Eiling's so fun, isn't he? Don't worry, you'll see a lot of him :)

I keep forgetting to mention (and considered not mentioning at all), Harry is kind of absent from this fic? He's off doing his own thing. Sorry if you were waiting for him to show up!

Enjoy!

It was Cisco who sank into Caitlin's vacated chair, pinching the bridge of his nose, and it was Iris who spoke up first.

"Why would Eiling want Jason?" she said. "I mean, it's the same thing with Caitlin—obviously not a metahuman. I thought Eiling's M.O. was metahuman experimentation?"

"That's what it used to be, at least," Caitlin said. "Maybe he's…moved on?"

"But to what?" Joe said.

Cisco groaned, heels of his hands now pressed against his eyes. "This is so bad. So. Bad."

Caitlin privately had to agree. While she had no love for Jason, and would probably sleep better knowing he was dead, the thought of him in Eiling's hands didn't sit well. The idea of them as co-conspirators, further, seemed utterly implausible, but also unreasonably terrifying. Now that Jason knew about the anti-meta serum, and about Barry and Cisco's powers, he was a more dangerous asset to Eiling than ever.

As Caitlin considered this, silently feeling the distress that Cisco was outwardly projecting, Joe looked around the room. "Where's Barry?"

"We tried to stop him," Iris said. "He went after Rose and Eiling."

"Jesus." For the first time, Joe looked truly weak. Iris offered him a seat, which he refused.

"What do we do now?" Cisco said. "With…anything in this mess? I'm open to suggestions."

"Barry's comm," Caitlin said. Miraculously, improbably, the overload of stress hit a reset button in her brain. "We can get in touch with him. Figure out what's going on there."

"Right, good." Cisco swiveled his chair, but before his hand had even made it to the computer mouse, the need for communication was cut.

In a sputtering of gold lightning, Barry appeared in the doorway, tripping to the ground and skidding the rest of the way into the cortex on his side. He lost momentum near the wall, the material of his suit squealing against the tile. With a growl, he rammed his fist into the ground and levered himself to his knees shakily.

"What—" Caitlin said, but it was then that she saw the blood dripping to the cortex floor. "Barry, don't move."

She was across the room like a shot. Barry had gotten himself to a sitting position on the floor, his leg extended in front of him. "Oh, no worries, wasn't planning on it."

Iris also dipped to her knees beside Caitlin. "Barry, what happened?"

"Um." Barry flinched violently away from Caitlin's examination. Long, deep gashes ran from his hip down to his ankle, the whole left leg of his suit shredded. Caitlin frowned. The cuts were ragged, clearly not made by a knife. "Eiling had a new toy."

"Doesn't look like the fun kind," Cisco said. He and Joe had gathered awkwardly at the edges of the group.

"What made these cuts?" Caitlin said. The cuts, while fairly deep, would heal—Barry's accelerated healing had countered worse—but she began running over a list of procedures in her mind.

"Some kind of…" Barry grunted at a touch to his knee. "A weighted net."

"A net?" Cisco said incredulously. "What was it made of? Butcher knives?"

Barry shot him a sardonic look. "Barbed wire." He flinched. "Ow, Cait, that hurts."

"Barbed wire," Caitlin breathed. "That's what Jason used to restrain you once he knew you were the Flash."

"Trust me, I remember." Barry's brows knit. "Wait, what does Jason have to do with this?"

"We have reason to believe he might be working with Eiling," Joe said. "Eiling was the one who transferred him out of Iron Heights."

"This day just keeps getting more fun," Barry muttered. "Listen, I barely got away from that net. I'm lucky it just caught me in the leg—if I'd been completely caught under it, I'm not sure there's anything I could've done. Whatever truce we had with Eiling, it's off."

Caitlin lifted her now-bloody hands and unconsciously brushed back her hair. "And Rose?"

His mouth tightened. "They took her. I'm sorry, I ran. I should've stayed…"

"No," Caitlin said firmly. "Look at this. If you stayed you would've gotten yourself killed. Or worse."

