(Author's Note: SURPRISE! I found the document I was missing. Finally. It was either write this or drown in some sucky goings-on in real life. I chose 'write this'. Enjoy! -Doverstar)

Joe was used to waking up to distress calls. 4 in the morning, a robbery at a gas station. 11 PM, having just gotten into bed, bam—a hit-and-run. A bomb threat at a school campus downtown. A shooting outside a theater. A heist at the local bank. Central City's whack jobs had been pulling him out of bed—or his slippers—or a plate of homemade fried chicken with his kids around him—ever since he'd joined the force.

Nowadays the distress calls from victims of the usual perps were few and far between. It seemed most of his nights, days, and lunch breaks were interrupted by a new kind of whack job, a new kind of distress call. The metahuman kind. You could find him helping the Flash and friends stop a superpowered twenty-something just as often as you could find him investigating a gas station murder.

So when Iris called on a weekend just before dawn with a clipped "Cisco says the Analyzer is going crazy, he wants us all down at S.T.A.R. Labs—", Joe just reached for his belt and keys and told Cecile to go back to sleep.

Being a cop was still important, even with a speedster for a son. Even with two. Civilians still needed protecting, if not from an energy-sucking superhuman, then from the guy loitering in an alley late at night. And even if the Flash seemed to make ordinary police work obsolete, even if soon the Streak discovered he really could be two places at once almost—stopping the hypothetical energy sucker and the loitering sleazeball—Joe knew he'd never be obsolete. Maybe the police force itself would become outdated someday, with Barry around to save the city in seconds, in some nice far-off utopia. Maybe all law enforcement, for that matter.

But Joe West would always be needed. Especially on Team Flash.

When he got to the Cortex, piping-hot coffee in one hand and a latte for Iris in the other, Cisco was mid-babble. Everyone was more or less lounging around in their usual stance. Jitters and donuts were decorating every spare surface. Caitlin was leaning on the desk and Iris was sitting on the dais steps, Barry standing starkly in the center with his hands on his hips. The Labs' two most beautiful minds had the floor.

"—not sleep deprivation, okay Caitlin, this was real life." Cisco had his hand on something huge, square, and metal.

The machine looked like a mini fridge and a microwave had reproduced. It was mainly silver, polished, and came almost to Cisco's ear height-wise. There was a small screen on its face, a number of buttons on its right side, and a dial of some kind—a mini fridge, a microwave, and a toaster had gotten busy, then—on its left side. The little screen was pulsing out a faint whitish light.

Cisco was pacing around the machine, sneakers squeaking on the floor. He kept shoving hair out of his face to lean in and see the screen, talking the whole time he moved. Saying something technical that Joe couldn't begin to unravel. Something about airwaves. Frequencies. Hocus pocus. Harry was standing a foot or so behind the fridge-toaster-microwave baby, arms folded tight, eyes glued to the dial. Joe thought they both looked like hell. Cisco's eyes seemed sunken in and Harry was all but leaning on the nearest wall. They must've pulled another all-nighter with this thing.

Caitlin was talking now, too. "All I'm saying is that it's still a work in progress. It could've been any number of things causing it to malfunction, we don't know what—"

"Except it wasn't malfunctioning, it was doing exactly what it was designed to do." Harry said. His mouth slid into a tight line. "Analyze the Speed Force."

"And it was freaking out," Cisco added, straightening. "I mean, it passed every test, followed our schematics exactly—"

"Exactly," Harry echoed.

"—and the second time we turn this puppy on, it goes nuts." Cisco raised both hands. "Now, I may not be able to get my Switch controllers to behave, and lemme tell you, I'm thinking that's more a messed-up voodoo demon problem right there than anything actually technological—"

"Cisco," Iris and Barry interrupted almost simultaneously.

"But!" Cisco almost knelt, turning the Analyzer's dial this way and that. "I definitely know what I'm doing when it comes to harnessing frequencies. Vibes?" he added, twiddling his fingers. Like some old-timey magician. "This thing was going haywire for a reason, guys."

"It seems fine now," Iris pointed out, already done with her latte. "I mean, Caitlin's right, it's new—we don't know for sure. It could've been anything."

