Collateral Damage (snowbarry)

Deja Vu

"Barry, you can't!" Caitlin pleads.

"Cait, I have to go." Barry says apologetically, and runs out of the lab. They had just discovered that the meta was turning into the poisonous gas and he was attacking someone at the mall. There was no way to stop him right now. Barry had just left on a suicide mission. Caitlin couldn't help but feel the deja vu from when Ronnie had said those exact words to her when he ran to prevent the particle accelerator from killing everyone at the labs. She was going to lose him too. She was going to lose Barry...

She quickly made her way out to her car and back to S.T.A.R. Labs so she knew what was happening. When she got there, she walked into the cortex, at first immediately relieved to see Barry in the room. Coughing. Why was he coughing. Oh god.

She ran over to the med bed to see what had happened. Dr. Wells explained and she only heard parts of it, completely distracted by the look of pain and panic on Barry's face. She turned to look at Wells.

"We need to get the gas out." He explained more directly.

Caitlin quickly looked for the syringe to extract the gas from his lungs, cringing at how much she knew this was going to hurt. Cisco was trying to comfort Barry, telling him he wouldn't feel it.

"You're definitely going to feel it." Caitlin corrected as she punctured Barry's chest with the needle, feeling her heart drop when Barry shot up gasping in pain at what she had just done to him. Sometimes being a doctor sucked.

Once the sample was secured and Cisco took it to run some tests, Caitlin sat there next to Barry, patching him up, clenching her teeth and avoiding the urge to glare at the dumb boy sitting next to her.

"My chest feels like that one time I smoked a cigarette." Barry says, trying to lighten the mood.

Caitlin shoots him a surprised look. Not because he smoked, but that, of all things, that was what he chose to say.

"Yeah, teen me lived for danger." He smirked.

Smug jerk. Almost got himself killed and he's making jokes. Why was he so much like Ronnie? He was going to be the death of her.

"It's not funny, Barry. You could've"

"I didn't." He stops her putting one hand on her arms that was still patching him up. He smiles at her, noticing the look of concern on her face.

She finished fixing him and looked at his face, a reassuring smile staring back at her. She stopped for just a second too long looking into his green eyes before she noticed his smile wavering and she walked away.

After Barry stopped The Mist later that day, almost dying, again... Caitlin sat there with her head between her arms on the desk. Wells wheeled up behind her.

"Caity.." he said softly, placing his hand on her back. "Come with me, I want to show you something."

She stood up and followed him. It took her a minute to realize he was taking her to the pipeline. When she did, she froze.

"It's okay, I promise. Just trust me." He smiled up at her.

She walked into the pipeline behind him and that night came flooding back to her.

***

The night of the particle accelerator explosion...

Caitlin looked to Cisco in horror realizing what Ronnie had just said. He was going to sacrifice himself so the explosion didn't destroy the building. This was it. Cisco looked at her with equal amounts of horror.