#snowellsweek2019

Since Ronnie's death, Caitlin kept the soulmark on the inside of her left wrist covered with a widow's band. Of course, it was common for people to not want to see the once-bright lines now turned black from the passing of their soulmate. People who'd known her from before might've always found it strange that she and Ronnie always kept their wrists covered, but probably just chalked it up to choosing to keep it a private thing between the two of them.

Cisco knew, of course, because he always knew everything, even when she didn't exactly intend for him to. So he was the only one who didn't look surprised when the plain black bracelet cuff caught on the corner of the desk in a freak moment of perfect physics and the clasp broke, sending it scattering in two pieces.

"Cait... Oh. Oh, you have a soulmark, how cool!" Barry said, deftly snagging one half of the thin metal cuff in mid-air while the other skidded across the floor. "I didn't know you and R-- Oh."

The last oh made it clear his brain had tardily caught up to his mouth.

"Um, yeah," she said. Covering the dark, delicate blue lines with her opposite hand was an automatic response. Dark soulmarks had never been activated, representing soulmates never found. Ronnie hadn't had a mark at all, though he had always followed her lead and kept his left wrist covered with something, so his lack of mark didn't contrast with her unactivated one.

She let her hair fall forward, shielding the illogical burn of her cheeks. There's nothing to be ashamed of, she thought, not for the first or even thousandth time. Just because we weren't each other's soulmates, it doesn't make what we had mean anything less.

But, though soulmarks were becoming more and more common, they still were highly romanticized. Living your life with a dark mark, never finding your soulmate, was considered a tragedy, no matter how happy your life had actually been. Ronnie had always emphatically said that he had found his soulmate because no glorified birthmark was going to tell him anything else.

"Cait, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, you know." Barry gave a roll of one hand, a helpless gesture of both apology and dismay.

Her smile felt brittle and blindingly fake but it was the best she could manage as she grabbed a random folder off of her desk. "Of course. Don't worry about it. I have to go, I've got work to do."

"Oh, sure, of course," he said quickly and pressed the half of her bracelet into the palm of her hand, giving her fingers a brief squeeze.

She was almost out the door when Dr. Wells' voice stopped her.

"Dr. Snow? I believe this is yours?"

He was holding out the other part of the cuff where it had come to a stop near his motorized wheelchair. His expression was blank, the face he wore when emotions were too troubling for him to process.

Of course, she thought as she doubled back. How many times had she seen pictures of Harrison and Tess together, smiling, their identical triangular soulmarks blazing like green fire inside their wrists? Now Dr. Wells kept his left wrist covered by a black widower's band, just like she did.

Would it be harder to look at a blackened mark and know that your soulmate was dead? It would have to be.

"Thank you, Dr. Wells," she said quietly, taking the cuff from him. To her surprise, he briefly clasped her hand and gave a short nod. She expected something like that from Barry but it was practically a full-body hug coming from the reserved man.

"I can give you the name of someone who can fix it," he said.

She nodded in thanks but he was already turning his chair away.

***

"Caitlin, you're too close. You need to get out of there!"

Cisco's panicked cry buzzed in her ear, making her wince from the feedback. "I can't leave," she said through gritted teeth. "Somebody's got to set off the pulse if we want to stop this guy."

The van rocked as a sonic blast seemed to agree with her statement.

"Let Barry handle him. He's got this," Cisco insisted and his statement was punctuated by another thud to the van. She looked up to see the back of Barry sliding slowly down the windshield and then out of view. Beyond, the metahuman was just a dot at the end of the street. But a dot that was quickly growing larger by the moment.

"He's in range, I'm detonating the device," she said. "Tell... tell everyone I don't regret anything."

"Caitlin!"

Several sounds blurred into one: Cisco's voice, the slam of her hand striking the detonator button and a buzz of rushing air. Then the pulse blew and everything went dark.

Consciousness crept back, followed by a wave of sickness and a pounding in her head. Disorientated, she flailed for a moment before realizing she was curled on her side on a bed.

"Easy," a soft voice said, a warm hand brushing the hair back from her face.