"Come on, when was the last time something Cisco'ed let y'all down?" Cisco held up a finger almost immediately after taking a breath. "Don't answer that. That was rhetorical."

"I think you're all forgetting something," said Harry. "Ramon isn't the only one working on this device; I built it. I drew up the plans. And I watched it happen, we may not know for sure what caused it, but we do know something about the Speed Force is off. And this machine picked up on it." He came off the wall, reaching for a pen on the nearest desk and popping the cap off. "That means Allen could be affected, Jessie could be affected. We need to run whatever tests necessary if we want to stay one step ahead of whatever threat is headed our way."

They all glanced at one another. It was hard to argue with any Harrison Wells, whether he had secretly murdered your mother or had interrupted you with incessant drumstick-tapping.

So far, Joe had nothing to contribute. Anything built by Cisco and supervised by Wells was way beyond him. The multiverse had been difficult enough to grasp on day-to-day basis. It seemed like the kids at S.T.A.R. Labs were constantly coming up with new ways to make thinking harder for him. Reality, too, for that matter.

Barry said, "Look, I didn't feel anything different this morning, so…"

"Whatever happened while you were running," Cisco said, "the Analyzer picked up on some kind of flux. Something. Harry's right, we gotta figure out what's different about the Speed Force—figure out what exactly Wally was trying to say—and we can't analyze jack if you're not in motion, my friend."

Barry was wearing the same expression he had when he'd been thirteen and worried he wasn't going to pass the upcoming science test. Joe got the feeling a back rub and a pep talk wouldn't help this time. There was a familiar kind of cloud hanging over Barry, ever since Wally's message had come through. He'd been free of it, briefly—they all had, after finding out Iris wasn't going to die on Infantino Street—and those had been a delicious last few months.

But now it was back, and it made him look smaller. Older. "All right, well, keep an eye on it, okay? I'll go for a run. See what it does."

Joe wanted to remind him there was a stack of paperwork on his desk at the station. He wanted to tell him to slow down and breathe deep. He wanted Barry to be thirteen again, and frustratedly explaining to his adoptive father dark matter theory, and he wanted it to be going over his head again at the kitchen table. So he could sit down across from Bar' and tell him this was just a test, and if he did his best it didn't matter what grade he got. "You workin' hard? You keepin' up with your studies? Then don't worry about the results, son. You're doing the right thing."

The way Barry had looked up at him then had told him he was one more syllable away from morphing into Henry Allen himself. Right there in the dining room.

Now it was different. Not just because Barry was an adult. It was because if Barry failed this kind of test, he seemed to be convinced the results were worth worrying about. Even for just one run.

For the Flash, every test failed seemed to end in the loss of a life. Last time, it had been H.R. Joe didn't know much about technology and frequencies and microwaves, but he did know that if they didn't get out in front of the next Big Bad—or whatever this was that had them all on edge—those grades were always the same. A big ol' guaranteed tragedy. They needed a strategy, they needed to focus, and right now hard work and keeping up with studies meant losing sleep. And running. Running faster than anything to save the day. Again.

FWOOSH!

Barry was gone.

Iris stood up. "Okay," she sighed, "since there's no way I'm ever getting back to sleep, now seems like the perfect time for me to get in some practice on the comms."

"Not without adult supervision."

"Cisco, I am twenty-eight years old."

"Harry—" Cisco waved a hand in the general direction of the white winding desk.

Harry was already there, not looking at Iris as she approached the chair beside him. He was scribbling furiously on a clipboard. When she reached out to switch on the nearest monitor, he was faster.

"Don't touch the generator switch."

"Once, I did that once—"

"And we don't set lattes down two-point-one inches from the keyboard. In low lighting. Without a coaster." Harry still didn't spare her a glance, picking up her latte and moving to put it right in the wastebin, still obviously more than half-full.

"Nuh-uh, boys, it is too early in the morning." Iris raised a hand, plucking her cup out of Harry's grasp just in time. "I am learning this system, I am helping my fiancé, and there is nothing you can do or say to stop me. Including eighty-sixing my latte."

"I can vouch for that," Joe said. "Took me two weeks to stop tryna get her to give up on learnin' to make cornbread."

