Chapter Nineteen

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Thank you and enjoy.

A beeping fills the room.

It fills it with relief and with steadiness and with the hope that all things can be overcome someday if they only just keep on going.

Caitlin hadn't left Barry's side from the moment he had come back.

It had taken too long for her just to be comfortable in saying he was stable again. His accelerated healing was gone until she was able to get enough glucose back into his system for it to pick up.

"How is he?" Cisco pops his head into the medical bay.

"He's…" Caitlin looks down to the speedster, half under the covers. "Okay."

Cisco lets out a breath that he had been holding ever since they had to leave Barry behind on that other Earth.

"That was close, wasn't it?"

"Close is an understatement." She sighs and glances back up to the vitals monitor.

A beat of silence passes between them.

"So, I vote that we don't go to any more alternate universes."

Caitlin musters up a small laugh for him.

"I think we're going to have to return a few people back to their respective homes first." She tells Cisco.

"Yeah, Oliver is kind of creeping me out. We should probably do that first." Cisco raises his index finger. "Then, though, no more after that."

"I'm not sure if we can keep Barry from resisting himself." She says and practically jumps as a voice speaks up next to her.

"I can hear you talking about me." Barry murmurs sluggishly without opening his eyes. A small frown tugs at his lips as he finally summons the strength to fully wake himself up. "Is this real?"

"That depends." Cisco crosses his arms and tries to begin seriously. "What are your thoughts on the realness of the Matrix?"

Caitlin gives Cisco a look and scoots her chair a little closer to Barry.

"Yes, this is real." She tries to assure him.

"Zoom?" He asks slowly.

"Zoom's not going to hurt anyone ever again." Caitlin answers after a beat. The perkiness is just a bit too strong in her voice.

"What happened?"

Caitlin opens her mouth, but Cisco interrupts her before she can get out any more words.

"We took him down, you know." He starts. "Someone had to while you were just napping for the entire week."

"Where is he, though." Barry doesn't let up on his persistence. He tries to sit up in the bed and groans. "Is he in the Pipeline?"

Caitlin looks down.

"Zoom's dead." She tells him and he doesn't even blink.

"I thought that was a dream."

"Your body still has a lot of recovering to do. It'll take some time for things to clear up with that concussion you had."

"Hartley's soundwaves were a good idea." Barry starts and Caitlin nods at first, but then quickly changes to shaking her head from side to side.

"No, you don't need to avoid talking about Jay for me."

"He killed Zoom?" Barry doesn't really seem to be asking.

"Along with many other things." She answers bitterly and motions in the general direction of the cells. "He's in the pipeline."

"Have you talked to him yet?" Barry asks him.

Caitlin gets up from her chair and walks to the front of Barry's bed as if she were the one with superpowers, reaching for his chart.

"I'd much rather talk to you right now." She tells him, flipping upon the pages. "Are you feeling alright? Any pain that's too bad. I mean, not that painkillers work on you, but-?"

"You should talk to him."

Caitlin purses her lips, closing the file in front of her and pretending to read the very first cover page again.

"What would I even say? I mean, what are we going to do?"

"About Jay?" Cisco shrugs his shoulders. "I think we just need to decide which Jay he's ended up being at the end of all of this."

She nods after a moment and turns around silently.

"Keep an eye on Barry, Okay?" She tells Cisco as she walks past him out of the windowed room.

"Where are we going to go now?" Jesse looks up to her father.

She switches her gaze to the screens that filled the bullpen and waits for his answer even if she wasn't sure if she would follow whatever he said.

Harrison lets himself sink down into one of the rolling chairs and pats the other, trying to signal for her to join her. She does slowly.

"Where do you want to go?" He asks his daughter, truly looking at her.

"I want, I want to go back to our home."

Wells seems to let himself process that for a moment.

"Okay, then. We'll go back home. Whatever you want to do, we'll do."

"I'm not finished." She stops him, shaking her head. "I want to go home, but I don't know where that is anymore for us."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that this whole Zoom thing feels like it's lasted for a lifetime, two lifetimes probably. It's going to be so weird to go back to our old lives and it's like we have something here that's also weird, but it's real."

"I'm sorry." Wells tells her. "I'm sorry you got pulled into this and I'm sorry it's turned into something that shouldn't ever had been near you."

"I'm not a kid, dad. I just need to process all of this." She wrings her hands. "And I need to hear what you are thinking too."

"I'm thinking that I just want you to be happy and I want you to know that I'm here for you."

"Dad…"

"Jesse, you were taken by Zoom and I couldn't do anything."

"Dad-" She tries again, but is stopped.

"I watched as Zoom got Barry too and I got to see another father go through the same thing. It gave me all of the perspective I needed.

"Perspective." Jesse smiles at the word. "Perspective's nice." She runs her hand over the metal of the computer dock next to her. "Maybe, we shouldn't just chose one or the other forever. Look at the breach we were able to open in just a couple days. We could come back at least sometimes if they ever needed us. I mean, we can't just leave and never come back. They're friends here."

