight companions without the side projects distracting them, it was suffocating.
"I'll try to make an appointment with Clarissa's doctor sometime after sunrise," Stein was saying. "The man's utterly insufferable—supposedly the best in his practice, but considering how little time he's put into actually curing her, I have my doubts. Luckily," he added, "in my years of press meetings and conferences at the University, I find it's the insufferable ones that are easiest to sway."
Caitlin's smile was still forced. Savitar, seated behind the white winding desk with both feet propped up, could see with half a glance how exhausted she was. How hollow she felt. All because of a failed portal. It couldn't last.
"I'll keep the antidote here in the meantime," she announced, closing a new briefcase—this one metal, with the S.T.A.R. Labs logo etched onto both sides. "It's the safest place for it."
She paused, catching sight of Savitar. He waved his plastic spoon at her with faux cheeriness.
"Where have you been?" she demanded, in a tone that reminded him of the headache his missing-in-action stunt had given her earlier. Her eyebrows pinched. "That Jell-O had better not be from the med bay."
Savitar ignored that warning. "Saw your head engineer," he replied, jerking his head toward the exit. "I think he's on his way out."
Caitlin seemed to freeze up. "Wally's leaving?" She ran a hand through her hair; Savitar watched the curls bounce over her shoulder. She turned to Stein. "Professor—I know this has been a crazy night, and I know I've asked a lot of you lately, but—"
Stein was already raising both hands. "Yes yes yes, you're very sorry, you'll be right back, I know. You forget, Miss Snow, I've had a front-row seat to your hectic schedule for some time now." When she hesitated, as if trying to decide whether or not to be offended by his interruption, he gave her a tiny smile and raised his eyebrows. "Well? Go on!"
Caitlin rushed from the room, snatching Savitar's Jell-O from his hand on her way past him. It was nearly empty anyway.
When she had gone, Savitar stood to leave the Cortex. He might not get any real time alone with Caitlin for the remainder of the late hours at this rate. Might as well head to bed. Everything he wanted to say to her—everything that kicked at his pride, proved him wrong, turned his mouth to cotton—could wait. The conclusions he'd come to lately, especially while he'd been out running after their fight, were not easy to share. He didn't mind waiting another day. With the breach machine down, Caitlin wasn't going anywhere. That thought alone might help him to sleep with less nightmares tonight.
He glanced at Stein, who was still sitting silently up on the dais, on his way toward the exit.
While Caitlin had been on the scene, Stein's expression had been either all-business, or extremely curious (over their multiverse stories, obviously). Now that she was gone, it had folded down into a very tired, very vexed frown. Everyone had a mask of their own around here.
Stein caught Savitar watching him and did not attempt to put the mask back on. Instead he took off his glasses, wiping them down with a cloth he pulled from his jacket pocket. "I'm afraid that after all this time," he said aloud, to Savitar, to his shadow, to the air, "all this effort…if our attempts should fail—" He made a frustrated sound and slapped a hand against his knee. "Well—I couldn't say what I'd do next."
Savitar's eyes drifted to the wall, then to the floor. He wanted to go to bed. He didn't have to stay up any longer, listening to more whines about plans going astray.
But Stein stopped him by suddenly admitting, "I can't lose her."
Savitar stilled, back against the Cortex's exit archway.
"You'll pardon my confiding in you, I'm sure," Stein went on, waving a hand in Savitar's direction. "It's much easier spilling out your problems to strangers than to new friends." He nodded toward the corridor, indicating Caitlin. "I have a lasting good impression to maintain."
Savitar didn't say anything. Clearly the old man intended to 'spill'. What was the point in prolonging it with conversation?
"When I met Clarissa," Stein began, "I was spellbound. We fought like animals at first. I had never encountered anyone who could make me so—unbalanced. We went to the same college. Every theory I posed, she questioned. For every exceptional grade I received, she pushed me to do better, to be better. A better man."
The Cortex smelled like glass cleaner; Caitlin must have cleaned while he'd been out. Savitar remained statuesque against the archway, but for his index finger, tapping the wall absentmindedly. The impatience to get to bed, to be alone, had drained away. Stein's voice was suddenly less grating to his ears. He was trained on every word. Almost hungry. Something was familiar in the picture the professor was painting, and Savitar was reluctant to move away from the canvas.
"I've come so close to reviving her now. It…can't go wrong." Stein's mouth became a tight line; the same tight line it had been when confronting Nimbus in the pipeline. "There won't be anyone else like her. Not in my lifetime. Despite my academic success, despite how little time I actually dedicated to being her husband when my career really took off, she was always there. Waiting." He was turning an old ring over and over around his finger, tone tense. "God knows what I did to deserve her." He looked up at Savitar. "And now—if our little plan doesn't play out—I may lose the one person on this planet that really knew me, and still chose me."
At that, Savitar felt as if the sound had been sucked from the room. He stared at the wall, arms folded tightly across his chest, not really seeing what he was looking at. Really knew me, and still chose me. Why were those words sticking out so plainly?
Realizing that Stein was silent now, Savitar tore his eyes from space and sent them barreling back toward the old man. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, as though he hadn't just given it fresh exercise talking to Wally.
"I've known loss," he said quietly, matter-of-factly. It seemed an out-of-body confession, deadpan and slow. But he could tell Stein was listening. He heard the chair creak, saw the professor's hands grip his knees as he leaned forward slightly. "It changes you. Forever. You feel like a different person." He worked his jaw, eyes moving back to the floor. Picturing 2024 and an armored suit and a metal spear ready to strike. "I've lost everything." Savitar swallowed. "Even myself."
He could feel Stein watching him. He could hear him stepping down off the dais and onto the main floor, but coming no closer.
"I'm a teacher," Stein informed him, a little dryly. "You might say I get off on telling people they're wrong."
The speedster scoffed, barely audible. Almost amused.
"And it seems to me that you have a very muddled view of your life, Savitar." He still said the name half admiringly, half patronizingly. As though he thought nicknames were unnecessary, childish. "For one thing, a man who sacrifices his days in the interest of helping others is not without an identity. And for another…" He did approach Savitar then, standing on the other side of the white winding desk. "You have not lost everything."
Savitar looked up, trying to ensure his expression was blank. The leather mask ought to have helped, but for once, controlling his outward appearance was a struggle. Stein's words were clean air after being in a basement or a broken elevator or a garage all day. His elaboration made that air even sweeter.
"After all, you have Caitlin, don't you?" Stein reminded him sternly. "A real treasure, it would seem."
Savitar felt himself nodding, not hard, not even excessively. But it was a nice feeling, not to hide. To allow some positive advice, new comfort, to wash over him. To react. Martin Stein had no idea who he really was. What he'd done. But the way he'd described his wife—the way he was offering solace—did he have any inkling of what it was doing to him?
He felt like himself for a moment. Like Barry.
Fueled by the warmth spreading through him, by the realization that Stein had given him facts—he had Caitlin, he was finding himself again, pulling it all in—Savitar locked eyes with the professor and tried to give some of that warmth back to him. "You're not gonna lose her," he murmured with certainty. "It'll work."
Stein gave him a small, genuine smile. It made him look younger.
Savitar didn't smile with him, but it was evident enough in his voice. "Caitlin's good at fixing things."