Spring on Earth-66 was cold, colder than Savitar had expected. It might have been normal for that Earth, or it might have been the side effects of an enormous bomb going off in the nearby, abandoned residential area Leawood about eight months ago. But even if that were the case, no pedestrian seemed surprised. Everyone outside and inside Jitters was bundled up like it was still Groundhog Day. The sparse trees around the city, the grass and shrubs in the park, didn't know what to do with themselves. Some had a handful of valiant little buds hanging on, some were exactly as bare and brittle as they had been in December, and splotches of bright green were few and far between everything.

Savitar liked the cold. He liked how it felt against the now-hidden scars caking the right side of his face when he ran. He liked the bite of it on his fingertips and his ears, even in the black-and-blue suit he donned on patrol.

He didn't like getting the sniffles. Being an exact copy of Barry Allen meant sneezing too often whenever the temperature dropped. And, just as it was with Barry, hot coffee seemed to be the only cure.

So Savitar had spent far too long waiting in an ordinary line with ordinary people at Jitters, moving at an ordinary pace. Eddie had told him that morning, at the scene of a just-thwarted car chase, that it might do him good these days to "slow down once in a while". Do things the non-god way. Walk through the lobby of S.T.A.R. Labs to get outside. Take the bus to Big Belly Burger. Stand in the queue, walk up to the counter, and actually talk to the mousy Jitters barista behind the register before paying for caffeine.

Lately, Savitar had taken to mutely, distractedly just doing the things his teammates recommended. Without question, without argument. As though he were on autopilot. His mind was so preoccupied with Gideon, so preoccupied with scant communications from Earth-1, so preoccupied with not thinking about Caitlin Snow—stop it—he didn't devote much energy to anything else. If Wally advised him to double-check the perimeter after a meta attack, he double-checked. If Stein asked him to beta test an experiment in the Labs, he did it in seconds. And if Eddie said to stop and smell the roses for a day in between hero work, here he was at Jitters. Smelling roses as best he could with a stuffed-up nose.

The barista, a blonde and something like 17 years old, kept trying to catch his eye as his receipt was being printed. Savitar wasn't used to that kind of attention. He was used to acolytes dropping to their knees at the sight of his large metal mask, used to his civilian face being something people only looked at the way one might look at roadkill. It took him a moment to remember that the Earth-2 transmogrifier's effects were in play for the day. He was just Barry in the face now, as far as anyone else knew—albeit with one faux blue eye and a slight shadow of darker skin where the scars normally were.

Evidently the girl chewing gum behind the counter would have been attracted to Barry Allen, if this were Earth-1. Savitar shifted his weight, pointedly looking out the window with his tongue rolling against the inside of his cheek. It wouldn't be very heroic of him to let a child see him rolling his eyes.

The bubble she was blowing popped, the printer finished, and it took every ounce of Savitar's patience to take the receipt at dinosaur (average) speed and move to the side, waiting for his coffee.

There was a reason he didn't go out masquerading as a regular citizen as often as his team would have liked. Being feared as a big silver god was one thing. Being scrutinized as a potential severe burn victim one more thing. But being ogled as a regular young adult really was another entirely. He didn't enjoy it, he didn't expect it, and it was about as welcome as the Trickster.

Suddenly someone was standing too close to him.

It was Professor Stein. He had come up just behind Savitar's shoulder, scowling, no greeting. As if they'd planned to meet here together. A coffee date with grandpa. The speedster didn't so much as glance at him; Stein's eyes were on the barista anyway. The smell of cologne and chalk clung to him—the same smart, vaguely-colored outfit as usual, not even a scarf to weigh him down. It must have been his morning off; Stein couldn't usually be found anywhere but the university at this hour.

"The sight of used chewing gum behind the register of a restaurant should be illegal." Martin had his arms half folded, hands on his coat's elbow patches.

Savitar snorted. He didn't waste time on a greeting either, matching Stein complaint for complaint. "I could be in and out of here before the next bubble pops."

"Evokes a whole new meaning for the term fast food," Stein chuckled. "I have to commend you, though."

Savitar turned to look at him.

"On taking the initiative?" Stein gestured with an upturned hand to the café around them. "Gracing the public? You've been…reclusive, lately. Even for you."

