The woman sat in the middle of the cortex, legs crossed, hands cupped around her knee. Her full-length white wool coat was buttoned all the way up, so all that showed underneath were her tall stiletto-heeled white boots. The only spots of warmth were her honey-colored eyes and the tinge of red in her hair. Even her mouth looked pale and chilly.

It was August, and Cisco Ramon felt sweaty and overheated just looking at her. But she always wore stuff like that. Like she was the Snow Queen or the White Witch or something.

He said to Barry Allen, "Are you actually crazy."

"Nice," the woman said.

Still to Barry: "Weren't we fighting her last month?"

"Sitting right here," she said.

Cisco pointed, still without looking at her. "Uh-huh. Killer Frost. Sitting right here in Star Labs. Without handcuffs. I say again: have you lost your mind?"

Barry, in his Flash suit with the cowl up, said, "Wait. No. Wait. She is here. And she hasn't done anything to either one of us."

"Yet."

"I think it shows good faith. She says she has a proposal for us, what would it hurt to listen?"

"A lot," Cisco muttered. "But sure. Your funeral." He dropped into his chair and made a production of checking all the perimeter alarms (damn, how had she gotten past those? he needed to ask her - no, no, he didn't, she'd probably lie) and studying the feeds for anybody sneaking in while she distracted them. Killer Frost had never historically worked with anybody, but given that the history of metahumans in Central City was about a year and a half, that didn't count for much.

Barry crossed his arms. "So, Killer Frost. Go ahead. Let's hear what you have to say."

She got to her feet, strolling around the cortex like it was her home base, not theirs. Her heels clicked on the floor. "I hear you've got a little Captain Cold problem. I think I can help."

Barry had to turn as her path took her behind his back. "Oh? How could you help?"

"Hmm," she said. "Let's see. A metahuman who controls and manipulates cold? Wow. What possible advantage could I have against that cold gun?"

"And what happens if Captain Cold brings along his buddy Heatwave?"

Behind them, Cisco grimaced. Barry was trying to do tough guy. It was a dismal failure. Barry didn't tough-guy very well.

"Oh, even better. Frankly, Flash, I'm your best option."

Cisco crossed his own arms as she paused in front of the workstations, and leveled a glare at her. She didn't seem to notice.

"And what do you get out of it?" Barry asked.

She picked up a to-go cup from Jitters, still almost full. She held it for a moment, smiling to herself. The outside of the cup slowly frosted over. She set it down. "A favor."

"No deal," Cisco said. "Bye now."

"Wait," Barry said. "Um. Ms. . . . Frost, ma'am? Can I confer with my colleague?"

Her mouth twisted. "Go ahead." She strolled across the room and stood in the doorway of Cisco's lab, examining his work table. It was cluttered with tiny gears and wrenches and a little portable welding torch, plus his safety goggles, tossed on top of the mess when she'd walked in. He tried to remember if he was working on anything she especially shouldn't know about.

"Cisco," Barry said through his teeth.

Cisco cut him off. "You know what, dude? I have a little Admiral Ackbar, in my head, yelling, 'It's a trap.' And I'm inclined to trust the Admiral."

Barry pinched the bridge of his nose through the headpiece of the suit. "She's got a point. We're barely making headway against Captain Cold. If we want to capture him, we're going to need help."

"Granted, but not from her." He popped the top off the Jitters cup and showed Barry the frozen-solid block inside. "This was a hot caramel macchiato before she walked in."

Barry looked at it mournfully. "Yeah, I know how her powers work. And she's right; she has a huge advantage against Captain Cold."

"And you. Six weeks ago, she sno-coned your zippy ass. Did you forget?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I wouldn't put it exactly like that."

"I had to break you out with a hair dryer, and the suit was ruined."

"Now I know why you hate her."

"I don't hate her because of that." Cisco frowned. "Okay, maybe a little. That was my favorite suit."

Barry just shook his head. "What is your deal with her? We've faced a lot worse. Why is she a sore spot for you?"

"Sore spot is putting it a little strongly, just because I don't want to join hands and sing 'Kumbaya' with a supervillain."

"Don't you think supervillain is a little - "

Cisco looked over Barry's shoulder, and his mouth fell open. "Whoaaaaa whoa! What do you think you're doing?"

She looked up from the open drawer at his desk. "I need chocolate."

He bolted for his lab. "You don't get any of my candy."

"You revoked my candy privileges?" She actually sounded shocked and a little hurt.

He snatched the funsize Krackel bar out of her fingers. "I do that when people turn evil."

Something flickered in her eyes, gone too fast to identify. "I don't remember that from the verbal contract."

"I think it's implied."

Barry said, "Cisco? A word?"

Cisco glanced at him, and then back at her. He pointed at the open drawer. "Close it. And stay out."

With her eyes narrowed, she shut the drawer.

He stormed off, feeling stupid and petty but goddammit. If anybody lost candy privileges, it was Caitlin Snow.

His friend stared down at him, arms crossed. "How does she know about your candy drawer and since when did she have privileges?"

Cisco crossed his arms, too, scowling at nothing.

She answered the question. "I used to work here."

Barry wheeled around to stare at her. "At - at Star Labs?"

She lounged against the door between Cisco's lab and the cortex, hands tucked in her pockets. She might have been narrating the evening news. "Right up until the particle accelerator explosion. That changed a lot of things."

"What did you do here?"

"She was a bioengineer," Cisco answered. "Her name was Caitlin Snow."

"It still is," she snapped, straightening up. "You're the one who came up with Killer Frost, Cisco. Don't think I didn't realize who thought of that."

Their eyes met. Hers burned with cold rage. He swallowed.

Barry broke the silence. "Okay. Um. So - if we agree to your terms - "

Cisco twitched.

