Thank you so much for your responses on the first chapter of this story! I have internet again, so I figured it was only fair to post the next one. I'm hoping to get onto a schedule of posting twice a week-Sundays and Wednesdays.

Enjoy!

Mind blank, Caitlin raised a fist to knock at the door. The skies were still gray, darkening the entire world despite the fact that it was still late afternoon. She'd been careful to scrub away the blood from her knuckles, but the wine-red of the door was enough reminder against the paleness of her skin. She lowered her fist.

What was she expecting, anyway? Joe wasn't home. And she doubted Iris was.

She paused on the doorstep for a few more minutes, considering. She hadn't locked her car, but that didn't seem important. Nothing, really, seemed important. Nothing mattered. Her hand found the doorknob. It turned without resistance, and the door opened.

Sometimes, when she had too much to drink, she could move through life in time skips. One minute she would be on the dance floor, the next at the bar, with no recollection of the time spent moving from one place to another. She would consider her actions, decide they were not important. Time was of no consequence.

It was like that now, as she moved through the house. In one step, she was in the entryway. The next time she took stock of her location, she was in the kitchen, staring at a family photo of Iris, Barry, and Joe taped to the refrigerator. It looked to be a few years old, judging from the length of Barry's hair and the youth of Iris' face. They looked so young, so happy. In the background of the photo, it was spring. Green leaves populated the edges of the picture, the sun casting golden light around the faces of the photo's subjects. Caitlin stared.

Then, in a blink, she was in the living room. Again, unfortunately, she found herself face to face with photos—this time a line of them, strung along the mantelpiece like Christmas lights. The happy faces in the frames made her stomach clench, and she again reached for her phone to dial up Barry.

She couldn't face the possibility, couldn't even fathom the possibility, that he was gone too. The mere suggestion of it at the back of her mind seared white hot. If she reached out to touch it, she would be consumed.

The phone rang to silence. Maybe he'd left it somewhere. He'd been known to do that.

The pictures bore into her, and the living room was in such a state of familiarity and peace that she was compelled to leave. Another time shift found her in the stairwell, plodding up stair after stair. Stairs she knew she would never stop climbing.

Then she was there, in Barry's bedroom doorway, listening to the faint ticking of the clock in the hallway. The further she stepped into the room, the less she could hear the noise. As she preferred the silence, she ducked in further. The red curtains, the stacks of science magazines on the desk, the single sock that had not managed to reach the hamper: these things welcomed her, comforted her, in a way that the cheerful photographs couldn't. A few steps more and she was at the closet, her feet kicking against a pair of running shoes.

In the quiet, she sat, pushed herself up against the back wall of the closet among the shoes and the rows of pressed shirts. Even with the musky scent of the rubber and wafts of dryer sheets, she could still unmistakably pinpoint Barry. When she closed her eyes and listened to the silence, she could almost imagine he was there.

The world passed inconsequentially, through scent and silence, so it scared her half to tears when her phone rang in her pocket. She scrambled for it, crushing it against her ear without even looking at the name on the screen.

"Barry?"

"No, Caitlin, it's Iris." Iris. For some reason, it had never even occurred to Caitlin to call Iris. The other woman sounded scared, wound tight like a spring. "We need to talk."

Something hard lodged in Caitlin's throat. "I know."

Without taking a breath, Iris continued. "Barry—he didn't stop the tidal wave. I don't know where he is."

The realization that Iris knew, that Iris had found out, bloomed dimly beneath the ache in Caitlin's chest. "Barry told you?"

"Right before he ran off to stop the wave," Iris said impatiently. "Listen, I need you and Cisco and Dr. Wells to help me. I'm on my way to STAR."

A monumental spike erupted in Caitlin's chest, her heart leaping over itself in an effort to reach equilibrium. "Don't go there. Come home. I'm here."

There was a pause as Iris took in this information. Then: "Okay."

The phone beeped as it was shut off. Apparently Iris had needed no more information.

Caitlin let the phone drop to her lap and readjusted herself in the closet. And waited. And tried not to think.

An indeterminate amount of time later, she heard the front door close downstairs. Had she remembered to close it herself when she came in? Or had she left it hanging wide, like the opening evidence of a crime scene? Whatever the case, she should have at least locked it-people did crazy things when faced with a natural disaster. They became violent. They became something other than themselves.

Natural disasters were not the only thing that prompted such changes, she supposed. Also grief.

Past the silence and security of the closet, she heard footsteps on the ground floor, a circuit of the house. Then the creak of the stairs, like old horror films or the thrill of sneaking downstairs on Christmas morning. Iris appeared in the doorway of Barry's bedroom seconds later. She cast a cursory glance into the room and jumped backward when she spotted Caitlin.

"Jesus," she said, putting a hand to her heart. "Cait, you scared me."

Caitlin said nothing. Iris moved further into the bedroom.

"I, uh…I just came back from the beach." Caitlin had always known Iris to be composed-vibrant, but composed. She'd often envied that vibrancy, that passion, but now it was nowhere to be seen. Iris' eyes were clouded, her hair windblown and damp and sticking together in clumps, her once-black boots caked with mud and sand. Mascara left a streak down one side of her face, though whether it was from crying or the increasing storm, Caitlin couldn't be sure.

Seeing that Caitlin was not moving from her haven in the closet, Iris continued. "Eddie is still looking for my dad. And I just finished searching the beach for…" Her breath caught, and she swallowed it. "For Barry."

Caitlin's heart sunk. "He still hasn't contacted you?"

"I think—I mean, there's no way—the wave was too big."

The fractures split across her face, and suddenly she was crying, standing there in front of the closet. Caitlin's hands lay useless in her lap as she watched. This should be the part where she should comfort the other woman, she thought dimly, but she could only sit there in silence. Iris' pain fed selfishly into her own, pushing her deeper.

Still, Iris did what Caitlin could not ask of her; with a stuttering breath, she took a step forward, sank into the closet. Her shoulders trembled against Caitlin's as she cried.

"I was looking for his body."

At this, Caitlin's instincts finally kicked in. She reached across for Iris' hand and clutched it in her own, squeezing it as much as she could. She did not know how much strength she had left, or if it was enough to provide any comfort, but still she dug her fingers into the softness of the other woman's palm. Iris' damp hair draped across Caitlin's jacket as she leaned her head on Caitlin's shoulder.

Caitlin hadn't realized how much she'd been relying on Barry being there, on Barry being alive, until then. If anyone could do anything to help, it would've been him. She'd convinced herself of that; she'd convinced herself that with Barry simply being there, they could figure out a way to fix everything that had gone so wrong at STAR.

Now Barry was not there, and the final piece of her shattered world collapsed.

"Cisco's gone," Caitlin said suddenly, her voice breaking. "It was Dr. Wells…I was with him, and then he was gone, and then he…he killed Cisco."

Already these things sounded like facts, not like the destructive forces that they were. Already she felt herself moving into the past tense, when these things were still so real, still so present, still so future.

Iris may have breathed an "I'm sorry," but the truth was, the two were both so consumed by grief that their grieving was no longer separate. Their words were the same, their thoughts, their tears.

They sat there together at the back of that closet, clutching each other's hands as if that might hold in their hearts, with Barry Allen's shirts hanging stagnant around them as they wept.

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts below. Again, a bit of a slow start (and lots of glorious angst), but things will be picking up shortly! See you Wednesday.

Till next time,

Penn