Cisco moaned. "Don't mention food when I haven't eaten in twelve hours."

Everyone seemed busy then, as though a switch had been flipped. Iris was booting up all the tech on the desk, and Harry was filling page after page of notes beside her. Cisco was still edging in a half-crouch around the Speed Force Analyzer, possibly muttering profanities—or whispering sweet nothings to it—as he worked. The only person not moving was Caitlin.

Caitlin was staring at the Speed Force Analyzer, at the little screen. Or rather, that was where she'd chosen to park her eyeballs. Joe could tell she was looking without seeing. Lost in thought. The way she was holding her mug of tea, gingerly, with both hands, made him nervous—like she'd drop it any second and pull the room into a grinding halt. Even the air around her looked too still. Cecile would say she was suntanning halfway to la-la-land.

"Hey—" Joe found himself pausing near her on his way out of the Cortex. "How 'bout you, don't you have something to do?"

Caitlin started. "What?"

"Some big…fancy job with more long words I don't know nothing about?" He tried a half-smile.

The girl just turned her empty la-la-land gaze on him and looked right through him. She didn't even ask him to repeat himself.

Joe's smile slipped off. "You seem…" He felt his eyebrows coming together. "Down. Something on your mind?"

Caitlin was shaking her head before he stopped talking. "I just—didn't sleep very well last night."

She turned and went for the emergency medical station to their left, skipping the steps altogether. She wasn't wearing heels today—and unless Joe's eyes were the first to succumb to almost-old-age, her shoes didn't even match. One was black and the other was blue-gray. She wasn't kidding.

There was always something a little sad about Caitlin, Joe realized, watching her open file cabinets. He hadn't known her as long as Cisco, or even Barry, but he was a detective. There was a lot he noticed that surprised people. The most surprising was usually the stuff he picked up just from empathy. Just from living life. From watching others live it too, and struggle like he'd struggled. Caitlin had a permanent grief wrapped around her, the way Barry had ever since he'd been eleven. Iris had it too, after Eddie, after Francine, but hers was a younger version of this shroud. Barry's was thicker—everywhere he went, everything he did, the grief was part of it. Caitlin was the same.

She had lost a fiancé—twice—and lost her career, and, from what she'd told him in the past, Caitlin had lost a father and mother almost at the same time. True, Dr. Tanhauser was still in the land of the living, but emotionally she was gone. Caitlin had cared about Jay Garrick, only to discover he wasn't Jay, and he'd taken her confidence and her ability to work in a room with the door open. She had a pendant hanging from her neck that said she'd lost her humanity, too, in a way.

Joe knew exactly what it was like to lose people, lose something important, lose your way. About the only family he had left were all in this room or out in the ether with the Legends of Tomorrow. He'd lost his wife, he'd lost jobs, friends, more than one partner. His hair. He saw Caitlin's shroud in the way she kept her head down, even after straightening up to rifle through medical files. He heard it in her voice every time she spoke, just barely. And he saw it now as her eyes came up to meet his, watching him pause in the clear doorway of the med station.

"What is it?" Caitlin pushed a chunk of hair out of the way, sizing him up.

Joe pulled his mouth down in a facial shrug. "Listen. I'm no Cisco, but—you ever need to talk, you know where to find me."

She forced a smile at him. A bad one. "I'm okay. But thank you."

She was not okay. Everyone could tell. He may not have had superpowers, he may not be able to translate a word Harry was saying to Iris just then about the readings coming up on the monitors, but Joe could do this. He could do this maybe better than anyone he knew. He'd always had a knack for getting people to talk, getting people to feel, take action, work through things.

"You busy tomorrow tonight?" Joe came further into the med station, one finger fiddling with the sleeve on his coffee cup.

Caitlin tilted her head, nose wrinkling.

"Tell you what, I'm gonna be out of work late—'specially if some kinda metahuman thing pops up—how 'bout you meet me at Jitters? My treat."

"Oh, I—I don't—" Caitlin flapped the paper she was gripping now, gaze flicking around the dais. She was shaking her head again, slower now.

"Caitlin."

"Yes?"

