A/N: Here it is, before midnight here!

This is just over 2,000 words, so I've made good on my promise. I had to sit for seven hours in a car, and some spelling/grammatical errors may have been made because I have the worst headache right now.

In other news, I might be looking for a beta reader - so just apply via PM to let me know if you're interested.

When I wake up again, I'm in a different room.

The bed's larger & more comfy, the walls still white, but with actual furniture.

I gather up the comfortable blanket around me, and try and sort through my memories.

Oh- Oh my god.

I was gonna die. Twice.

Once at the hands of mafia-type thugs that Barry and I had accidentally turned into good people (I am still really confused about that) and once at the hands of Captain Cold's nephew.

My breath comes in short gasps.

Why and when did everything stop feeling so real?

Where was the boredom and monotony that so often accompanied my work days?

I am distracted by Barry coming in.

He enters with his back turned to me, and is in a refined version of his Forensic Scientist outfit. It makes my heart pang a little for my Barry Allen.

"You can't be real," is the first thing I say to him.

He cocks his head. "Well, how would you know that?"

"I didn't say I did," I mutter, on the defensive. This could be a meta-human's work, so I had to be careful with what I revealed.

"Okay, grouchy. Here's your breakfast." There's a tray with some pancakes, some toast and jam and a glass of juice.

I feel the corners of my mouth turn up, then I force them to stop and remain neutral.

"Thank you," I say stiffly.

He then takes off the funeral blazer and pulls his suit pants off. "I need to go and get some real pants, so don't start without me." he says, and goes to presumably find a pair of pants.

I nervously play with my hands until he gets back.

He jumps onto the bed and cuddles up with me, and it takes all of me not to go and hug him back, because this was the Barry I loved. He even smelled mostly the same.

I allow myself to hold his hand, but otherwise focus on eating.

I let Barry have about half of the pancakes, pushing his to the right edge of the plate, and gave him the entirety of the toa st. I wasn't that hungry.

Once breakfast is finished, I hold his hand and walk through the rest of the house.

I recognise a couple of objects that belong to me, but the rest is all new.

Even the pictures of us, hung all around the house, are all new.

Apparently I took a trip with him to Italy to get ice-cream sometime in late 2015.

He gives me a small shy smile when he sees me looking at the picture.

"I really hope you remember that."

The sentence hangs in the air - I can almost see those damned words.

I hug myself a bit, then walk up to Barry, and give him a big hug.

Even if I wasn't sure this world was real, I still felt for the poor guy. To have your wife taken away and replaced with someone else who looked exactly like her, talked like her, and had probably the same memories except all the ones of them together probably took a giant hit to your emotional stability.

He hugs me back. A little bit tighter than my Barry did, but the hug was still nice.

A little while later, I sat down at the kitchen on a barstool.

I'd gotten changed into some comfortable clothes, and the giant cardigan was helping muffle some of my anxiety at tbeing in this new world.

I had heaps of questions, of course, but I wasn't going till ask them till later - Barry probably had enough on his mind without having to worry about the cultural adaptations I might have to make.

Barry, bless him, approaches me with a mug of coffee and a bowl of ice cream. He sits a fair distance away (probably put off by my on-again-off-again clinginess), and sits sipping at his own mug while I take slow sips, trying not to synchronize them so as to minimise the awkwardness (because it would probably make it more sterile and robot-like than the situation already was).

Eventually he speaks.

"Hey, um, I have work off today, so do you want to go to the library?" He asks, slightly shy.

I'm surprised he sounds so shy, so I give him a real, genuine smile, and tell him to go grab his keys.

He stares at me for a second before going to do so.

When we get to the library, it looks pretty much the same as it did three years ago. The interior has changed quite a bit to become more modern, and i look with awe at the bigger shelves and the unusual floating computers.

"You did those, with Cisco. Dr Wells gifted them to the public, and then STAR Labs was slowly accepted back again into society."

I stare at the computers for a few seconds more.

I latch onto Barry's arm. "Please don't leave me alone," I say, quietly, hating myself for being so weak.

He gives me a hug. "I won't," he murmurs against my hair.

I hold his hand as we browse the stacks, stopping occasionally to pick up a book of interest.

The books haven't changed, but when we get to the computers, I'm totally lost.

Barry takes me step-by-step at how to use it, and I'm surprised at how well it works.

I hold the stack of books. "Should we pick up some popcorn on the way home?"

"Sure, but the grocery shopping has changed."

I smile a little bit. "Let's go to see the future."

So, as it turns out, its pretty easy to use the machine.

It was basically a self-checkout morphed with a vending machine.

I'm so fascinated by it that I order a bit more than I mean to.