"If," Barry reemphasized. "Then what's the favor?"

She tapped her fingers on her pocket. "One I'm not going to tell you about. Not until you owe me."

"Shocker," Cisco muttered.

"Right. Well. Um." Barry scratched his cheek. "We're going to have to think about this."

"Take all the time you need," she said, and headed for the door. "Let me know."

"Wait. How do we find you?"

She turned, but it wasn't Barry she looked at. Instead, her eyes found Cisco. "Try looking."

Caitlin left Star Labs, feeling the weight of their gaze between her shoulder blades. It had been a gamble coming here, but not that much of a gamble. She was pretty sure they had a cell all ready for her, and the way things were, she would have been just fine going in there tonight. If she knew Cisco, either it blocked her powers somehow, or he'd souped up the heating to maintain temperature equilibrium no matter what she did.

Given that even Caitlin didn't know how to completely block her powers after living with them for eighteen months, the cell could probably double as a sauna.

She had to take a shaky breath at that thought. All that steam heat, pressing down on her skin, soaking in - Don't.

She took the long way home, walking instead of taking the subway. The sun was setting, the concrete releasing the heat of the day, and oh it felt good. She practically salivated at the sight of the heat waves shimmering above the street. Summer had never been her favorite season, but that had changed in the past year and a half. A lot had changed.

It was full dark by the time she turned onto her own street, a heavy hot dark like a blanket. She stood waiting for the light to change, watching the bakery across the street. They were closed, but someone was there, cooking bagels and donuts for the next day. Steam billowed against the windows in clouds. When they briefly parted, she watched the baker wipe sweat away from his forehead, and envy shimmered over her skin.

The light turned, and she started across the street.

Somebody leaned out his car window, making kissy noises. "Hey, baybeeeee. Whatcha got under that coat, baybeeeee? You gonna show me?"

Annoyance and revulsion crawled chilly over her shoulders and down her spine. She turned to look at him, knowing her eyes were glowing blue.

He threw himself back into his seat. "The fuck!"

His passenger smacked the back of his head. "I tol'you shut up! You leave her alone or she'll freeze your goddamn nuts off."

She smiled to herself and kept walking. If there was one thing she loved about the cold in her veins - and only that one thing - it was the way she could walk through the city any time of the day or night and know she was safe. There was something about striding down her street, head up, after a lifetime of making sure she never walked alone, or if she did, she had her mace in her hand, ready to whip up and spray into someone's eyes.

It was positively intoxicating, being the most dangerous person on this block.

Her apartment was a tiny studio on the top floor of a four-story walkup. No A/C, and the windows faced full west. She paid half what the rest of the building did for the inconvenience, for the way the sun broiled the room and the heat rose from every other apartment in the place.

She'd've paid four times that much.

She walked in, froze the door locks behind her, and went to the kitchen to fill the kettle. She always had water in the kettle. She hovered over it, trying not to drag the heat out of the slowly boiling water, because that would make it take longer. She'd learned that the heat she got from actually drinking hot tea or soup lasted longer than what she took in through her skin. But it was hard sometimes.

She hadn't been able to resist that coffee cup at Star Labs, for instance. It was better she'd given in, because the heat from that was how she'd managed to walk out of there with her laissez-faire mask still in place.

If, the Flash had said, and Cisco right behind him with his face saying, No.

The cold gnawing at her stomach flared out, and she pressed her hand to the side of the kettle for a moment - just a moment. The slow-rising whistle faded into silence. She swore and pulled her hand away, shivering.

Finally, the kettle clicked, and she poured the water over the teabag she had waiting in a cup. She picked up the cup and the ceramic burned against her skin. She let out a moan of pleasure, standing there in her tiny, stifling kitchen. Heat flowed into her palms, up her arms, to her core - Crack.

She looked down into the cup, knowing what she'd see, because the cold had done this before.

The tea was frozen solid, a block of brown with a teabag caught in the middle like a fly in amber. The cup itself had cracked in two places from the plunge in temperature and the sudden expansion of the water as it froze. She sighed deeply and put the whole thing in the garbage. Then she took down another cup, added another teabag, and filled it.

Holding it with both hands (no, don't pull, don't pull) she took a gulp, and though the water in the cup was still near boiling, it cooled to lukewarm almost instantly in her mouth. She took another gulp, bigger, and this one was still warm when it slid down her throat. It wasn't quite as good as body heat, but then, nothing was.

She pressed the mug to her breastbone, soaking in the heat (don't pull) and went to the closet, which held an array of heavy coats from Goodwill and a stack of cardboard boxes. She opened the first one and surveyed the contents - pill bottles. She fished around until she found the ones she needed, and counted them.

The dose she'd taken before she'd gone to Star Labs hadn't lasted as long as it should have. She rattled a pill bottle, calculating how long it would last if she took them more often. She'd already increased the frequency twice in the past two months. Was the cold growing hungrier or was her body building up a tolerance? Or both?

If she went on like this, her overburdened liver would fail. She knew that. She worried that her lack of appetite was the beginning stages, even though it was really probably because she drank so much tea all the time that her stomach was always full of that. She'd lost twenty pounds since the explosion. Far too thin, especially for somebody trying to conserve body heat. She forced herself to eat nuts and cheese and candy when she had no appetite and avoided looking in mirrors.

She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a miniature chocolate bar. Krackel - her favorite. Cisco didn't like the texture, but he bought them anyway because he knew she'd dig around in the drawer until she found one.

Probably he'd just bought them out of habit. Or that it was part of the mixed bag.

She thought of the way he had looked at her. The way he hadn't smiled, when he'd always had a smile for her. The skepticism - the anger - in his eyes.

"I'm not a villain," she said out loud.

She believed that. Most of the time. What did it matter if anybody else did?