"Don't you have some Earl Grey to order?" Savitar sighed.

"Actually, my wife is the one ordering." The professor nodded to the queue.

Clarissa Stein had just reached the counter. She was fussing with her purse, nails painted and hair swinging to frame her face. She bore the healthiest glow Savitar had seen on her since they'd officially met a month or two ago.

The professor's wife had been attacked by this Earth's Kyle Nimbus, poisoned, and incapacitated in the hospital for ages. After having been cured eight months ago, she should have taken a little longer than this to recover. She should've been paler, maybe just now finding a routine that worked in order to regain her energy. Thinner, definitely. But she wasn't. She was paying for breakfast with a sunny smile and fresh makeup, looking ten years younger than she actually was. It was almost superhuman.

Or the mark of a very talented doctor. A very determined, very earnest, very good brunette doctor with steady hands and a habit of getting involved in other people's business. Caitlin's handiwork was on full display in front of that register.

Stop.

Savitar blinked hard. He watched Clarissa approach them, resituating her purse's strap. Stein was watching her, too, with a twinkle behind his spectacles and the corner of his mouth twitching. Sometimes he looked like that when he entered the Cortex on Saturday mornings, or just before he left to meet Clarissa for dinner. Just the thought of his newly-rejuvenated wife seemed to pull Stein into a new kind of honeymoon phase. What Barry used to feel for Iris times a thousand, richer and stronger with age, like wine. Barry would have grinned at them both, enjoying their enjoyment. Appreciating the happiness, the love.

Savitar didn't grin. He cared about Stein. By extension, he cared about Clarissa. But he was far from the version of himself that might have rejoiced with those who rejoice, and these days seeing anyone that happy, in that particular genre of happiness, set his teeth on edge.

He did spare Clarissa a nod, though, when she reached them and said "Well! I—suppose you meet all kinds of people here on the weekend, don't you?"

She knew all about what Stein did at S.T.A.R. Labs, knew all about Savitar. All about the bioengineer from another Earth who had saved her life. There were zero secrets between the Steins. Sometimes all they had to do was look at each other and an entire conversation seemed to pass between them, unnoticed, silent. But if your eyes moved at superspeed, you might just be able to catch it.

His teeth were on edge again.

Another barista, one with dreadlocks, yelled out, "Henry! Black coffee for Henry?"

Savitar sidestepped Clarissa and took the cup. When he came back, Stein was talking about bubblegum again and Clarissa was making a face at the teenager behind the register. Apparently she agreed with the verdict, or she knew how to stoke her husband's petty fire. Or she liked watching him go off on a tangent. Either way, Savitar had had his fill of the subtle, elegant displays of affection.

Stein ground to a halt on the gum topic when Savitar passed them. "I don't suppose there's any chance of your joining us for breakfast?"

Savitar paused, whole body turned desperately toward the exit. He craned his head back around to take in Stein's slightly-amused, definitely-not-hopeful expression. Mrs. Stein was watching him.

"Sorry." Savitar held up a hand and wiggled the fingers, showing off his suit's compressor ring. "Duty calls."

"Before you go," Clarissa piped up, "I…I hope you don't mind, I heard you'd been in contact with Dr. Snow recently…"

Savitar went still. Stop. Stop.

"Martin's been regaling me," Mrs. Stein laughed. "I just thought—if you hear from her—I mean, next time…" She took a breath, shutting her eyes for a moment. Gathering the right words. "Thank her again for me, will you? We talk about her often, Martin and I, and I was hoping—"

"Err, I-I'm certain Miss Snow already knows everything you want to say." Stein's face had gone slack. Savitar didn't like the way the older man was looking at him, with the same puppy eyes Wally kept giving him every day in the Cortex. The same caution. Too easy to read.

Clarissa absorbed her husband's frown, the way his hands clenched. Then she looked at Savitar, cowed, and back at Stein. Her mouth gaped open and shut like a puffer fish. "Of course. I'm sorry."

Savitar glanced out the window. Watched cars passing at a snail's pace. Cast his eyes on the dripping little trees with fences around them, the people walking by or stopping in. Anything to keep from meeting the professor's sympathetic gaze.

