You're the first face that I see
And the last thing I think about
You're the reason that I'm alive
You're what I can't live without
You're what I can't live without
You never give up
When I'm falling apart
Your arms are always open wide
And You're quick to forgive
When I make a mistake
You love me in the blink of an eye
I don't deserve Your love
But You give it to me anyway
Can't get enough
You're everything I need
And when I walk away
You take off running and come right after me
It's what You do
And I don't deserve You
Don't Deserve You, Plumb
Good things rarely felt like a win since usually something bad followed – or at least that was what Rachel learnt from being a part of team Flash. That night she got to go home with no powers bothering her and feeling blissfully free – or she should. The one thing that prevented her from being happy was Caitlin's situation. All this time were terrified – she especially – that Cait would lose control, that she was eventually meant to and… what actually happened was absolutely out of said control. The story Rachel heard from Cisco was heartbreaking. Barry had brought Jesse back from the Speedforce, but Jay Garrick had taken her place and now he was the one stuck, suffering because Savitar still ran free. And then Caitlin got hurt. And despite all the pain she endured, all the courage she showed – in the end it was all for nothing. She coded. She died. And Jesse couldn't let her go. Hence Killer Frost was born… Rachel couldn't even hold this against the younger woman. She'd probably do the same if someone she loved was dying and the one thing that could save them would be activating their powers. Still… they had no way of knowing if they could even bring their Caitlin back, if maybe she was already too far gone, forever becoming Killer Frost.
Rachel reached her apartment, at least relieved and happy to be back home, to be able to detach a little from everything and gather up her strength when… the doorknob felt so cold she recoiled. Fear instantly hit her since she knew there was only one thing that could cause this…
She slowly turned around, already knowing what she would find. Caitlin. Dressed up like a supervillain, indeed, looking at her with eyes so cold and foreign she didn't resemble Rachel's best friend anymore.
"You…" she spoke, her icy voice dragging the syllables, "should be dead."
Rachel was already reaching to her phone to activate her panic button, but Caitlin knew all the team's tricks too well, effectively freezing it before any help was called upon.
Was that it? Crossed Rachel's mind. Would she die anyway because she, indeed, was meant to?
"I… I think I found her," Cisco informed the team back in the cortex as they were all focused on looking for Caitlin. "But you're not going to like it." He turned to Barry with a warning ready.
"Why? What is it?"
In the end Cisco didn't really need to explain since Barry's eyes opened widely on their own and he was gone just to return immediately, holding a phone that looked…
"She froze it," he informed, throwing the useless device onto the nearby desk. "Caitlin has Rachel."
"But… but why would she take her?" Harry seemed perplexed. "How does this benefit her?"
"Rachel's her best friend," Cisco provided. "Maybe there's still a part of Caitlin somewhere in there or…"
"Maybe Killer Frost's trying to get rid of it," Barry followed with. "Cisco, we need to find them and we need to do it now. Can you trace her again?"
"I don't know, dude, it's very hard with the cold weather out there… makes it difficult to trace her cold signature, but I maybe can try vibing her for a change."
"Do whatever you can, please. We haven't gone to all this trouble to produce a cure for Rachel just to…" he didn't finish. "Just do it."
"Dr. Wells?" Julian stood in the cortex's entrance in that moment. "The cure we just tried… it's not enough. Wedon't have enough."
"We need a sample of Caitlin's blood," Harry guessed, nodding. "From now, from after she changed."
"How about we kill two birds with one stone, then?" Cisco suggested when taking off his goggles. "Barry, suit up. I got a location!"
"What are you going to do with me?" Rachel asked Caitlin.
She was brought to some abandoned warehouse and… nothing happened since then. Cait – or maybe rather Killer Frost – was present, but she seemed to be in a conundrum, pacing back and fro, not able to make up her mind about something.
"Shut up!"
"No, really. Why did you bring me here?" Rachel honestly wanted to know. "What are you going to do with me?"
"Kill you," the answer came in the iciest of tones. "Because you are meant to die."
"Says who? You, guys, already made a cure for me. It seems like it's just the opposite."
"Oh, no, you couldn't be more wrong. He needs you dead."
"Who? Wait…" Rachel frowned. "Are you…? Are you working with… Savitar?" she gasped, shocked by that revelation.
"He has great plans for me. And the whole team," Caitlin responded.
