3: "Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?" Barry and Caitlin share a moment in Barry's recovery room after he wakes up from Zoom's attack. (2x06 "Enter Zoom")

Prompt: "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." Barry and Caitlin.

Enjoy!

"Please, he needs rest," Caitlin said. "I swear, you can smother him as much as you want once he's stable enough to take it. Right now, sleep is the best thing for him."

Joe, Iris, and Cisco were perhaps still too scared to protest further, still convinced that any wrong move might send Barry back into that place where his life hung outside of his body. They filed out of the recovery room amidst half-hearted teary farewells, promises of movies and smoothies and return visits. On his way through the door, Joe grasped Caitlin's hand, enveloped it in his own.

"Thank you," he said sincerely. "Thank you."

There was nothing else. The door closed behind him, and Caitlin and Barry were left in relative silence. Caitlin busied herself immediately, checking Barry's bandaging again and fiddling with a few knobs on the oxygen machine. Barry sank back into his pillows, exhausted. It had only been an hour since waking up, but there were dark circles carved under his eyes. His eyelids were rimmed pink.

"Caitlin," he croaked.

Hands trembling, Caitlin fidgeted with his neck brace. "I'm serious," she said. "You need rest. You need to heal."

"I'm not going to heal," Barry said. "Am I?"

"Don't be silly." She adjusted his sheets, careful not to jostle his legs, not to draw attention to the elephant in the room. He'd managed to keep himself together fairly well as the visitors had filled his room, but she saw now that he was damaged. He didn't cry, perhaps didn't have the energy to cry, but his face hollowed, crumpled. "We'll fix this. You know we will."

"I was sure I was going to die," Barry said. "I never really knew…what that felt like. Until it happened."

Caitlin was thrust back into that cortex, frozen at the computer bank, watching her best friend choke up blood as he dangled two feet from the ground.

She would never say it, but she'd been sure, too. She'd been sure he was going to die.

Instead of speaking, she sat down in one of the chairs beside his bed and put her face in her hands.

"Cait," Barry mumbled. "Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?"

Caitlin lifted her head, looked at Barry where he lay like a broken doll. His eyes drooped over his sunken face. He was already gone, already slipping back into the oblivion that Caitlin could only imagine.

Still, she reached across to the bed and took his hand.

"I'm not going anywhere," she whispered.