"This ain't an intervention. Just coffee. Okay?" Joe's eyebrows crawled to what would have been his hairline. "Now, you got something keeping you up at night, I get it. We've all been there. I don't know about you, but personally I tend to sleep a whole lot better after talking it out. So does Barry—and Iris."

"And Wally, I'm guessing," she said softly, a grin trying and trying to spring up.

Joe lifted his coffee at her. "Family takes care of family."

Her mouth twitched, the grin coming easier. Her eyes went soft. It made her look ridiculously young, too young to be in that shroud. Too young to be holding a paper with a word like bradykinesia scrawled in blue ink at the top. All of Joe's fatherly instincts went roaring toward her, taking in the bags under her eyes and the work it took to respond with a smile. Cisco had been pegging it for weeks. Something deep was at work in Caitlin.

"Ten o'clock. Jitters." Joe continued to point at her with the coffee, heading down the two little steps and toward the Cortex's exit.

"I'll be there," Caitlin promised.

Joe smiled, too, on his way out. There it is. He would always be needed on Team Flash.

Barry had been running for an hour.

It had been raining overnight. Central City was dripping and sparkling in the early-morning sunlight. The smell of wet asphalt was everywhere, and people were shaking off their umbrellas as the streets of downtown dried off. Barry zoomed between cars, moving so quickly they all seemed parked in the middle of every lane to him. The clouds overhead were turning pink.

His connection to the Speed Force remained stable as ever. He felt it behind his eyes, always, and burning in his bloodstream with every heartbeat. Electricity winding around him. Lights and colors and sounds just watercolor smudges, everywhere he went. Every person was perfectly captured, frozen mid-motion, so he could process every detail of their individual faces and feelings before their next step hit the pavement. These were just some of the people he was running to defend.

But the civilians he was currently worried about were the ones he slowed down for. Daily. The long-haired inventor watching his new machine analyze the Speed Force as Barry ran, the fiancé on the comms in his ear, the scientist from another Earth beside her, the foster father on his way in to work, the bioengineer monitoring his vitals and, no doubt, wringing her hands in concern. Team Flash was being threatened by some undefined, impending peril, and Barry was the only one fast enough to protect them. Same-old, same-old.

Things really had been so good lately. And then the other shoe had to drop in the form of a message from the Waverider. Why hadn't he seen this coming?

"Babe, can you still hear me?" That was Iris in his ear.

"Loud and clear," Barry said, dodging around a lamppost.

"Anything different yet?"

"Nothing."

In the background, Harry could be heard, gruff and clipped. "Don't turn down the brightness."

Iris' huff crackled in Barry's ears. "It's bad for your eyes—stop, how can you see anything like that?"

"How can you see anything when it's down, don't. Don't. Dooon't."

"It is my turn to run this thing, so it is my turn to choose the brightness level on this screen. Scoot!"

Barry grinned. Things were still good. Whatever Wally was warning them about, it hadn't reached them yet. There was still time to keep things this way, keep them this peaceful. This full of love and relief at having survived another catastrophe together. Planning a wedding, helping people, working through life as one unit. Worry about right now. And right now, they were all safe.

Cisco's call crackled through the comms. "Okay, Flash, come in for a pit stop. No new data, which means either I screwed up the schematics on this thing—"

"Likely," muttered Harry somewhere much closer to the speaker.

"—or Harry did, thank you, or—" Cisco got closer now too, louder. "We need to be on the lookout for something other than a glitch when you're on patrol. Something more minute."

"Got it."

Barry flashed in and out of a nearby McDonald's on his way back, downing about thirty mini apple pies and saving one for Cisco. Something more minute. If Wally's warning had been specifically about the Speed Force, wouldn't whatever it was be happening as he ran? Or could it be something that had happened subconsciously, while his usual faculties were shut down, like when he was sleeping? Did he need to go faster, did the Speed Force Analyzer need something more like Mach 6 to pick up on the 'something' Wally was trying to reference?

He was a minute or so from S.T.A.R. Labs when the world tipped around him.

Barry blacked out, just for half a second, and lost his footing. When he could see again, a heartbeat later, he was on the ground beside Caitlin's car, one leg in a puddle. His right ankle was aching. The parking lot was steamy and still. A bird was singing somewhere in a nearby tree, out by the sidewalk somewhere.