Jesse looks to study her father's face and just sees acceptance for whatever she wanted. Somewhere behind all of that, though, he looks happy.

She knew he had made friends.

They had made friends.

Cisco watches Caitlin as she walks around the corner then turns back to Barry. He waits a moment before stepping forward to take the seat Caitlin had left.

"So, dude, what's up really?" Cisco asks him, heaving himself down in the uncomfortable chair. "Are you good?"

"I think so?" Barry blinks as if he were about to fall back into the darkness.

"That's not very confident."

"I confidently think so?"

"That's better." Cisco tells him then frowns. He just kept seeing the entire sequence of events over and over and over again. "Barry, I'm sorry."

"You didn't do anything, Cisco. It's okay."

"No, it's not okay. Specifically because I didn't do anything." Cisco says and doesn't let Barry cut in when the other man tries. "I walked away when you were stuck in that glass box and I shouldn't have. We might have been able to get you out and look what happened."

"Look what happened?" Barry winces as he raises his voice a notch. "You guys saved me. You got me back from that psycho and you all stopped Zoom. Without speed."

"We didn't exactly do it easily. People died."

"You did your bests."

"What if it wasn't good enough? What if it isn't good enough the next time something happens?"

"Then, we'll figure it out." Barry raises his hands up as far as he can.

Cisco shakes his head and swallows.

"I think I was supposed to be the one comforting you." Cisco tells him and doesn't miss the darkness of past pain and fear that passed through Barry's eyes.

They all had some healing to do.

"Hey," Joe walks into the room and a smile takes over his face. "You're awake. How are you feeling?"

The man embraces his son as lightly as possible because of his injuries.

"You don't know how many times I've been asked that question in the minutes I've been awake, Joe."

"Oh well, you'd better get used to it because Iris is just behind me and I don't think she's going to let up on this one for a long, long time."

Barry snorts at the thought and smiles up to his father.

"I think I'll manage." He tells him and Cisco can't help but agree even if he doesn't say it outloud.

They would all manage.

"I didn't think you would come here." Jay's eyes are only on Caitlin as the iron curtain slides up to reveal the cell behind it.

"I didn't think I would come here either." She practically echoes him before finding her own voice. "There, there are some things I need to say to you."

"Please. Go ahead."

Caitlin nods and takes a second to collect her mind.

"You were lying to us for a long, long time." She clenches her fist. "At any point you could have told us what Zoom was making you do. We would have understood."

"Will you understand now?"

"Don't interrupt." Caitlin raises a hand. "So you didn't tell us and you continued to work under him. Then, for some reason, you changed your mind or something and you said you wanted to be on our side. What changed?"

"You know what changed."

"I'm not sure if I do anymore."

"You changed me. You all changed me and I didn't want to see that monster do to you what he did to me."

"So you killed him?" Caitlin shakes her head. "The door was opening Jay and you broke his neck with your bare hands."

"You still had to drag him to a cell. Barry would have died, Caitlin."

"You took the easy way out and it's not okay that in your mind that means killing."

"That was not the easy way out." Jay looks down. "My own speed died with Zoom. I will never get it back and I knew that when I killed him."

Caitlin breathes out and pushes back her hair.

"That isn't why it was supposed to be hard."

"I'm lost, Caitlin. Okay?" Jay chokes out. "I got pulled off my path and I ended up somewhere dark and being in the light just blinded me at first."

"How are we supposed to know if your eyes are ever going to adjust?" Caitlin pleads with him.

"Help them. Please. Help me."

The two are left staring at each other from different sides of the glass. Caitlin can't see all of the cracks that had formed inside of Jay and he couldn't see her own, but in that moment she still brings her hand up to sit it lightly against the glass of his cell and lets it rest there.

"Hey there." Cisco sits up as a whole slew of other Earthers show up outside of the med bay. "What's up?"

"We just came to check on the patient." Wells says, wrapping an arm around his daughter's shoulder.

"How are you doing, Barry?" Jesse asks him.

Barry and Cisco share a funny look over the question before he answers.

"Good." Barry says and smiles to reassure them. "At least, a lot better. I guess I should thank all of you."

"We owed you." Wells shrugs his shoulders and looks over his shoulder as Caitlin walks down the turn into the hallway outside the med bay.

She gives him a weak smile and moves to change Barry's saline bag.

"What are we talking about?" She finally asks them, closing the supplies drawer.

Cisco and Barry give her both similar looks of concern, but she waves them off with a small smile.

"Just catching up." Barry tells her with his own relieved grimace. He waves his hand to all of the people who had found themselves there together.

"We have to figure out what's going to happen now." Cisco leans back in his chair.

"Well, I believe," Dr. Wells starts, taking in the room with Barry, his daughter, Cisco, Iris, Caitlin, and Joe. "Whatever is decided, it's going to be okay."

"At least until the next world ending crisis." Cisco raises an empty hand to toast them.

Until we meet again...

Your's truly, Inkwalking