Last night's episode had no chill-I like to think the same concept applies here.

Enjoy!

Iris shoved another forkful of pasta into her mouth and changed the channel on the TV. Now that she was eating, it felt as if it had been a millennium since she had. Her battered body craved it; the adrenaline crash came with a serious case of hunger pangs.

"It is believed that all residents living in the south side of the city have been safely evacuated. We're getting reports from..."

Iris flipped the channel and sat back on the couch with a frown. She would've thought at least one news channel would be covering the rescue of her father. Or, at the very least, the capture of Mark Mardon. Maybe people were still too confused by the prospect of a man controlling weather patterns to take the arrest seriously.

Or maybe they needed a serious reporter like Iris West to tackle such a big story. She smiled to herself and took another bite of her dinner.

A few minutes into some trashy reality TV show she'd settled on, the door of the house opened. She looked back, expecting Caitlin, but to her surprise, it was Eddie who stepped over the threshold.

"Hi." He shut the door behind him gently and put his hands in his pockets. Judging by the state of his coat, it had stopped raining completely. On the way back to normal, then. Or, at least, as normal as the city could get. "Mind if I come in?"

"Looks like you're already in," Iris said, and she flinched immediately at the slight bite in her words. "I was hoping to see you, actually."

"Funny enough, me too," Eddie said with a little wave of his hands. An attempt at a joke. "What a coincidence."

Iris set her pasta back down on the table and drew up her sweatpant-clad legs to her chest. Eddie took this as an invitation to come in and sat at the other end of the couch. The scene was all too familiar, and Iris swallowed past a lump of pasta that had lodged itself in her throat. Eddie looked at her, the lines in his face growing deep as he took in the state of her face. Mardon's punch had given her a nice bruise on her cheekbone, and the oversized hoodie that she'd borrowed from Barry's closet concealed a similar bruise on her chest and a bandage around her arm.

"Do you need any ice or anything for that?" he asked, motioning at her face. Though he was clearly concerned, he at least had the decency not to ask her if she was alright.

She shook her head. "I just got back from the hospital, actually." At his alarmed look, she backtracked. "For my dad. I was with him until he woke up. He insisted I come back to get some rest. The nurses checked me out, though."

"Of course," Eddie said. "I heard about the whole thing—you and Caitlin taking on Mardon alone—I just thought you might need some space."

Iris rubbed at the back of her neck nervously. "Yeah, it's been...crazy." She paused, afraid to look him in the eye again. When she finally did, he was staring back, searching her, looking for answers. "The truth is, I...I felt the space. And I wanted you to fill it."

Eddie's mouth hung open for a split second, lost for words. Then: "I'm sorry, Iris. I thought you didn't want to see me—it's just, the other nigh—"

"Barry kissed me," she said suddenly. "We kissed. Right before the tidal wave hit." Eddie again opened his mouth to speak, but Iris didn't want him to say anything. Not yet. "Then we got...separated. Everyone was scared for their lives and I think that's what compelled him—compelled us—and then the crowd was so desperate, and I think...I think he just got swallowed." She gasped. She'd told herself she wouldn't cry. Not in front of Eddie. Not because of this. But tears flowed unbidden down her cheeks, and she felt pain, fresh hurt and old scars, but didn't know which she was crying about.

In a second, Eddie was across the couch, his hand on her shoulder, drawing her close. She sank her head into his chest and listened to his heartbeat while her crying slowed.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" he asked softly once she had regained some control. His hand carded through her hair.

"Why do you think?" Iris said, chuckling wetly. She could hear the rumble of laughter, too in Eddie's chest.

"Dumb question," he said. "But you know I understand. Barry has been there your whole life—I've always wondered—"

"Hey," Iris said, and she lifted herself quickly from his chest to look him in the eyes again. "I chose you, remember? Listen, what happened that day, what we did...it doesn't matter." It did matter, if she wanted to confront it, but not in the way that Eddie was thinking. With the crash of adrenaline, the slight bit of closure from the fight with Mardon, she could see more clearly. She felt her heart pumping, and she reached out to brush Eddie's face. "I love you, Eddie Thawne. I love you more than anything."

With that, she leaned forward and kissed him. A kiss that she hope spoke to her truth, a kiss to make him understand everything she was feeling. She wanted him to know. She needed him to know. As he kissed her back, his hand sliding around the back of her head to draw her closer, the pain of Barry and of everything that had happened sunk into temporary shadow, a shadow that shielded her from the worst of it. It was the warmest she'd felt in days.

"And you, Iris West," said Eddie between kisses. "I love you more than anything."

Under his touch, she melted, and off of her too melted the anxieties and the useless feelings that had overtaken her the past few days. Eddie's teeth grazed her lower lip and she leaned back at his guiding touch. When her back met the cushions, she winced. Eddie pulled away instantly.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked.

"Not you," she explained. "Just my chest."

With a look at her for confirmation, Eddie gently tugged down the zipper of her hoodie just low enough to expose the huge gray bruise made by the ice blast. The doctors had looked at it and ruled out frostbite, but the impact point still hurt like hell and would keep her from wearing anything low-cut for a while.

She squirmed, worried about Eddie's reaction—why would you go after a killer? it's not safe, Iris. see what happens when you get involved?—but, to her surprise, he looked back up at her with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Iris West," he said in a low voice. "Hero of Central City."

He placed a light kiss on the top of the bruise, and the feeling of warmth spread further through her. As he unzipped the hoodie further, his lips warm on skin that had been cold for too long, Iris closed her eyes allowed herself finally to thaw.

For having only one person in the lab, the trash was filling up awfully fast with bloody gauze squares. Caitlin tossed a new one into the bin and winced at the movement. Her shoulder had only gotten stiffer since her second fight with Mardon, and getting hit in the head twice in twenty-four hours was doing nothing for her headache.

At least she didn't need stitches. Those would have been hell to do to herself.

Iris had urged her to come with her to the hospital, to get checked out by a (dare she say it) real doctor, but Caitlin had refused. All she wanted was to lick her wounds in private, shut down all of her programs at STAR, and have a long night of Netflix and chocolate. She knew that Iris would be busy with her dad and Eddie, and it felt wrong to intrude on any of that. There would be plenty of time to catch up later.

For now, despite the blood and the bruises and the probable concussion (or perhaps because of those things), Caitlin felt better than she had in ages. She'd always wondered about the healing effects of adrenaline and danger, based on what she'd seen from Barry. And while she still didn't feel Barry-esque in hero quality, she did finally understand something of his addiction to the hero lifestyle. It felt good. The weariness felt good, and she felt as if her tension, her sadness, siphoned away with the thrill of activity. Perhaps that was what she'd needed all along—to be doing something with her life. To convince herself that she was ready to move on.

She wasn't ready to move on, not just yet. But she was getting closer.

The Weather Machine—she hadn't come up with a clever name for it yet, but that too would come with time—had been deemed effective enough to hold Mardon in a prison other than the pipeline, and the ruined STAR van was parked safely in one of the back lots. There was nothing more to do. Caitlin cleared away the last of her medical supplies and shut off the computer monitors of the cortex, then grabbed her car keys.

The knowledge of what was downstairs caused her step to falter, but she brushed it off in favor of the new relief that had been promised her. She took a breath, felt the anxiety release, then flicked off the cortex light.

"Good evening, Doctor Snow."

The light in the hallway beyond flickered on, and Caitlin froze.

Harrison Wells, the Reverse Flash, smiled in the doorway.

Wheeee!

It's kind of fitting that this chapter fell after last night's episode, actually. I told you things were far from over.

As always, thank you so much for reading, and please leave a comment with your thoughts below!

Till next time,

Penn