"It's just—" Clarissa broke the awkward moment, forcing through it with an even lower, even more serious tone. "I don't think I'll ever be able to thank her enough."

Savitar didn't have trouble meeting her gaze then. "Me neither."

There was a moment where Clarissa's eyebrows knit, where she looked almost as sympathetic as her spouse. It mingled with confusion, and then the creases relaxed and she smiled. She got it. She didn't know him, not really, not like Stein did and not even half so well as her savior, but she understood this. She understood having needed Caitlin at one point in life, and having had her, and now having lost the opportunity to keep her. Yes, it was different, but she got some part of it, at least.

Suddenly the air in Jitters seemed too thick. Too much Caitlin everywhere, in him, in the conversation. Stop. It. He needed a run. He nodded again, for both of them, his version of a goodbye, and turned to speed away.

Just as he got to the glass double doors, just as he pushed his way into the doorframe and let the cold air hit him, the world tilted sideways.

His coffee hit the ground, spilled all over the steps. He watched it turn the concrete black, dribbling, spinning, spinning, spinning, spinni—

"Savitar!"

Stein's hands were on him, one on his shoulder, one under his right arm. Savitar's left hand gripped the door's rail. The scientist struggled with him for a moment, heaving him upright again. That didn't help. The street outside, the café behind him, everything was tipping. Dizziness consumed him.

"What is it?" Clarissa's voice was nearby, motherly and hushed. One or two people stopped somewhere in his peripherals, watching him. Startled. He thought he heard someone murmur about an ambulance, or gasp, or do something else completely useless. "Martin?"

"I'm fine—"

"Don't move a moment." Stein drew Savitar with him further out the door, away from prying eyes, into the fresh chilled air. Fuzzy with pollen, thick with early-morning dew. "It's all right, Clarissa, his glucose levels are exacerbated, a-a-a side effect of his remarkable abilities—"

"What do we do; should I get him some food?" Clarissa's voice was now above them a little, up a few steps. Still half-in, half-out of Jitters.

"Well, yes, if you're in the market for approximately eighty-five blueberry muffins—"

"There's no need to take that tone with me, Martin—"

"I apologize, it's just that normally Wallace is the one who—"

"Stop." Savitar let his shoulders go tense, waiting until Stein let go of him to speak again. "I'm fine."

Clarissa ducked back instead. He heard the door shut, let the blessed lack of a maternal essence wash over the area. Stein was still hovering, snowy eyebrows down low, looking the speedster up and down. His hands and arms were stretched out like he was cornering a cat. The sun had risen just enough to reflect irritatingly in his glasses. It made Savitar's head hurt all the more.

"Clarissa will be back in a moment with the entirety of the bake case, no doubt," Stein said. "Possibly a few of the frozens they keep in back, too. I'm afraid her hearing is sometimes selective in cases like this."

"Everything's fine, Professor," Savitar repeated, closing his eyes. Trying to get his breathing back to normal. "Just…dizzy."

Dizzy spells, spontaneous crashes.

Stein puffed out a little air himself, scoffing at the hero. "Why on earth didn't you elevate the number of calories you consumed this morning before an outing? Eons of existence, a veritable medical anomaly, nay, a walking miracle, and you somehow didn't remember to kee—"

"I did," Savitar growled.

"I see." Stein straightened. "Then I suggest you and I add a detour to S.T.A.R. Labs to our morning itineraries."

"Scanners got nothin'," Wally confirmed.

Stein scowled, standing just outside the med station with his knuckles near his mouth. "You couldn't find a more professional way to phrase that? Got nothin'?"

Wally and Eddie had already been at the Labs when Savitar had run Stein there. Clarissa, understanding there was some kind of superhuman adventure possibly beginning, had stayed behind willingly. She had a meeting, or maybe she just enjoyed some alone time. Savitar couldn't remember Stein's explanation. He had been too busy trying not to throw up, trying to run in a semi-straight line. Now that they were here, the familiar scents of Clorox and dust were making it worse.

