He's Just a Little Broken

Broken Part 1

“Is he going to be alright?” The words were out of Maria’s mouth before Caitlin had closed the door behind her.  The young scientist had a million specific words and anatomical explanations prepared, but one look into the terrified brown eyes in front of her made them all die before escaping her mouth. 

“They, we…” Caitlin tried again, her tongue felt dry and it was difficult to make her voice heard.  “We don’t know.” 

She finished, eyes staring down at the white floor.  The hospital’s lights above them flickered violently as the sliver of a crack appeared in the glass of the nearest door’s window.  Caitlin flinched back at the TK outburst as Maria had begun to pace in front of her, mumbling in rapid Spanish. 

Caitlin stood still, she knew as a doctor, and as a scientist, that she was doing more harm then good by cluttering the ER’s hallway.  However she couldn’t bring herself to walk away from Cisco laying there… the blood was everywhere…  Stomach wounds, punctured lungs, not to mention his right foot was so twisted up he might never get full movement back. 

Caitlin had never been so scared as when Barry had burst through STAR labs earlier.  He had come to confront Wells about using him as a lab rat, but the fight ended up being with all of them.  She hadn’t been able to speak as he told her to ‘get over her dead guy and find someone else to mope over.’  Cisco had though. 

The young man’s cheeks had gone livid as he confronted Barry, walking up and pointing at his chest as he yelled back at the crazed speedster.  What had Barry done?  Grabbed him by the throat, cracked several ribs with a swing from his elbow, and then thrown Cisco towards a table of medical supplies and various sharp objects. 

He was unrecognizable.  It was horrible.  The weird part of it all was that Wells didn’t seem as shocked as she and Maria were.   As if he knew it was going to happen, although, it was a rare thing for him to lose composure. 

“I am going to-” Maria had started speaking English again, her hands were in fists and for an second Caitlin thought she might say ‘kill him’ but instead the Latina whirled to face her and reached out to grab Caitlin by the shoulders.

“I am going to make this right Caitlin, I swear to you.  I swear to god, I am going to fix this.  Alright?  I’ll fix it for you.”  Her words were both laced with anger but also there was that maternal tone Caitlin had grown to identify as distinctly Maria. 

Maria’s warm hands had moved to cup her cheeks, her thumbs brushing just under her eyes, Caitlin was confused until she saw the tears on Maria’s fingers.  So she was crying. 

“I will keep you guys safe from now on.  I will do everything in my power to make sure something like that, NEVER happens again.”  Maria’s voice had grown scratched with emotion as she held Caitlin’s face in her hands.  The scientist sniffed, her eyes slowly rising from the floor to look into Maria’s own. 

Slowly she nodded and felt herself collapse onto the other woman, holding on tightly as she buried her face into Maria’s shoulder, hiding away from the world in Maria’s soothing voice and the scent of her perfume. 

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That was it.  Wells had told her she couldn’t afford to treat Barry like a friend, but somehow she had naively convinced herself that she would be able to stop him without hurting him.  Perhaps she had assumed this based on the fact that there was no way in the fucking world that she would ever trust Wells.