"What just happened?" Iris' voice was pitched with confusion.

Caitlin's voice came next, sharp and curt. "You lost consciousness for two fourths of a second. And your right tibia bone is fractured from the fall."

The physician's voice got even sharper, even tighter, describing his injuries. There was something more strained than usual when she spoke—she was mad at him?

"Is he gonna be okay?" Iris demanded.

"Yes—good—he…he heals fast, remember?"

"Are you okay?" Iris' tone bent, halfway between amused and concerned, and Barry suddenly recognized Caitlin's mood.

No, she wasn't angry. She was stressed—but a specific Caitlin stress. Like whenever she told Cisco they were out of Jell-O in the med bay and really, she'd just hidden them in one of the storage closets. She was trying to cover something, awkward and tense.

Another swirling sensation, the area wobbling where he sat, silenced any more speculation.

"I'm fine," Barry grunted, pushing himself up and leaning on the hood of the car. His head spun. "Everything's fine, just a little…uh, dizzy."

FWOOSH!

He was back in the Cortex, Iris at his elbow. She smelled like hibiscus. It made him dizzier. Barry let her take his arm, ushering him up the dais and into the medical station. Cisco was still fussing over the Analyzer in the middle of the room, Harry barely sparing a glance from his paperwork behind the white winding desk.

"It should take half an hour for your tibia to mend itself," Caitlin was saying as he sat on the gurney. She had her tablet out, giving him a portable x-ray.

She was doing that thing where she didn't look at him again. To an acquaintance, it would seem like Caitlin was just engrossed in the current problem. Focused on his injury, focused on her job. But he wasn't just an acquaintance, and they'd already done this song and dance. Whatever she'd been trying not to show Iris, whatever she didn't want to say to him the other day in the med bay, it was rearing up now and engulfing her. And Barry really didn't know how to make it stop.

That, and he was seeing spots. It was hard enough to focus when Iris was in the room, let alone dealing with vertigo the middle of a normal morning patrol. Caitlin's mood swings promptly took a backseat.

"So what happened, you skip your donut holes this morning?" Cisco asked, pressing a few buttons on the Speed Force Analyzer. He shot a little grin through the glass walls in Barry's direction.

"His glucose levels are normal," Caitlin announced, still messing with the tablet.

"I did have like several dozen mini apple pies on the way over."

Cisco's grin disappeared. "Way to share with the class, Bartholomew."

"Hey, I saved you one, I just—" Barry's jaw worked. "Dropped it when whatever happened…happened."

Cisco muttered something about failing the city and ducked his head when Caitlin sent him a glare for it.

"What…did happen?" asked Iris.

"I don't know, I mean—" Barry lifted a hand, letting it rake up through his hair. The material of his suit's gloves felt strange against his scalp. He hadn't thought to change on the way in. Suddenly the Flash costume felt a little stifling, even in chilled springtime air. "Everything was the same. No Speed Force freakout, no metas, no…nothing. Fine."

"You're sure he's eating enough?" Iris sat beside him on the gurney, looking at Caitlin.

Caitlin was responding almost before she finished the question. "Judging by the apple pies this morning and the 42 pizzas he ate last night before bed; I'd say his diet isn't the problem."

"The Analyzer was dormant the whole time," Cisco informed them, coming up the dais with a wrench still tucked into the pocket of his khakis. He bounced his eyebrows at Barry. "Even when you went teeter-totter. But it's…" He paused, hands clapping together to make a fist, "…technically not finished yet, so. That could've just been a fluke."

He looked physically pained to admit it.

"If it's not that he's hungry and everything else about him seems normal," Iris said, "and Wally's message is the only sign we have that something weird is coming, then—that's gotta be it, right? The Speed Force? I mean shouldn't we explore every option?"

Cisco pursed his lips. "I'll double-check the data. See if there're any kinks left in the Analyzer because, y'know, my stuff's apparently about as reliable as The Cape actually getting another season, rest in peace…"

He trailed out of the med station with a big fake smile and fake jaunty-jog motion. Barry could tell Iris was laughing with her eyes at Cisco, though the hand she had on his shoulder was tight with worry.