Savitar could have scanned his own vitals. He could have monitored his own glucose levels. He often did. But he was supposed to be a team player now, and Wally was supposed to be learning this sort of thing. He was on his way, at a turtle's crawl, to being the group's medical expert. He already knew how to work the late Cisco-66's old tablet, already knew where everything in both the med bay and the newly-refurbished medical station was, and he was even noticing when to restock the Jell-O fridge more regularly than before.

The Earth-66 version of Joe's youngest was a far cry from certain other doctors this building had housed, but he was getting there.

Wally turned the tablet around to show Stein. Blinking gauges were lined up beside a pixelated outline of a human body—Savitar's body specifically—and the glucose levels were peaking.

"He had like 42 burritos last night. I was there," Wally said, glancing at Savitar with raised eyebrows. "Plus whatever you had for breakfast—"

"Apple pies," Savitar supplied. Wally gestured with a hand, like, see?

Stein made a face. McDonald's was, to him, the fast food equivalent of a dumpster in an alley.

"Couldn't he have burned through anything he ate by now?" Eddie suggested. His voice was still morning-low. He sat at his special chair behind the white winding desk, sipping what was definitely the same cup of coffee he'd had at 4 AM after the car chase. He pointed the cup slightly in Savitar's direction. "I mean, you've been out for six straight hours."

"Perhaps it's the lack of sleep interfering with your system," Stein muttered.

Savitar kept his eyes on the south wall. "I eat enough. I sleep enough. This is something else."

He slid off the gurney they'd made him sit on, pulling on his corduroy black jacket. The lights were too bright, the beeping coming from the tablet was too loud, and the only thing he wanted to do was zip up to the Lounge and run his own tests with Gideon. Tinker a bit. Get away from whatever was going on.

But they'd never let him. And he knew better—the sooner they figured out what was happening inside his body, the sooner things could go back to normal.

Everyone could stop looking at him like he was an abandoned cat on the side of the road. Stein could take his knuckles away from his chin, Wally could turn those big knowing eyes on someone else, Eddie could quit using his talk-down-a-bridge-jumper voice whenever he spoke to the speedster. Now he was getting dizzy and dropping coffee, giving everyone on his team one more reason to treat him as if he was either a sniffling toddler or a very heavy backpack they had to take everywhere. Someone to be pacified, something to try and lighten every other minute.

"Something else?" Wally set the tablet down on the desk, leaning back against it. There was a very Joe-esque glint coming into those brown irises. Stern.

"Like that…thing, that frequency thing you wear?" Eddie was hypothesizing in a completely different direction, bless his blonde little heart. His eyes were on the thick, metallic bracelet Savitar kept on his wrist.

Savitar glanced down impatiently at the Hammond Cuff. It was the device that kept the ruptured timelines from erasing him every second. He couldn't even take it off when he slept. It was Cisco's little masterpiece, a reluctant gift, something designed to change Savitar's personal frequency—the one he existed in, everyone had their own—into one that melded with the temporal zone. It was the same as ever, shiny, maybe a little eroded from several months' worth of showering (it was waterproof).

"If it was this thing," he said bluntly, "I'd already be gone. Erased from existence, atom by atom."

"Then it seems to me the only thing left to us," Stein said, "is test your abilities and see if it happens again. With the right technology we can deduce at the scene, in real time, how and why your equilibrium is being affected. It may be something entirely new."

Something new.

Savitar nodded, not bothering to change into his suit, shouldering past Wally and heading for the exit. The three other men were exchanging glances behind him, he knew. Still worrying. Still slightly annoyed. Just another day on Earth-66.

"Track my vitals," he ordered on his way out.

"What happens if you black out?" Eddie asked.

"I crash."

"Perhaps you'd better choose an area with limited breakables." Stein came around the desk, already firing up the monitors beside Wally.

"Yeah, nowhere with any telephone poles," Wally added, shooting their hero a grin.

Savitar held up a finger, pausing in the Cortex's doorway. Giving Wally the slightest quirk of an eyebrow, the barest hint of Barry's big, stupid smile. "One time."

With that, he took off.

Savitar had been running for an hour.

Central City was still cold, even in the later-morning sunshine. Mild amounts of steam drifted from the pavement where shop doors were open; little puffs of frost on grass blades were melting away. He had chosen at first to blaze right through the middle of downtown, heading out toward Leawood to get a clearer runway. Cars and buildings had long been abandoned there, and it felt like the world was frozen around him as he ran.