So instead of the one item we had come to obtain, we left with about eight bags - I'm quite curious to try some of the new things as well as see if the ones I have had changed at all.

I'm so excited to read and try these new things, so I grab the books and run all the way up to the house we've parked outside. It's fairly large and prettier than the other ones on the street, and slightly more modern looking.

I run up the steps, ready to throw open the door (I literally forgot about keys and the fact that they existed) and jump into the couch.

I look at the door.

There's no doorknob.

"Barry!" I yell. He comes running at a normal human pace.

"What is it, Cait?"

"Where the frick frack is the doorknob?"

"Oh," He laughs. "That's a new system that many people are getting installed in their homes. It's a fingerprint recognition system, and yours is programmed on it, so just push your thumb against it, and hey presto!"

I look at him sideways for a second. I could not have ever imagined Barry using those two words, but now it's out there, and I concentrate on the door.

To my surprise, it works.

Like honest to god works.

"Cool!" I exclaim.

I leap inside, and put away the groceries and start making the popcorn and refreshments, occasionally asking what the functions were and how to use them when it came to the new kitchen appliances, at a speed that would put the Flash to shame.

I'm still dancing around the kitchen when I finally ask, "What happened to the Flash?"

He stops short, sobers up, and sits down.

"The Flash got too big for his boots. I wouldn't tell you this normally, because you were there, but you're going to keep at it, if I know you, so here's the real story.

At the end of 2016, the Flash and his team were pretty much the only police officers. Sure, the CCPD helped out a bit, with guidance from STAR Labs, but the only people really doing the legwork had powers.

Then someone attmepted to blow up the CCPD building when there was a Team Flash meeting containing the original members of the team - Iris and Eddie had moved away to Emerald City at this point, because they both found promotions at work, and Iris was expecting a kid.

I was late, and you were in the elevator going down to the parking lot to yell at me for being late - and that's what saved us.

I couldn't choose between three possibly dead men and you.

So you were impaled by a metal from the elevator, and was practically almost dead in every sense of the word, but I saved you with a blood transfusion.

My powers started stuttering, and now I don't run anymore - I'm just part of the tech support. You do enough good for the both of us, though, and that's what matters."

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine. We both got through it, together."

"Follow-up question: how do I do enough good for the both of us? I am a scientist, a doctor. You are part of the team."

"So are you."

"I don't understand."

"You have powers too." Nope. This was definitely an alien planet.

"That's not quite right."

"Try to use a muscle in your brain you'd never imagined having."

I attempt the exercise.

"Not working - no powers."

He comes up behind me, and guides my hands.

"Close your eyes, and just - let your imagination loose."

In an instant, I think about an ice horse, how perfect the shape is, how pretty it looks - and then I open my eyes, and there it is on the table - about the size of my hand, looking as adorable as it had in my head.

I try do it on my own, but it doesn't work as well.

"By the way - we're linked. We have better concentration if we're together, and our powers work better."

"So, hypothetically, what would happen if I built you an ice running track?"

"I'd be just under the speed level of how I was before the incident."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

I kind of want to nap, but I want to read, so I get the book pile and put it on the counter, and pull out the popcorn and the weird soda.

There's something I want to do with the couches that I saw on pinterest or tumblr once, and I push the identical couches together and put a whole bunch of blankets and pillows in it to create a giant comfy reading pit.

I get my book, To Kill A Mockingbird, and then sit in the pit with Barry.

After about twenty pages, I find that we'rve gravitated towards each other, so I shrug and cuddle up to him.

We read our books till well into the afternoon, and then Barry decides on Thai for dinner.

"Will it be the Pad Thai for you then?"

"Yeah, thanks," I'm so engrossed in the book that I barely register the outside world.

About twenty minutes later, I am broken out of the book spell by the smell of delicious food.

We sit down for dinner on the barstools, and I thank him.

He looks surprised for a couple of moments, but then he smiles, and waves the gratitude away.

"You'd do the same for me," he says, and I freeze, flashing back to the weird period of my life when a Barry Allen from about three years in the future came to Central City.

Would this be the same Barry Allen, but he seemingly can't remember? I don't even know anymore.

"Has the shower changed much?" I ask.

"Not really, actually. We didn't do much to the bathroom when we moved in. So the shower and toilet should be free to use. Towels are in the airing cupboard."

"Thanks, but I might finish up another couple of chapters of this book before going to have a shower."

"Course. I'll go have one then, and I'll read for about twenty minutes. You okay with sharing a bed? Cause those couches aren't the best thing to sleep on, and we have no spare beds."

I smile shyly at him, again struck by deja vu at how similar these situations were. "Okay."

"Cool. You finish that book then."

"Roger that," I say, and jump back into the pit to read again.

A/N: Tada!