"Caitlin, this man… he's a monster! You can't trust him! You can always come back with me to the Labs! We can help you!"
"Oh, sweetheart, if only you knew… I don't need help! He was the one who showed me the way to embrace my true self and that is the only cure I'll ever need!"
"I wouldn't be so sure of that!" they suddenly heard Barry's voice and he charged Killer Frost, but ended up being hit with her icy blast.
"Barry!" Rachel screamed his name, immediately running towards him. It was Caitlin's own mistake that she hadn't tied her up. "Are you ok?" She got to him.
"Watch out!"
He got up, pushing her away and diverting the ice queen's next blast.
"Caitlin! This…"
"…isn't you?" she finished for him.
"You're…"
"…one of us?"
After a while of this going back and fro, Killer Frost laughed.
"Savitar told me everything you're going to say. You two are more alike than you realize… Now, she needs to die so he can ascend." Caitlin attacked Rachel again, but Barry covered her with his own body, getting momentarily immobilized by a particularly big stream of ice.
What Caitlin didn't see was Cisco behind her, striking her with his powers and rendering her unconscious, which made it possible for him to take a sample of her blood.
Almost immediately after that, Savitar made an appearance, powerful and scary in his steel armour. Though he didn't attack. He just took Caitlin and sped off with her.
"You sure you're ok?" Jesse asked Rachel one more time after checking her up, taking over Caitlin in her absence.
"Yeah, thanks. I'm ok. I don't think she actually wanted to kill me. She was too conflicted about it, which is good news. It means Cait, our Cait, is still in there."
Jesse just nodded, pressing her lips together. "Let's hope Julian and my dad can come up with a proper cure now that Cisco managed to get her blood. I'm gonna go check on them."
"Everything alright?" Rachel then heard Barry asking.
She turned in his direction and saw him hovering in the door, looking a bit unsure before finally stepping inside and coming closer.
"I'll live," she assured him. "I promise."
"Thank god for that," he responded. "I thought… I thought I… we… lost you there for a moment. You gave us quite the scare, Rachel."
"I know, but you, guys, came up with the cure just in time. Besides, being taken by Caitlin… it also gave me hope that we haven't really lost her, that we can still get her back."
Barry nodded and then shifted his weight from one foot to another while nervously rubbing his chin. "Listen…" he started and stopped immediately, looking into her green eyes. "Rachel, I can't keep doing this. I just can't keep pretending."
She felt confused.
"What do you…?"
"I love you," he blurted out and that immediately caused her to fall silent. She might've expected a lot, but not this. Not here, not now, not like this.
"I love you and I think you already know that. And I need to finally say it, get it out there, because… because I almost lost you. Twice. And I can't take it. Life without you…" He briefly looked aside, shaking his head. "Just because you refuse to acknowledge that there is something here between us… that there always has been… will not change or hide this fact. I know you don't want to get hurt, but… it won't make me feel any different. I love you and I won't stop. And I am going to love you because for me there's just you and always has been. I won't settle for anyone else. Ignore it as much as you want, but… I love you." Now that he finally said it, he couldn't seem to stop and he started to feel like an idiot. The fact that she was still staring at him, speechless wasn't helping him either. "And I don't want to know who I would be without you in my…" Suddenly, he broke off, his eyes opening wider, a realization dawning on him.
"Barry?" Rachel eventually asked, the rapid change giving her her speech back.
"I'm sorry, I need to…" He was gone. Just like that – he sped off.
It took her a moment to realize she felt tears falling down her cheeks.
"You know, you guys have something special," she heard Cisco out of the blue and as she raised her head to the door again, he was the one standing there now. "You shouldn't push it away or ignore it." Was there really not such a thing as privacy in this building?! She thought in annoyance.
"Were you standing there this whole time?!" she asked him bitterly.
"No, but long enough. Rachel, I know it's not any of my business, but…"
"Exactly," she cut in sharply, "not your business."
"You're gonna have to decide whether the pain of losing him outweighs the happiness you could actually have with him. And aren't you suffering anyway? Right now?"
"What… What do you mean?" she stammered when asking, too taken aback that he actually spoke up about this. She would maybe expect it from Caitlin – memory of her best friend like a punch to her chest – but not from Cisco.