She squinted, her vision swimming in and out of focus, and when she tried to ask what had happened, all that came out was a jumble of sounds.

"Don't be afraid, it's just a side effect from being caught in the edge of the blast. You'll be fine."

The voice sounded wrong somehow but she couldn't parse the reason. Her fingers curled helplessly into fists into a thick surface and she recognized the comforter on her bed. She was in her own room.

"Just rest," the voice urged and it must've seemed like a good idea because her mind let go and she slipped away once more.

***

By the time she woke and made her way back to S.T.A.R. Labs again, she felt like she had the mother of all hangovers but at least seemed to have her faculties back in better working order. She was met by Cisco with a tackle-hug, by Barry with an only slightly more restrained embrace and by Harrison with stony silence.

"Dr. Wells," she said when she couldn't stand his frosty stare any longer.

"That was stupid," he said, pronouncing each word distinctly as if wanting to make sure she couldn't possibly misunderstand. "And you're many things, Dr. Snow, but stupid shouldn't be one of them."

"Dr. Wells," Barry interjected. "That's a little harsh. Caitlin was just trying to--"

"Get herself killed? She almost did that quite efficiently." Harrison gave her another cold glance, then turned his wheelchair away.

Caitlin gaped, not quite expecting the strength of his reaction, but tried to recover, turning to her other friends. "Ah, thanks, Barry, for getting me out of there. I owe you."

Barry's brows knitted together. "Uh, it wasn't me, Cait. I mean, I tried, don't get me wrong, but by the time I got into the van, you were gone. We had no idea what happened to you."

"You're a meta, aren't you?" Cisco said with undisguised glee, his voice going sing-song. "You're a meta who can transport. Because transporting would be an awesome superpower, girl! Give me, like, ten seconds and I'll have you killer codename!"

Caitlin shook her head. "It wasn't me. Somebody grabbed me and the next thing I knew, I was in my room. I thought it had to be Barry because of the speed and the... Oh, of course, he was disguising his voice through vibration."

"Why would Barry disguise his voice?" Cisco asked, frowning.

"He wouldn't."

The three of them turned towards Harrison who had spoken without looking back at them.

"I know of only one other speedster in town, don't you?" he continued.

Barry straightened. "Why would the Reverse Flash get involved? Why would he save Caitlin?"

Harrison finally turned, leveling a direct, almost incriminating gaze straight at her. "Why, indeed?"

Even Cisco was left speechless at that.

***

Caitlin was exceedingly thankful that Dr. Wells seemed back to normal the next day and life returned to the "Wait, who is this metahuman and what is his or her power and how do we stop them when they inevitably do something bad?" normal that it had fallen into over the past few months.

Then one evening Caitlin entered her home and there was a moment when she knew. Her hand bypassed the light switch as she moved through the entryway and she quietly slid open the shallow drawer of her hall table, fingers groping with silent certainty then confounded at closing on nothing.

She abandoned the plan and turned, intending to head back for the front door, but then heard a distinctive whoosh. She'd been around Barry too long not to recognize the sound of a speedster in motion. But Barry's eyes certainly did not glow red in darkness.

A moment later, the light switched on, leaving her blinking in dismay at the man in the yellow suit standing at the other end of the hallway.

"Good evening, Caitlin," he said in his distorted voice. His feature were a blur, concealed not only by his mask but by motion too quick for her eye to distinguish.

She ran for the door which was only a few steps behind her, knowing it was a futile gesture even before she crashed full-bore into his chest. Her hair whipped in a blinding riot from the speed of him passing her. Even still, she struck out hard, windmilling both arms in order to break his hold.

"Caitlin," he tsked indulgently. "That might work in your self-defense class but I'm--"

She stomped the insole of his foot and then kneed him squarely in the groin. Speedster healing or not, she'd yet to find any man who was completely immune to that combination. He let go, doubling over with a startled groan, and she dove back for the still-open drawer of her hallway table.

"I already took care of your taser," he said, his distorted voice sounding like it was coming through gritted teeth.

"But not my backup," she responded, ripping it free from its hiding spot and promptly firing it into him.

