"It'll be like it never happened," he told her.

But it did, she thought with his kiss still warm on her lips, watching time peel apart to let him and the nasty-eyed man in the yellow suit through. It did.

And contrary to what he'd told her, it stayed happened.

Wally got better, slower than usual, but still faster than a normal person. He was back to speeding around the city and protesting his Kid Flash moniker inside of a month. They were still trying to figure out why he hadn't healed as fast as usual, but it didn't seem to be a permanent effect. He said the Speed Force had felt "weird" ("weird, what does that mean, weird" "I don't know, weird!") while Barry was with them, but the weirdness rippled gradually away after he left. She took copious notes and fussed over him until he whined.

They had an awkward lunch with their dad, where he stuck pointedly to iced tea (poured by the waitress, watched by both of them, undoctored). But there was a cabinet over his refrigerator that he didn't let her go into, when she drove him home, so she wasn't entirely sanguine about his sobriety.

But, you know. Baby steps.

And she remembered Barry Allen.

Remembered wasn't the right word, though. That made it sound like he popped into her mind every once in awhile, in downtime, during TV commercials or boring meetings.

He never entered her mind because he never left it. He was in every neuron, every synapse. He was under her skin. He was on her lips and her fingertips.

The way he'd touched her, looked at her. The way he'd said, it escapes definition and the way she'd felt when she'd looked at him, like a puzzle piece had clicked into place. Like, oh. There you are. Where have you been all this time?

She ran into Nora Allen in the grocery store. She said hi, tentatively, over mangos, wondering if Nora Allen still had a son who'd introduced her like he was introducing a princess to a queen. But the other woman's face lit and warmed.

"Say," she said after they exchanged small talk and mild compliments on jewelry. "Did something happen on your date with my son?"

"Uh - "

"Because Barry was so excited and then we met you and he was still so excited and then - poof!" She made a little poofing motion with her fingers. "I asked how it went and he didn't seem to know what I was talking about."

Iris gulped a little.

Nora eyed her compassionately. "Did it not go well? Listen, sometime I'll have to tell you about my first date with Henry. There was this thing, with my roommate's pet tarantula, and in my defense I didn't realize how very arachnophobic he was - still is, I have to kill all the spiders in the house, there's gender essentialism for you - My point is, it didn't end well, but here we are anyway. Sometimes the first time is bumpy, especially when you really want it to go well."

"It's hard to explain," Iris said, while her body hummed and buzzed and jittered with the thought, There's still a Barry Allen in this universe.

But how?

She told herself that she couldn't (shouldn't) follow Nora Allen home and wrap herself around Barry like a liana vine, and finally flower.

Especially if he didn't remember her.

"Alternate universes," Cisco Ramon theorized. "He may think it all erased behind him, but really all he did was jump timelines. Like jumping from branch to branch in a big tree. And the Barry who was always supposed to be here got put back? Or something."

"Hmmm," she said, tracing one finger under the marks on the glass, careful not to wipe it away because it was proof, it was proof -

"And by the way, why the hell are you here again? Is this my lab or Grand Central?"

She wrinkled her nose at him and kept studying the diagram.

"I should have security throw all y'all out on sight," he grumbled. "Do one little favor for a speedster with puppy eyes and see what it gets me. People swanning in here like they own the joint - you know who owns this joint? Me, that's who. And I never signed up for crimefighters running about and getting stabbed and kidnapping some poor kiddie eye doctor for no reason."

"Wally never did that last one," she pointed out. "So, are you getting LASIK?"

He flushed dull red. "Shut up. What? Shut up. I don't know what you're talking about."

She chortled to herself. Cisco Ramon's heavy black-framed glasses were as iconic as Steve Jobs' turtlenecks. Either Dr. Caitlin Snow had been thinking about how he looked without them for a long time, or she was more than a little spacey. Either seemed possible.

