4: Barry succumbs to the wounds left by Zoom's attack, and Caitlin and Cisco are left reeling. (2x06 "Enter Zoom." Character death.)

Prompt: A fic where Barry dies after Zoom's attack.

The dart fired, and Barry dropped. Everything happened so fast, Caitlin had no time to react to what was certainly a significant moment in the conflict. All she could see was Barry, hitting the floor, lying motionless. Then a rustle of wind, and emptiness.

"Barry." She sprinted forward, her heel skidding on her desperate run around the desk. In her periphery, she dimly registered that Wells was screaming, but her own internal screams were far louder. In front of her, Barry lay broken.

She'd known it was over the minute she saw him fall on the computer monitor. Through the grainy video feed, she'd seen the way his body contorted unnaturally, and on her other monitor she'd seen the vitals spike, plummet. She'd known, then, that they'd lost. But she hadn't confronted it until Barry hung from Zoom's grasp ten feet away from her.

Kicking into instinct, she placed both hands over the most immediate of Barry's wounds, the stab wound in his chest. Judging from the blood that trickled out of the corner of his mouth–almost indistinguishable from the dozens of other blood streams that snaked across his face–there was severe internal damage. He'd been stabbed, too, by the dart designed for Zoom: not a good sign for his healing factor, which she might have otherwise relied on to restore the possible damage to his lungs.

As blood bubbled up through her fingers, pooled around her hands, she began vocalizing her prayer. "Stay with me, Barry. Come on. Stay with me." She knew he could hear her. She knew it. If he could just listen, he would hang on, he could fight past the brokenness that threatened to take him away, he could resurface from this new hell.

She didn't know how long she stayed like that, trying to staunch the bloodflow, knowing deep down that the wounds below were far worse. Not even when Cisco tossed her his jacket did she pause. Not even when the jacket was soaked through and Barry's heartbeat slowed to nothing.

She had to be pulled away by Cisco, who was so dumbfounded by shock that he couldn't even explain to her that what she was doing was no longer working. She tried to fight him, but he understood something she didn't–he understood what she, as a doctor, couldn't. She couldn't pull away, couldn't believe the sudden drop in temperature around her.

And, despite the uselessness of it, she couldn't stop her screaming.

"Barry! Barry!"

The world melted around her as her best friend in the world bled out the last of his life, and her hands on Cisco's shirt, her sobs into his chest as they both collapsed together, didn't feel real.

"I should've done something more," Cisco said hollowly. "It shouldn't have happened like this. This is wrong."

His own mantra faded into nothingness as he succumbed to the shock. His voice was insubstantial, and days later the two of them would look at each other and try to remember what was said, what was done.

For now, nothing in the world felt real, and perhaps that was for the best. Even the ache in Caitlin's chest, which grew to such capacity that it threatened to burst out of her, wasn't fully recognizable as pain until hours later.

Not until she sat in an uncomfortable chair, alone, with her friend's lifeless, beaten, broken body on a table in front of her. Not until she watched the news reports, clawing at screens with her eyes for last selfish glimpses of her friend as a living being, however damaged. Not until she bunched up the red suit in her hands, knowing immediately that she would burn it in the morning.

Not until then did she understand that she would be crippled by the pain of it.

I just wanted to say thank you for the wonderful responses to the last chapter! This is all I have in terms of drabbles right now, but more may be coming soon. Thanks for reading!

Penn