Nothing had happened. No dizzy spells, no change in his vitals. So he'd gone back downtown, where pedestrians were starting to fill the streets. Caitlin had talked about the dizziness, said Barry could feel it, said they thought it had something to do with the Speed Force. But his connection to it remained numb. All he had was its speed, no lightning sense, no vague hints he was part of something bigger. Just the automatic power, nothing extra. For him, the speed was enough. Lights and colors and sounds were almost nonexistent, almost dry and dead as he ran. Every person was a wax figurine, stuck mid-motion, every expression the same unimportant, ordinary countenance, bland and unremarkable. These were the little mortals he was fighting for daily.

"Anything?" Wally crackled over the comms in his ear.

"No," Savitar thudded out.

"Your vitals are stable." That was Stein. "Your glucose levels superb—exactly how many apple pies did you consume this morning?"

"Does that really matter?" Eddie said somewhere in the background.

"In science, everything matters."

Savitar didn't respond, shaking his head as the team continued to argue. Talking about nothing because they had nothing. He shouldn't have come out here. They weren't getting anywhere; nothing was happening. Normally running would clear his head, help him get away from problems. Now the opposite was happening.

Caitlin may have been right. The fact that Barry was getting dizzy shouldn't have affected him—even the fact that something might be going on with the Speed Force shouldn't have affected him. Savitar had no connection to either. He wasn't struck by lightning in a forensic lab four years ago. Barry was. He was just a copy of Barry; none of what he remembered doing had ever actually happened to him. Savitar had no real link to the Speed Force; all he had was a one-to-one duplication of Barry's superspeed, and any ability that might come with it—more, too, because he was a time remnant of a future version of Barry.

The Speed Force didn't crackle around him the way it did for the original Flash. His lightning wasn't gold and red—it was sickly yellow and barely vibrant enough to light an underpass. It could burn behind his eyes, but there was no sense of being part of a group of chosen speedsters, no superhuman oneness or strength passed down to him from an energy that had chosen him. It hadn't.

Savitar and the Speed Force were almost enemies. The only tangible thing it had ever really been to him was an enemy, a tool used by the Flash of 2024 to punish him. It wasn't the same for him as it was for Barry.

But he had blacked out. No warning, no usual cause for it. Just like Barry. Part of him hated the similarity, as ever, but another part was curious. Barry was a scientist; Savitar was a scientist. Maybe an even better one, considering he had more experience and more knowledge. You didn't time travel with ease, convincing acolytes throughout the ages that you were the first ever speedster, without knowing a thing or two about a thing or two. He wanted to understand what was happening, of course. But acknowledging this, doing this, was communicating that not only was he still unable to break fully free of the original Barry Allen—but that Caitlin had hit the nail on the head.

And that meant he had to think about her. That meant she was involved, involved and impossibly out of reach.

When she'd called him yesterday, just for a moment, he'd thought she'd come back. That maybe whatever was happening on Earth-1 had required her to drop in on Earth-66, or get away from the problem on Earth-66. The reason didn't matter. She could have said she was allergic to Earth-1 all of a sudden and had come back for a week of relief, and his level of care would not change.

That hope had only lasted 0.2 seconds before reminding himself how little she'd communicated with him lately. Reminding himself how obviously, Caitlin Snow wouldn't leave Barry Allen in the middle of some kind of team crisis. And things had been bad enough lately to give her that press to her voice whenever she called. The one that said she was fraying at the edges.

Of course she hadn't actually been here when she contacted him. Of course she wasn't coming any time soon. Of course Barry got first dibs. Always.

Savitar had started to think if he avoided Caitlin—mentions of her name, lingering on memories of her throughout the day—it might be easier to ignore the bitterness, the discontentment that was threatening to engulf him every morning when he woke up. But now this was happening, and he couldn't.

At least she'd been worried about him.

And today, maybe she was right to worry.

By the time he got back to S.T.A.R. Labs, everyone but Wally had left. Stein had returned to his day off with Clarissa, and Eddie was back at the station.

