So glad the hiatus is over! Again, a shorter chapter, but lots of feelings (per usual).
Enjoy!
Caitlin held out her hand, and Iris responded instantly with the screwdriver.
"I just think it's silly," Iris said. "A lot of wasted potential."
"Tell me about it," Caitlin responded, squinting as she twisted the screw. "You've got to be consistent. One minute she's established as this strong female character, whatever that means, and then...poof! She's gone. Completely out of the story once she's served her purpose."
"Once she's motivated the male protagonist, you mean."
"Oh, of course."
Caitlin handed back the screwdriver, and Iris chuckled. "I'm glad someone else feels the same way. Eddie couldn't believe I was ranting to him about a children's movie about dragons."
"You should've spent more time with us," Caitlin said with a laugh. "We all went to see it together, and Cisco wouldn't shut up the entire car ride home about the implications of alpha and beta dragons in the real world." Her smile froze in place as a familiar ache throbbed through her. She remembered the car ride, the three of them—her, Barry, and Cisco—thinking of alternate titles for the movie. How to Subdue a Very Large Dragon. Dragons! For Some Reason Everyone Loves Them Now. And Caitlin's personal favorite: Hiccup and the Neville Longbottom Effect.
It had been strange seeing Barry in a car for once, but she'd loved it. She'd loved the three of them cramped into one vehicle, their laughter too big for that one space. No crimefighting, just them.
The realizations were never really new at this point, but they twisted the knife in new ways. She was struck, again, by the pain of absence. The realization that she would never again sit in a cramped car with her two best friends, smelling of popcorn grease and salt.
"Hey," Iris said. "You okay?"
Caitlin swallowed. They'd posed the question to one another enough lately that it was harder to lie. "Just thinking about them. I feel like we didn't have enough time."
Iris reached across for Caitlin's hand, steadying it on the machine they were working on. "I understand."
After a few moments, Caitlin nodded and collected herself. She glanced up at the computer screen with the schematics and pulled out a new component from their pile of parts.
"This is almost done, I think," she said. "I don't see why it won't work."
"Can we test it out?"
"Maybe," Caitlin said, thinking back to all of the gadgets they'd thrown out in the field without testing. They'd always been lucky, she supposed, not to have had a major malfunction. Then again, it had been Cisco at the helm, Cisco's tech and his hands and his mind. She always trusted him to get the job done, and to do it right the first time. He'd been a genius. She and Iris, surrounding this incredibly unreliable piece of technology, were mere shadows. At least she recognized that. "I don't know if we'll have time, though."
The weightiness of the situation seemed to descend on both of them at once, and they lapsed into quiet. Iris glanced at the computer screen and adjusted a part on their machine accordingly, while Caitlin rubbed at a spot of grease on her thumb.
"Listen," Iris said softly. "This has all been strange to me. Finding out about Barry...I'm still not quite sure how to process it. I can't help thinking that I should've known, somehow. All of those times he would meet with me at Jitters, or when he would always rush in to save my dad...I should've realized it was him under that mask."
"No, we should have told you," Caitlin soothed. "It was unfair to keep that much from you. And for you to find out how you did."
"I wish..." Iris started, but she trailed off. "Never mind."
"No, what were you going to say?"
Iris bit her lip. "There's a part of me...that wishes he wasn't. I wish he'd woken up after that coma and gone back to his normal life. Is that selfish?"
"He loved being the Flash," Caitlin said, as gently as she could. "He loved everything about it."
"I know," Iris said, even though she didn't. There was so much she didn't know. "But thinking about it now, how many times he could've died...without me knowing. Would you have told me, after he was dead? Would you have told me then that he was the Flash?"
Caitlin stayed quiet.
"And, you know, if he wasn't the Flash...maybe he would be here right now." Iris' hands dropped.
"He was a hero," Caitlin said. She tried to steady herself, tried to make the words sound confident, but her heart wasn't there.
"I didn't want him to be a hero," Iris said, and Caitlin's heart stuttered in her chest at this reflection of her own words, so long ago. We don't choose who gets to be a hero, she wanted to say, but her throat constricted with the truth in Iris' words. She'd had Iris' thoughts enough. If he hadn't become the Flash, Caitlin never would have known him. But at least he would be alive. Wasn't that a better reality than the one they had now?
"In that park," Iris said, more slowly now, "right before he ran off to stop the wave...right before he revealed himself as the Flash, Barry..." She swallowed. "Barry and I kissed."
The admission was a jolt to Caitlin's system. She tried to stay passive, stay calm, but the statement was so far afield of anything she'd been expecting she couldn't help but jerk her head up. "Oh?"
"It might have been the danger," Iris said, looking away from Caitlin's eyes. "Adrenaline makes us do crazy things. I just realized that we were likely going to die, and I needed him to know what he meant to me." A weak laugh. "I didn't know it would come to that. But it did, and it felt right, in the moment. Ever since he admitted that he loved me back at Christmas, it's been difficult."
"Do you...love him back?" Caitlin asked tentatively.
"It doesn't matter now, does it?" Iris said with a half-chuckle, half-sob. "There were a lot of emotions all at once, and it seemed like the right thing to do in the moment. I don't know. When the world is ending around you, there's not much else to do but choose what makes you feel alive." She sniffed. "I can't look Eddie in the eye now."
"Eddie would understand," said Caitlin, in an attempt to provide some kind of advice. In truth, she was still reeling—a new piece to the only picture she had of Barry's last minutes.
"Would he, though?" Iris swiped at her face. "Sorry, that was probably too much information."
"Not at all," Caitlin said honestly. "Look, I've had my fair share of crushes on Barry Allen, but you...he has loved you for a long time. I can't imagine what you're feeling, Iris. It's okay to acknowledge that it's complicated. But I also don't think you need to avoid Eddie. He cares about you, too."
"Yeah," Iris said, and through her glassy eyes it was hard to tell if she was convinced or not. However, there was no time to continue the conversation further. On the left computer monitor, where a map of Central City was spread out in detail, a single point pulsed and beeped.
"Is that—"
"Mardon," Caitlin said, swiveling toward the screen and reaching across Iris for the computer mouse. "The program picked up on a possible location. A barn, near Bannon Park."
Caitlin and Iris locked eyes, and the weight of their last conversation lay heavily behind the conclusion they had both reached.
"Let's get him," Iris said.
Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you feel so inclined (or want to make my day). See you Sunday!
Till next time,
Penn