He almost wished something had gone wrong in the Speed Force. Then he could stop Caitlin from clutching the tablet like it was a steering wheel in a rainstorm. Stop Iris from cutting off circulation to his shoulder. Give Cisco a chance to throw his energy into something more concrete, something that actually let him sleep after a while. Instead, Cisco was up at all hours working on a machine that might not even help, and the two women in the medical station with him were twin pillars of anxiety. He thought Caitlin's lower lip might become nonexistent by Monday.

Most of all, Barry wanted something to defeat. Something he could point to, for his own sake as well as Cisco's sleep schedule's, and say there it is, this is what we have to do. This is who we have to take on. This is how we save the day. Then he could go out and do something, fast, so life could be gold again. Sitting here with zero answers had him twisted inside. He was in perfect health. He had eaten so many pies. He shouldn't be getting dizzy, shouldn't be falling out, not now, not when something Waverider-message-urgent was coming straight for him and his friends.

And it was still happening. Barry swayed slightly on the cot, and Iris' hand squeezed at his suit's material, steadying him.

He looked over, right into her round dark eyes. Laid a gloved hand on hers. "I'm okay. Whatever this is, we'll figure it out."

Barry turned to say the same general thing to Caitlin, only to find her staring back at him already. There was a drawn achiness in the corners of her mouth, in the way her eyebrows moved. The expression was so familiar, Barry wondered if he hadn't time traveled again. It was the exact face she'd made when she'd caught glimpses of Ronnie after the particle accelerator exploded. Or when anyone would bring him up after the singularity. The same posture she'd had post-Zoom, post-Jay.

It only lasted a moment. But Barry's eyes could move quickly enough to make a moment stretch like taffy.

Caitlin's head swung back down to the tablet. "Maybe I should try getting a message to Earth-66," she offered haltingly.

Barry felt his eyebrows coming down low. "Are you sure that's a good idea right now?"

He wanted to say, Are you sure you can handle more reminders of Earth-66 right now?

Are you sure it's not gonna make you miss them even more?

Are you sure that's what you

need?But he didn't. He couldn't. What little Caitlin had shared with him in the med bay was obviously something she hadn't wrenched out for anyone else. With Iris sitting right there, and Cisco and Harry just a few feet away, it wasn't the right moment. The last thing she'd want was a heart-to-heart in front of everyone, bringing up a team they didn't know with a leader who'd tried to hurt them all. She'd be back in her shell in seconds. It was a miracle she'd ever even gotten that far telling him.

And anyway, Barry wasn't sure he wanted the answers to those questions. That little sparkling moment the other day, when she'd finally let him see inside again, it hadn't done much to improve things. Not enough. Caitlin was still walking around with this clear weight. Always distracted. Always a foot or two further away from everyone than necessary.

She seemed to be getting worse. If he was honest with himself, deep down, Barry hadn't really believed her when she'd said this was home. That she belonged here. He was scared, scared she'd reach a breaking point. That when this was all over, if the weight hadn't gone away by the time they'd made it to the other side of whatever was coming, she'd discover she needed a change of pace. That she wanted Earth-66 instead. Earth-66's Cortex, Earth-66's Central City, Earth-66's Jitters, Earth-66's metahumans, Earth-66's timeline.

Earth-66's Barry Allen.

All of this was taking him heartbeats to consider. Caitlin's answer pulled him out of it just as that last thought came shoving through.

"The best way to figure out if the answer to your blackout is the Speed Force is to check with another speedster, right?" Caitlin reached into her lab coat's pocket and tugged out Cisco's MP3 device. "And—I've got one on speed dial. Remember?"

"Ask Hot Pocket how my suit's holding up," Cisco ordered, not looking around. His head was halfway hidden by the Analyzer.

He was crouched on the floor behind it, metallic sounds coming from somewhere in front of him. A spark or two shot out of the machine near him and he cursed under his breath. Harry glowered from behind the white winding desk.

Barry's eyes followed Caitlin as she marched out of the Cortex in her mismatched shoes.

"I'm sure your suit is exactly as functional as the last time I asked, Cisco," she said, a smile in her voice but not on her face.

She didn't turn to meet anyone's eyes as she left.