Wally was waiting behind the white winding desk. Savitar had taken much longer to come home from patrol, even after all their tests on his running had come back nonconclusive. He could have made his way to the Lounge hours ago, locked himself up there with Gideon and his gadgets and not come out until the next big disaster struck in the city. But he'd gotten lost in thought and just kept running. Sometimes it seemed that was all he knew how to do.

"Got you like…a lot of burgers." Wally jabbed a thumb toward the desk.

Beside Earth-66's non-Kid Flash, there were about four family sized bags from Big Belly Burger, each one full of food. Savitar changed out of his suit in the time it took West's eyes to shut and open again, reaching into the nearest bag for a carton of fries. The monitors were all off, and Wally's textbooks were crowding the desk again.

"So—earlier—" Wally laced his fingers over his chest, exactly the way his father did. Greetings were extinct today, it seemed. Savitar's team was used to that kind of communication. "When you said you thought it was somethin' else?"

Savitar didn't stop chewing, one good eye coming up to stab the intern. The stern, Joe-look was back in the kid's expression. He felt he knew what was coming.

"Does that have anything to do with Caitlin's call yesterday?"

Savitar stilled, giving Wally narrowed eyes. Looking at him over the top of one of the monitors with barely-disguised warning eyebrows. He didn't need this. Not after Clarissa that morning, not after the dizziness and the hours of going in mental circles with himself, running around the city. Trying to focus on the problem, on what it meant that Caitlin's problems on Earth-1 seemed to be leaking into life on Earth-66. Not focusing on what it meant for her to have been onto something, for her to still be too far away when they might have to face the same threat.

Not focusing on how when the Flash got dizzy, broke a bone, needed patching up, he had her right there to help solve things. And he, Savitar, couldn't even get a consistent string of interdimensional phone calls.

Not focusing on how he sounded less like a god and more like a younger Barry Allen, pining in the bushes while Iris was kissing Eddie Thawne.

He didn't think he'd ever feel like this again. Or have to deal with people obviously noticing and obviously trying to bring him down from it. He shouldn't have to pine. He shouldn't even have had to miss her. Just a year ago, the one thing on his mind had been pain and revenge and erasing the original Barry from existence, whatever it took. Compared to that, this strain should have been easier.

But instead, it was harder. Trust Caitlin Snow to ruin him with care.

Wally pursed his lips, giving up on receiving an answer. He took Savitar's glare as a yes. "Man—you gotta let this go."

"What if she was right? Say she's right, say—it's the same thing. If Barry's connection with the Speed Force is what's causing this for him, then the exact same threat could be coming for me. For this Earth."

Savitar heard his own voice winding at the end of each sentence, a raspy mirror of Barry's standard, arm-throwing arguments with Joe. Felt his eyebrows draw together the same way. Actually, talking to Wally-66 these days was starting to feel a little too much like talking to Barry's other father.

"Don't tell me Joe never taught you to think one step ahead, Wallace." Savitar leaned forward; arms braced on the desk. "Get out in front of the perp, better safe than sorry?" he quoted, squinting.

Wally stopped spinning his chair slightly, straightening. He pointed. "Okay so, number one, don't be doing that. It's creepy. You don't know my dad."

An agree-to-disagree snort came in response.

"And two—" Wally stood up, reaching into a white paper bag to unbox a few chicken strips. "If you fallin' out this morning had anything to do with what's going on over there, wouldn't we be able to tell? All this stuff you built, all this crazy equipment? We've had issues before. Metahumans, right, medical emergencies—like when that crocodile guy almost bit your whole arm off last month?"

"Make your point."

"Why does it have to be about Caitlin this time?" Wally didn't touch the food, standing there with the box closed in his hand and staring Savitar down. "You told us your connection with that Speed Force stuff is long gone. So why all of a sudden—"

"When Caitlin—"

"Bro, not everything leads back to Caitlin! Okay?"

"Don't call me that."

Wally gave a short huff, like a laugh, but more frustrated than that. Glancing off to the side. "We all know you miss her—"

Savitar rolled his eyes. "That's not what this is."