"Probably worse." Cisco crossed his arms. "So, Eiling has Jason and Canton." He made a breathy noise like a scoff. "The tables have turned, haven't they?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that they're getting a taste of their own medicine, aren't they?" Cisco said.

Caitlin turned completely to face him. "Cisco, that's an awful thing to say."

"Hey, did I say I liked it?" Cisco said defensively, throwing up his hands. "I'm just saying. It wasn't too long ago that I couldn't see properly out of my left eye, that Barry couldn't walk. Eiling has Canton and Jason now. We know how nightmarish Eiling is. What are we supposed to do? Risk our lives for the people that tortured us?"

"We don't have to make any rash decisions," said Joe. "Whatever Eiling wants, something tells me we're going to know about it sooner or later."

"And something tells me that Eiling's not going to be in his old hiding place," Barry said. "I can start searching the city."

"Not like this, you can't," Caitlin said. "We need to get your leg cleaned up. Then you need to focus on healing while we figure out our next course of action."

"Wouldn't be a bad idea for you either," Iris said quietly, squeezing Caitlin's shoulder.

Caitlin didn't acknowledge the motion, but she didn't brush it off either. She grasped Barry's boot firmly and resolved not to think too far ahead just yet. "Maybe. Someone help me get him up."

An hour later, once Caitlin had cleaned Barry up and stitched up the worst of his cuts, she sat on a cot in her workroom and fiddled with the Band-Aid on her arm. The puncture mark from the syringe was relatively small, and it didn't bleed much, but Cisco had insisted on "patching it up." Still, in just an hour, she had already toyed with it enough to leave it hanging by a thread.

A soft knock in the doorway heralded the arrival of Iris. She knew better than to take Caitlin by surprise, especially at a time like this. "Hey."

Caitlin dropped her hand. "Hi."

"What's up?" Iris replied, somewhat lamely. She realized the ridiculousness of the question as Caitlin did. She cringed as Caitlin raised her eyebrows.

"Nothing much," Caitlin said. "Just hanging out. Trying to decide if we should rescue a woman who once held me at knifepoint. The usual stuff."

"Yeah, there's probably a TED Talk somewhere about this very situation," Iris said. "Can I come in?"

"Of course." Caitlin scooted over on the cot to make room for Iris. Iris' warmth, her weight, settled on the flimsy mattress. "Are you okay?"

"It's not great," Iris said. "Knowing that Eiling is back out there. I know I wasn't around the first time you faced him, but I saw him during the Grodd incident. This is bad, isn't it?"

Caitlin nodded. "He's smart and ruthless, which is a terrifying combination. He experiments on metahumans and designs high-functioning weapons to specifically target their weaknesses. The first time, we spent half an hour digging three-inch-long metal spikes out of Barry's skin."

Iris winced. It occurred to Caitlin that there was a lot that Iris didn't know about those few months when she'd been kept in the dark.

"Any ideas of how to stop him?"

"He's just a man," Caitlin said, rubbing at her eyes. "It should be so easy. But it isn't."

Iris paused. "So what are you thinking about?"

Caitlin rested her hands back in her lap, willing herself not to pick at the Band-Aid anymore. It was clear Iris had already noticed it, but there was no need to draw extra attention. "I'm just thinking about how similar this all feels to last month. My déjà vu is so bad it's making me dizzy."

"I think it is for all of us," Iris said gently. "But I think we're also grateful that we have you here this time. You and Cisco and Barry."

"That's the thing," Caitlin said. "I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. I'm trying to feel relieved that it wasn't—that it wasn't any of us who were taken. And maybe I shouldn't care about any of it."

"There's no one way you're supposed to feel right now," Iris said. "You're not a robot who is programmed to emulate specific emotions at specific times."

"She kidnapped us," said Caitlin, fixing her gaze out the door, across the cortex, on the door of the med bay where Barry lay recovering. "She let Jason torture us. She just watched. She injected me with a serum that had the potential to kill me."

Iris let these words soak in silence. "And yet you feel empathy for her."

"I don't know."