Caitlin did need to call Earth-66. It was wise to get as many points of view on the problem as possible. The Speed Force was an exclusive thing. When only a small handful of people throughout the entire multiverse had access to it, you took every chance to gather intel that came your way.

And she tried to convince herself on the elevator ride upstairs that that was all this was. Information download. An opportunity to tackle this medical anomaly from every angle. If Barry was blacking out, in his accelerated, excellent health, with a full stomach and a shining blood sugar level, they needed to know why. It was almost certainly connected with Wally's warning.

But it wasn't that. It wasn't any of that. The nagging little voice in the back of her mind—the one that sometimes sounded like Killer Frost—told her it was because of Barry. Because Barry was dizzy, because he had gotten hurt, the most minor of injuries, the stupidest little thing. A fractured bone. He might even have healed already, never mind the half hour.

Because Barry had blacked out and dented his ankle, Caitlin needed to hear Savitar's voice.

Even as she was using the device to call him, she knew it was infantile. She knew this was just her feelings taking the steering wheel, moving her thumb across the MP3 Player's dial, pulling her mouth down into a frown. Making her heartbeat take off. She knew she should have better self-control.

But Iris' hand on Barry's shoulder, the uneven brightness in his green eyes that said his ankle was hurting him, superpowers or no superpowers, the way his hair looked darker in the med station's low lighting—

A confused tone, tinny, pulsed out of the MP3 Player and stopped the ice storm that she was sure had been starting to curl at the edges of her brain.

"What on earth…"

Caitlin almost bumped into the elevator's railing behind her. "Professor?"

Stein had answered. She had probably been connected right to Earth-66's version of the Cortex. Maybe right in the middle of a mission, if Stein was there.

"Wha—Caitlin Snow." The professor's voice was warm. "So this is what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of your engineer friend's inventive marvels. The quality in audio is…impressive. Considering the circumstances, that is. Uh—forgive me, I'm rambling. But I have to say, this is a pleasant surprise."

She felt the hard, Dairy-Queen-chocolate shell that had been forming around her crack a little bit. A little smile making her eyes squinch. "It's good to hear from you too."

"To what do I owe this interdimensional interruption?"

"Sorry, I—" Caitlin blinked hard, trying to choose what she wanted to ask first. Trying to filter out the dozens of questions that had been pounding in her head every time she called them. "Is this a bad time?"

"No, as a matter of fact," said Stein, "we were just wrapping things up on this end."

"Another metahuman attack?"

"A burglary downtown. Nothing to get excited about, I'm afraid." Stein cleared his throat. "Caitlin, correct me if I'm wrong, but—given the fact that, as I understand it, we haven't heard from you in quite some time—I assume you didn't call just to shoot the breeze, as they say, with an old science partner?"

If she crossed her eyes, Caitlin was sure her nose was turning red. Maybe her ears too. "I'm sorry," she said again. "It—things here have been—"

"Please. No apology necessary." Stein's tone went slightly lower. "Not to me."

"I need…" She took a breath, tried again. "Would you mind…patching me through to Savitar's headset? Please?"

"I'll do you one better." She could hear keys tapping on the other end. "I'll patch you through to his cell phone. He's out-of-uniform now."

Caitlin felt her head rear. "He has—"

"Yes, it took some convincing, believe me," Stein cut her off, an obvious smirk coming through. "I found it difficult to picture myself, but young Mr. West is an excellent negotiator. He managed to persuade 'the Shadow' to downgrade to a more casual modus operandi of communication. At least when he's in his civilian form. Patching now…"

"Thank you, Professor," Caitlin told him. She let the smile out, hoping it would match the volume of Stein's smirk. "It really was good to hear from you."

A little snort sounded on the other end. The kind she knew Stein-66 used in place of a full chuckle. "The feeling is mutual, Miss Snow."

There was a sound, like a rushing, then a beep. And then—

"Stein?"

Savitar's voice was rough. Impatient. Sleepy. Exactly the way he always sounded. To the bioengineer a universe away, hearing it was like closing the door on a crowded theater. A long drink of water at the end of a busy day.

Caitlin gripped the elevator's rail, tight. "It's me."