"If you care about him, it doesn't really matter if you let him in or not, does it?" he continued. "If something happens to him, you'll feel hurt anyway. Besides, any other man… he could die in a car accident or be killed by an evil meta. That's the world. That's the reality we live in. We're all gonna die someday. That shouldn't stop you from living, that shouldn't stop you from denying yourself happiness. You will never know how much time you'll have. You almost died recently as well."
"So, you're saying…"
"I'm not telling you what to do, Rachel. It's not my place and that's for you to figure out, but you need to decide whether loving him is worth the potential pain of losing him. That's all. Don't pretend nothing is happening, don't pretend those feelings aren't there, because even I can see them. I've seen it for quite some time and Harry, too. And isn't it like this with all of us? We will never know how and when, but we can be certain that it will happen. None of us can live forever. Just some food for thought."
And maybe it wasn't just about her. Maybe love should be more about the other person. The whole point of loving was to give someone love, show them how important they were, to be with them till the end… He deserved that. God knew Barry deserved that more than anyone she knew. And so far she'd only been bringing him pain. And herself as well.
Cisco was just about to leave, but then turned back to her again, something clearly coming to his mind. "Don't you think your powers might've just been another manipulation from Thawne?"
Rachel frowned on hearing that.
"He clearly wanted you to have them. Maybe he wanted you to have that vision of Barry dying in the future to effectively keep you away from him? To keep you two apart even from the grave?"
"But… Thawne had no idea…"
"Are you so sure about that? He knew the future. He knew everything. Of course he knew about this as well."
That was… that idea was… scary. Just like Cisco said – Thawne was controlling her and her choices even from the grave. Why else would he insist on keeping Rachel by his side that fateful day? He clearly wanted her to have powers. What for? They never benefited him. They only destroyed whatever there could be between her and Barry…
Yet, she wasn't meant to have more time to think about this since Barry himself was back, clearly in the cortex to which he was calling them all now.
"What is it?!" Rachel and Cisco got there first, followed by Harry, Jesse and finally. Julian.
"I know who Savitar is," Barry only said, his expression a look of a pure horror. "I figured it out when I…" He briefly looked at Rachel, but then he immediately shifted his gaze away as though ashamed of something.
"Well? Who is it?" Cisco prompted.
Rachel wasn't sure she wanted to know. There was something about Barry… something that bode a warning. This was not a game. This was not some random villain they were facing. This seemed to be much more than that. This was someone who knew everything – or nearly everything they were going to do and was always one step ahead. Someone who wanted her dead, who wanted Killer Frost on his side, someone that still kept Barry alive and knew everything…
"It's me," Barry finally revealed, just in the moment when Rachel's own eyes enlarged as she figured it out as well.
"That's crazy," Cisco commented, nearly laughing it off. "Isn't it?"
"It's not really me, but a version of me from another timeline. He… He told me. He's the result of the paradox that I created because of Flashpoint. He's the broken me… after Rachel died," Barry confessed. "He followed me when I decided to change things back to the way it was. It was me from the future where he lost everything and I threatened his existence in the Flashpoint after I created him."
Rachel felt a headache coming, but this time it had nothing to do with any metapowers. It was all simply a bit too much.
"That's why he was creating metas just like those in Flashpoint. To recreate that timeline. That's also why he wanted to make sure Rachel died and Caitlin couldn't help her. To keep himself alive. It's all my fault… Savitar is my fault."
"But… it's not really you." It was Rachel who said that, so sure of it. "If you took everything I love away from me and leave me completely alone and broken, if you then tried to take this world away from me too, my very existence… I would probably turn evil as well. To survive. To cope somehow." Maybe it was the writer's mind she possessed, but she understood this. In a twisted way it made perfect sense. "It's a typical birth of a villain. That's how they're created. Every single one of us has the potential to be both good and evil. Partially it's your choice and your personal strength that dictates it, but sometimes circumstances are just too powerful."
"Stop. Please, just… don't defend me. I… It's all my fault. Your death… then and here… Caitlin becoming Killer Frost…"
"Nah, I don't believe that," Cisco said, shaking his head. "You're powerful, but you ain't that powerful to control fate like this. Maybe Caitlin would've gone full on meta anyway. You can't know that. What we do know is that you're Barry Allen, the Flash, our friend and the hero. And we can beat Savitar."
"He was trapped in the Speedforce, so I need to find a way to trap him in there again. We're gonna need Jay for this. If I can somehow pull Jay out, maybe I can push Savitar in there to take the speedster's place."
