The Flash - Why Should I Trust You (SaviSnow Oneshots)

Climbing The Walls

Chapter 3 – Barry is gone, everyone is struggling and the only person there when she needs someone is Savitar. Notes:

This one shot assumes Caitlin didn't fully become Frost, but does have powers, and Savitar took the help offered to him, a little earlier than on the show so HR is still about. However, they still used the speedforce bazooka to free Jay, meaning the Speedforce storm happened just like at the end of S3 and Barry had to go away to stabilise it. Some minor spoilers for 4x01 included.

It's sort of angsty (also warning for PTSD mentioned), plus angry interactions, with eventual hurt/comfort-ness. More of a friendship/pre-ship piece but I do hope people enjoy.

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Climbing The Walls

She tells herself she's okay, but there are times when she can't pretend for a second longer and it overwhelms her.

Barry is gone and everything is not okay.

Cisco's been going on missions with Wally lately, fielding the crimewave that's sprung up since people realised the Flash isn't around anymore, and when he's not out, he's working non-stop on a way to get Barry back. Iris is barely holding on, she'd tried to step up, helping coordinate with Wally and Cisco out there, but having Savitar skulking around is not helping her cope with the loss of Barry.

It's not helping any of them in truth. He looms in the background, his figure cut almost exactly like Barry from a distance, like he's haunting them. It's a painful tease; if he actually let them get close enough they'd be confronted with the evidence that he's not Barry. He's a broken shadow of a man, who barely interacts with the team now that his speed is gone. Losing his powers was the price of fixing the paradox and he resents them for it. Some days she sees the way Iris looks over to him and wonders if Iris resents him for being the one who got to stay, who has to play at Barry for them to keep up the pretense that he is alive and well enough.

HR's transmogrifier does its job to make him look like his former self – not that he uses it at the labs - and he turns up to CCPD dutifully doing the part-time work negotiated after they'd fabricated a medical setback to explain his abrupt change of persona. PTSD, surfacing years after either trauma they could legitimately pin it on – his mothers murder, the lightning strike. There was his fathers death too but that had been considered inexplicable, rather than the murder it was, because they couldn't risk tying Barry too closely to Zoom in case people cared to ask why. It's an irony that there's so much else that has happened to Barry unofficially, off the radar of what they could admit to Singh, and even more to Savitar, to actually explain it. The PTSD probably isn't even a lie at this point.

She tries to dampen her emotions, retain control, so she can keep her powers that way too. Even with tears brimming, threatening to fall any second, she attempts to modulate her breathing, counts to ten, then twenty – anything to stop herself from properly falling apart. If that happens she might have to get the necklace on in a hurry and she doesn't want to lose the progress she's made so far in staying in control for so long. It means something and she doesn't want to give it up, she needs to be strong, just like the others are trying to be as well.

As she takes a slightly stunted breath, she finally feels the tears well over, tracing down her cheeks. She takes another shaky breath and attempts to quell the urge to sob outright. That's when she hears the footsteps, relatively quiet but distinctive in the silence of the lab. She turns around to find Savitar striding through the door with an unusual level of intent, though she has no idea what he means to do, why this is when he chooses to come out of the darkness he's generally so keen on sticking to.