"What are you going to do?"

"Throw her in the drunk tank, I guess. We can get ID in the morning."

"Too bad. Looks like a classy girl."

Joe West is working late at his desk in the Central City Police Precinct when he hears a conversation in a nearby hallway, louder than usual because there's drunken female voice yelling incoherently during it. The truth is, Joe has a soft spot for all kinds of drunk women, high women, women caught in a bad spot. He knows it's usually inevitable, but he hates that they have to wake up disoriented in a cell.

"Sullivan, who is she? Isn't there somebody you can call?" Joe rubs his tired eyes, following the sound and coming into the echoing corridor.

"No ID on her, or we'd have just driven her home," shrugs the uniformed cop, who is supporting one side of a very drunk woman, with his partner, officer Drummond, on the other side. Joe notices that the intoxicated girl's feet are bare and dusty, probably with cuts on them, and that she's wearing a skirt and top that were nice to start with but are streaked with dirt.

Just then, the mumbling girl looks up.

"I know her," says Joe quickly. "I—I'll take her home."

"You sure?" asks Drummond. "If you have her address, we can just take her there. Me and Tim don't mind."

"It's ok," answers the older, and much more senior, detective. "She's a friend. I'll take care of it."

"You at least want us to help you get her into your car?" asks Drummond dubiously.

Joe shakes his head. "Just leave her in front of my desk while I get my stuff together."

The uniforms follow orders and leave, and Joe is left with an incoherent, mumbling, pale brunette half-sitting, half-lying in one of the uncomfortable metal chairs in front of him.

"Time to go," he says loudly, taking her hand, trying to be gentle. She looks up at him and shakes her head. "Sleepy."

"I know you're sleepy, Sweetheart," he says patiently, "but we need to get you home." It's no use arguing with a heavily intoxicated person, something Joe has known for far too long. In the end, he takes Dr. Caitlin Snow and hoists her over his shoulder, carrying her out of the precinct through the darkest hallways, trying to avoid anyone's curious eyes and hoping to goodness she won't remember any of the indignity in the morning.

She doesn't fight him on getting into the car, and by the time he hooks her seatbelt, she's nearly asleep. That makes it easier when he gets to her apartment. He has no idea where her purse or any identification might be, but she lives in a nice building, and a quick flash of his badge to the security guard downstairs gets him into her place. He regrets having to let anyone know that Dr. Caitlin Snow is the worse for wear, but the guard seems less than surprised, more wryly amused than anything. Joe doesn't like the implication of that, the implication that this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

Once inside, he lays the now-sleeping girl in bed and almost turns tail to leave immediately, but he feels a pang of concern. If this were Iris—heaven forbid—he would want someone to take care of her. Trying not to disturb anything, he takes a washcloth from her bathroom and a bar of soap from the shower and, as gently as he can, washes her grimy feet. Just as he suspected, the street hasn't been kind to them, and he counts five cuts—two minor, three deep enough that they need a bandage on them.

The cop rummages through the scientist's medicine cabinet and finds everything as organized as he'd have expected. He takes out a tube of ointment and a box of bandages and comes back into her bedroom, sitting on the end of the bed and attending to one foot at at a time, putting on the cream and then the bandage over each wound.

When he's almost done, the girl's eyelids flutter open and she sits up quickly and throws her arms around his neck. Taken aback, Joe sits still, not sure what to do. He smells liquor on her breath as she whispers, "I missed you so much," then falls back onto her pillow, asleep again.

Joe blinks back tears. It's been six months since the pale girl lost her husband for the second time, six months since the love of her life sacrificed himself again. It's been twenty years since Joe's wife left him, and it still hurts. Six months is like yesterday; it's a pain he knows well. He finishes the last bandage and pulls Caitlin's comforter up around her shoulders, taking a big hand and smoothing the hair off her forehead.

Then, he goes to her kitchen and finds a pad of paper with a half-finished grocery list. He pulls off an empty sheet and writes:

Dr. Snow,

This is Detective West. You were found in downtown Central City last night, intoxicated and by yourself. I'm sorry we couldn't locate your handbag or wallet or shoes, but I'll see what I can do tomorrow. Your feet were cut pretty badly, so I bandaged them. I don't know why you ended up where you were, but I'd like to talk about it. Call me or drop in at he precinct.

Joe

p.s. This is between us and a couple of uniform cops who didn't know your name.

The next day, Joe spends the morning answering a possible metahuman threat that turns out to be nothing more than a college kid in a gorilla costume. By the time he catches the kid, Joe is so irritated by the waste of time that he's tempted to throw the book at him. But he doesn't, because when he looks into the kid's face, he sees Barry and Iris and Cisco and Caitlin and even Eddie—all the young, stupid, life-loving people he knows.

"Here's what's going to happen, Son," he says, looking straight into the kid's blue eyes that are scared behind his glasses. "You're going to get back to your dorm, and you're going to study the heck out of this semester, and I'm gonna take down your information, and if you ever do anything to get noticed by the police again, you'll be spending a night in a cell. Understand? The answering nod contains a mix of terror and relief.

Joe drives back to the precinct, glad he didn't bother to bring Spivot. No reason to waste the valuable time of two officers, and her enthusiasm extends to office work, so he, very gratefully, has her reorganizing his taskforce paperwork—with the promise that he'll take her to the metahuman section of Iron Heights in return.

He finally gets back to his desk at 3:00pm and finds a foil-wrapped package tied with green ribbon. He opens the card next to it and finds an old-fashioned thank-you note with swirled cursive writing. On the inside, it reads:

Detective West,

I hope the enclosed cookies show how grateful I am for last night. Thank you for keeping this between us.

Caitlin Snow

Joe shakes his head. It's just like her—polite, sweet, a nice gesture, but as avoidant as all getout. He hopes it won't happen again, but he has his doubts.