There was a moment of silence. The sound of a car going by or something. Maybe he was still running.

"You're not here." To anyone else, it would've sounded like a statement. But she could tell from a slight vibration in his tone that it was one of his hard, thudding questions. "At S.T.A.R. Labs."

Of course. Being redirected to his cell must have seemed like a call directly from the Cortex on Earth-66. She wondered what the Caller ID had looked like.

Caitlin didn't get out when the elevator stopped in the lobby. She just kept gripping the rail, Savitar's lack of noise full in her ears through the headphones. As if he were holding his breath.

"No," she said, giving the word a push. Hating to say it. "Professor Stein patched me through."

More silence. Then, just as Caitlin was gearing up to count to ten, try to inhale like usual, trying to get control of the butterflies, he came back with five blunt syllables.

"Everything okay?"

He sounded strained. Like someone trying not to cough, or holding in a shout. Caitlin felt every muscle in her body straining, too. Straining to push through the walls between Earths to see his face. Study his expression. If he was in civilian form, he was using the old Earth-2 transmogrifier, so the scars would be hidden. One blue eye. She wondered if he'd gotten any new clothes. Wondered if he was finding it as difficult as she was to breathe evenly at the moment. If he was finding it difficult to function, daily, like she was.

She didn't ask. Instead, she found herself saying, "Barry fractured his tibia."

Maybe counting had been a good idea.

A click of the tongue, like an aw with a bite to it. "Sorry. I don't have a spare."

Caitlin grinned, almost involuntarily. The nerves dissolved a little. He seemed more like himself at that. Barry on a really bad day, maybe lacking sleep and pumped full of opioids. Sarcastic, rude. Weary. Perfect.

"No, I mean—" She bit the smile back. "He was out on patrol and something…odd happened while he was running. He said he got dizzy, started seeing spots, but his glucose levels are elevated." She looked at her feet. Was she wearing two different pairs of shoes? Why was she wearing two different pairs of shoes? Focus. "We thought maybe it had something to do with Wally's message—something to do with the Speed Force?"

"Caitlin—"

"I know. You said it was different for you, you said—" Caitlin shook her head, letting her hair hit the sides of her face for a moment. "You said the connection was altered, but—I wanted to be sure nothing like that was happening to you."

And Iris' hand was on Barry's shoulder.

And he looks like you in the dark.

And I almost throw up every time he gets hurt because I can't isolate his well-being from yours.

"No."

"Nothing?" Caitlin straightened, one hand still on the elevator rail. "No dizzy spells, no spontaneous crashes?"

"Look, just because Barry doesn't—"

"Savitar, I needed to know you were okay." Caitlin sucked in again. Her voice was coming out too sharp, more out of frustration that she wasn't communicating properly than anything else. Not communicating properly with anyone these days. One. Two. Three. "That's all."

Savitar's quiet lasted much longer this time. She almost thought they'd been disconnected. Then she could exhale, pull herself together. Maybe get her exterior back to normal before re-entering the Cortex.

He got to exhale. The sound made her stomach crawl toward her ribcage. "I'm fine."

I'm fine. It was like she'd pressed replay on Barry's exact reassurances in the medical station, just minutes ago. This Barry, on this Earth. Suddenly the similarities made her vision swim. She couldn't do this. She couldn't keep doing this. Hearing Savitar's voice actually hadn't made anything easier.

"Are you sure that's a good idea right now?"

She'd known exactly what he'd meant. The original Flash. She'd just ignored him.

And he'd been right to ask.

"Good," she murmured, sucking in a breath through her nose. Trying not to let it sound too much like a sniffle. "I just…wanted to check."

There were more important things right now than feeding this craving she had. This constant need to put all her attention, all her emotion, into someone who wasn't even here—wasn't even affected by whatever was affecting Team Flash. The people on this side of the breaches needed her. And she was frozen in an elevator putting her heart through a constant loop of longing and impatience and confusion. It wasn't right. Time to compartmentalize.

Caitlin disconnected from the call and shoved the device, headphones and all, back into her pocket.

(Author's Note: You know, Jell-O Squares. You know. If you're reading this, please leave a nice long comment detailing your thoughts. It motivates me. -Doverstar)