Even as the lightning crackled across his yellow suit, she dropped the weapon and darted into the kitchen.

"Caitlin," he said firmly, storming through the door in time for her to blast him with her fire extinguisher.

He coughed, choking out, "That's not cold enough to stop me."

"I know," she said and flipped the switch that activated the emergency super-cold spray that Cisco had installed for her as a precaution.

He made an incoherent noise and vanished back through the doorway in a shower of ice crystals. But unfortunately he returned back in the next blink, knocking the extinguisher from her hand. "I'm trying to not scare you!" he roared.

"You broke into my home. What part of that isn't supposed to scare me?" she fired back, turning in a last ditch effort and reaching for the knife block on the counter.

"No, no knives!" he snapped and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back against his chest and pinning her arms to her sides.

Before she could bring her feet up and try to use the counter for leverage, he sped them to the middle of the living room, lifting her up so that her feet could only kick ineffectually against his shins.

"I'm not here to hurt you. Please, just calm down." He was clearly trying to sound reassuring instead of irritated.

"What do you want?" she growled out but let her ineffectual struggling stop until she was hanging in mid-air, pressed backwards against his chest.

"I wanted to see if you were all right," he said, gradually lowering her so her feet touched the floor again. "Do you have any idea what that blast would've done to you?"

He sounded annoyed, as if she had taken a foolish chance on a whim with no concept of the consequences.

His annoyance annoyed her. "What does it matter to you?"

He huffed in frustration and his grip loosened minutely. She couldn't help herself, she stomped his insole again and tried to yank free.

He immediately tightened his hold, cursing loudly in her ear. "Would you stop that? I can heal broken bones in my feet but that doesn't mean they don't hurt. Look, pull up my sleeve."

It was a weird enough request that she stopped struggling. "Why?"

"Just do it. Please." The last word was clearly an after-thought. He carefully adjusted his hold around her waist so his left arm was free. "Go on. Do it now."

She hesitated long enough that he repeated it again, but this time in a deeper timbre. The distortion made it a monster's voice. "Now, Caitlin."

It spooked her into putting her fingers onto his wrist but she could only make use of her left hand, her right arm still trapped helplessly beneath his. Even still, she found the nearly invisible seam between the sleeve and the gloves and gave it a tug.

"Caitlin," he warned.

"It's too tight," she said. "I can't pull it up like this."

He gave a wordless growl.

"Try it yourself," she invited.

He adjusted his hold, clearly expecting her to try something else as he pinned her back against him and gave his sleeve a tug. It didn't move.

"Okay, so I like snug tailoring," he muttered and gave a harder jerk that rolled the cuff back.

In the next breath, it was as if a bomb went off. Caitlin found herself down on her carpet, curled on her side, blinded by the pulsating glare of the mark on her left wrist, too bright to be hardly even dampened by the widow's band. She tried to cover it with her hand but it still shone through her fingers, the most beautiful sapphire blue she'd ever imagined.

The man in the yellow suit had also been knocked off of his feet. Sapphire blue blazed from his wrist, pulsing in time with her own mark.

"No," she muttered, then said it louder. "No, no, no. This isn't happening. You... you can't be..."

He chuckled a bit breathily, like he'd been punched in the gut. "If you had any idea how far I've traveled just to end up finding you here and now, in this place..."

A wave of longing swept over her. She felt touch-starved, like her skin itself was trying to pull towards him. That bare strip of arm showing where his sleeve was rolled back looked like an oasis after wandering lost for too many days in a searing desert.

"Caitlin," he said, his voice sounding wondrous, like he was seeing her for the first time.

"I've got an antidote," she gasped out, scrambling to her feet and staggering back towards the kitchen. "I can cure this."

She thought he might superspeed ahead to try and stop her but when she glanced back, he was still on the floor.

"You can... cure yourself of me?" he said, sounding surprisingly forlorn.

An overwhelming desire to comfort him made her stagger to a halt. Then she gritted her teeth and made herself keep going. You knew this might happen, she thought. That's why you were ready for this. You're ready for this.