"You let her go when you had every right to keep her locked up in that pipeline," Iris said. "It's a decision that—that I'm not sure I entirely understand yet. But that's who you are, Caitlin. You've suffered so much loss, and yet you have one of the greatest capacities for empathy I've ever seen."

"I'm not the only one who's suffered loss," Caitlin said sharply, looking back to Iris. "Maybe it's not empathy. Maybe it's irrationally."

"Who ever said those two were mutually exclusive?" said Iris, and she squeezed Caitlin's hand gently for reassurance.

"It would be stupid, wouldn't it?" Caitlin said. "To face Eiling again just to rescue her?"

Iris contemplated this. Offered her a tiny, almost-sad smile. "Some might say irrational."

Caitlin considered a moment more. The conflict was written across Iris' face so clearly, but it was also obvious that her words were honest. That alone, that confirmation, was all that Caitlin needed.

"Alright," Caitlin said. "Thank you. As usual." She released Iris' hand and vaulted off of the cot. Determined now, she led Iris out of the room and into the cortex. Sensing her energy, Barry sat up in his bed, and the others lingering in the cortex turned toward her as well.

"Caitlin," Joe said. "Some of us are getting ready to turn in for the night. Can we take Barry home to rest or do you want to keep an eye on him?"

"No, the healing's going to be fairly simple," Caitlin said. "He should be fine in a few hours. Being at home will probably do him good. We'll need rest, because tomorrow we get to work."

There was a short, scratchy silence. Caitlin sensed Iris shift behind her. Barry slid off of the cot and leaned heavily on the doorframe.

"We're going after them, aren't we?" he said. "We're going after Eiling and Jason."

"I'm going after Canton," Caitlin clarified, suddenly aware of just how much attention was focused on her. That kind of intensity had never scared her before now. "To rescue her. And if Eiling and Jason get in the way, then so be it."

Joe ran a hand over his mouth. "This is going to be dangerous."

"Which is why I'm not asking you to help." Caitlin took a deep breath. "Canton is my responsibility. She has been since I let her out of the pipeline. I know a lot of you didn't agree with what I did. And that's why this is on me. Barry and Cisco—both of you are metahumans. We saw with Jason how much danger that label holds. Especially if Eiling is involved."

"And you think he'll spare you since you're not one?" Cisco said.

"No." Caitlin shrugged. "But I'll take whatever risks necessary."

"Let me stop you right there," Cisco said. "You're not going after Eiling alone. You don't really think that we would let you do that?"

Caitlin paused, cocked ahead. "No," she said again. "But I wanted to give you an option out."

"Or an option to try to talk you out of it?" Joe said.

"'Try' being the operative word." She looked around the room almost hesitantly at the expectant faces. "You're sure you want to do this?"

"Saving people is what we do," Barry said. "I don't see any reason why we should start being selective about who we save."

Caitlin nodded. "Okay. We're agreed. Tomorrow we get to work."

A tension released in the space, but at the same time it was filled by a new, weighty sense of importance—the precipice overlooking a great, wild expanse. Caitlin breathed it in, watched the others swallow back their anxiety.

Joe was the first to speak. "We're giving Cisco a ride home," he said. "Figure it's best not to travel alone right now. Want a lift?"

"I'm fine," Caitlin said, shouldering the imminent protest with ease. "I have my car. I'll be careful. I'm just going to tidy up a few things here."

Joe gave her a look. "Are you sure?"

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said firmly. "Cisco, want to meet here in the morning to start digging?"

Cisco gave a weak, half-hearted salute. "I'm all yours, boss."

Iris joined him at the door to the med bay to help Barry limp out. Joe's gaze lingered on Caitlin a moment more, likely feeling the same déjà vu that she was, before he exited the room as well.

Alone at last, Caitlin took a deep breath to ward off the uneasiness that the new open space gave her. As a precaution, she flipped on a few extra lights, as if that might ward off the fear spirits.

Then she sat down at the cortex table, booted up a computer, and cracked her knuckles. It was going to be a long night.

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment on your way out!

Till next time,

Penn