"Sis," Wally said to her. "Either you go hunt down Barry Allen 1.0 and figure out if this version is your fated true love soulmate or whatever, or you shut up about it."

She sniffed. "Pardon me? What was that, Mr. I-Don't-Have-a-Crush-on-My-Sister's-Coworker? Mr. Can't-Say-a-Word? Mr. - "

"Okay, okay, let's leave my love non-life out of it, huh?"

He did have a point, though. So she went to Jitters, where this had started.

And she went back.

And she went back.

"Good wifi," she mumbled when the baristas started commenting on how much time she spent there.

Finally, one horribly crowded day when everybody in the city seemed to have a desire for a latte and a scone and wifi at the same time, she saw him, hunched over his computer, tapping away. Her heart froze in her chest and then leapt into her throat, fairly vibrating.

What if it wasn't the same?

He looked the same, long and lanky, kind-faced, smiling sweetly as he went up to grab his drink from the barista.

But what if -

What if it didn't feel the same?

What if she needed him to be the Flash as well as Barry Allen before she felt that thing? Even though, she reminded herself, even though she'd felt it, the crackle, the buzz, the click before he'd peeled off his red cowl.

He'd seemed to think it was the same. That his connection with her was the same as his connection with Other Iris (she hated Other Iris, who had him now).

But maybe she wouldn't feel that way except if he were a speedster. And he wasn't - there were no speedsters besides Wally right now. When she'd theorized that he was a speedster who just didn't use his speed, Wally had laughed and laughed and laughed.

She twisted her necklace until it snapped, and slithered off her neck into her hands. (Well, shit.) She sighed and thought, Get to it, go talk to him, go. Now. Better to know.

She walked across the shop and paused in front of his table. He lifted his eyes to her, blinking a few times as if he'd been deep in thought.

"Hi, uh, you need to sit?" He started scooping things aside. "I'm taking up a whole table here. So rude. I'm sorry. Go ahead."

"Thanks," she said. "But, uh - "

He looked away from his screen again. "Hmm?"

"Sorry. I - " She worried her broken necklace through her fingers, aware that she looked like a freakadeak. Walking up to a strange man in a coffee shop. Her Grandma Esther would have told her she was being forward. Forward of what, Iris had always wanted to know, and gotten only a killer look in reply. She gulped air. "I think we know each other?"

Doubt wrote itself all over his face.

"From elementary school," she said. She'd thought about that for a long time, checking her old yearbooks, seeing the man's ridiculous eyelashes and his brilliant grin in the bright, sweet face of the ten-year-old boy. "P.S. 23? Mr. Hinkley's class?"

He gasped. "Iris?"

"Barry," she said, and her tongue rejoiced at the syllables on it again.

"Iris," he said again, softly, and it was the same, he said it just the same way …

She swallowed. "Barry Allen," she chirped, perching on the seat across from him. "Wow. How long has it been?"

(One month two weeks four days thirteen hours ten minutes.)

(Some unknown number of seconds.)

"Gosh, wow, years," he said, running a hand over his hair backwards so it stuck up. "How funny. My mom was asking about you the other day. Seemed to think we'd run into each other or - " He blushed and didn't go on.

"Maybe she's psychic."

"Maybe. She definitely has some weird dreams sometimes. So, wow, how have you been?"

They traded dry biographical information for a few minutes, and she soaked him in. He didn't know her like Other Barry had, but he was the same. Shyer, maybe. When their eyes met for too long, his flickered away, dropping lash-shaded to the tabletop before he looked back up with a smile. She seized those smiles, hoarded them in her chest like gold.

You, this, us, her soul whispered. You this us.

"Wow," he said again. "Iris West. You know, I had the biggest crush on you." He grinned at her, big and bright, and then blushed adorably. "That's not cool to say five minutes after we just reconnected, is it? Forget I said that."

She felt the answering smile well up like a clear, sweet spring. "I'd really rather not," she said. "Because I think I'm getting a crush on you, Barry Allen."

FINIS