"—but if this thing was really the same as what's happening on that Earth," Wally continued, ignoring him, "we'd have more to show for it. You just lost your balance, man. You got dizzy. That's it. I mean, who's to say that's not just like a—a side effect of being—" Wally gestured with an arm, a hand, up and down Savitar's frame, "—a clone of some other guy?"

The speedster let his brows shoot up. "A clone."

Now it was Wally's turn to roll his eyes. To shift his weight, glance away in exasperation. "You know what I mean. You have someone else's memories, right? Somebody else's face? At least, over there. That's what Caitlin said. And I know all us other normal guys don't get it, all right, I know we're just backup, but…" He raised his hands. "We could help you figure this out. If anything's coming, we can handle it together. We're not on that Earth, we're on this one."

Savitar's jaw worked. "If something is coming to this one," he mimicked, voice low with the effort of controlling his tone, "I need to consider every option."

"We need to consider 'em." Wally pointed again, swiveling a finger between himself and Savitar, and then in a stupid little circle in the ether, signifying the team. "All of us. And we will. But how 'bout we keep Caitlin out of it for now?"

Savitar tilted his head. "It's the best lead we have."

"Not yet," Wally argued. "We don't know what this is. If it's even anything. Maybe you're just—like, you have a cold or something."

"Wally."

"Or it could be some new metahuman, or—our scanners are bein' janky; I don't know—"

"You really want me to ignore the fact that what happened to me this morning," Saivtar interrupted, voice a little louder now, still barely keeping in his frustration, "is exactly what happened to Barry? That's a little too much of a coincidence in our line of work." His mouth twisted.

"You're not dyin'." Wally folded his arms tight over his chest. "I think we got time to wait and see if anything else turns up. Maybe it was some new meta."

Savitar shook his head slowly, pulling out another burger and beginning to unwrap it. Moodily pinning his gaze to the far wall as Wally waited for more arguing. This version of Kid Flash was even more stubborn than the one he remembered. He always lasted longer in a debate than Savitar could recall Wally-1 lasting against Barry, and he could get louder, too. Maybe it was practice with this Earth's Eddie; the two were more like brothers here than had seemed possible anywhere else.

"I'm just saying—" Wally licked his lips, glancing at the Hammond Cuff, the ceiling light, Savitar's burger. "Keep the other Earths out of this for now. If it's all connected, then…we'll see it."

When Savitar looked back, Wally was watching him. He knew the intern was saying what he always seemed to be saying these days, between the lines. We can't move forward without you. Make the most of what you got. Stop waiting for Caitlin.

Savitar wanted to race out of the room. He wanted to go to the Lounge, go to his room, go to the furthest point in the city, in the state, in the multiverse. But he couldn't get away no matter how fast he ran. He couldn't seem to shake other people's worry, or their judgement. He couldn't shake the fact that people needed him now; he wasn't used to that. And he definitely couldn't shake the fact that some part of him was stuck on Infantino Street, eight months ago, with Caitlin standing inches from him and seeing him and he himself finally, finally feeling whole.

And that part of him, more than anything else, was what kept him rooted to the spot. Fighting Wally's advice at every turn. There was no strategy, no better safe than sorry about it. He just didn't want to let go.

Wally started, suddenly. He was getting a phone call; his pocket was buzzing. He glanced balefully at Savitar for a moment, as if expecting him to dash out the moment he turned his back, and pulled his cell out. Eddie's photo, a past snapshot of he and Wally, some moment captured in a bar, was lighting up the screen.

"Hey, man." Wally paused, listening on the other end with his mouth tightening into a straight line. Savitar watched his hand grip the phone tighter. "Got it. He's right here." He hung up without a goodbye, looking back at the speedster. "Eddie says there's a huge fire downtown, 5th Avenue. An apartment."

Savitar had changed into his suit before Wally had finished speaking. Without another word, he had sped from the Cortex, from the Labs, down the street and into the city. Relieved to get away from Iris' eyes and Joe's posture and Wally's general do-gooder suggestions. He'd had someone nagging at him in that building before—and no matter how quickly she'd told him he learned, he still took a while to really listen.

He'd lost too much already. To Savitar, having Caitlin Snow again—or rather, for the first time—wasn't something he was willing to give up just yet. Even the bitter pieces of it. Even the missing and the waiting and the not-letting-go.