The Pipeline got crowded.
Hunter went into the cell next to Jay Garrick's. Cisco built a second containment ring around the cell as a backup, in case Hunter recovered Speed Force connection inside the cell faster than the suppression projected. He worked through the night. By dawn the second ring was online and a third, redundant, was in fabrication.
Jay watched the installation through the glass of his own cell.
He didn't speak.
When Cisco was done at 6 AM, Jay rose from where he'd been sitting on the floor, walked to the glass, and put his hand against it.
Cisco looked at him.
Jay said one word.
"Thank you."
He sat back down.
Cisco came up the stairs and texted me a photo of the new ring installation and the words garrick said thank you, no idea what to do with that and I texted back let it sit, it's allowed and he sent back a single thumbs-up.
I was at Caitlin's.
I'd brought her home from the silo at 1 PM the day before and I'd not left. She'd asked me not to. She'd sat on her couch with her shoes still on for twenty minutes saying nothing, and then she'd cried for the first time I'd ever seen her cry properly — not the controlled tears of a doctor at a bedside, the real kind, the head-down kind, the I have not let myself do this in eleven months kind — and I'd sat next to her on the floor in front of the couch with my back against her knees and let her have it.
When she was done she'd asked me to stay.
I'd stayed.
I'd slept on the couch.
She'd come out of her bedroom around eight AM in sweatpants and her hair in a clip and made coffee for both of us in silence. We'd drunk it at her kitchen table. The morning sun was coming through her east window in a long diagonal across the table. She'd pushed a plate of toast at me and I'd eaten the toast.
She'd said: "How are you."
"Empty."
"Define empty."
"Like there's space in me where there used to be wiring."
"Different kind of empty than yesterday."
"Yeah."
"Better or worse."
"Both."
She'd nodded.
She'd taken my hand across the table.
Held it for a minute.
Let it go.
"What now."
"You go to STAR Labs at noon. You write up Hunter's file. You email it to whichever Speed Force speedsters Cisco can think to email. You make sure his name is in front of the universe the way you said it would be."
"I meant for you."
"I know you did."
I drank coffee.
"I have eight powers. I have a permanent cellular floor at sixty-nine percent. I have a city that doesn't know I exist as the Harvest yet. I have a team that does. I have, presumably, a lifetime of trying to stop becoming the thing the System wants me to become and trying to become the thing the people I care about want me to become, and I have not yet figured out how those two things are going to fit in a single skull."
"That's a lot."
"It's the situation."
"What do you want."
I held her look.
"I want to take a week off."
"Done. I'll cover."
"And then I want to come back to work and not run anything bigger than a meta-of-the-week for at least a month."
"Done."
"And then —"
"And then?"
I thought about it.
"I don't know. We'll see."
She nodded.
She finished her coffee.
She got up. Walked to the kitchen window. Put her hand against the glass for a moment. Pulled it away. There was no frost on her palm.
"I felt it leave him," she said.
"Felt what leave him."
"Whatever was holding him together. When I said his father's name. He came apart inside the cage. It wasn't the cage that caught him. It was the name."
"Yeah."
"I don't think he's going to try to get out."
"Maybe not."
"He will. But not the way he was going to before."
"Yeah."
"That counts."
"Yes."
She turned.
Looked at me.
"Stay tonight too."
"I can stay tonight too."
"Okay."
She came back to the table. Sat down. Took my hand again.
This time she didn't let go.
---
[Three days later.]
The team had a dinner.
Joe hosted. Pizza, beer, a bottle of wine Caitlin brought, brownies Eddie baked again (still badly), Iris with a pie from the bakery on Second. Wally was there for the first time — finally cleared by Joe and Iris to be in the same building as the team after the threat had been removed — and he was sixteen and skeptical and smart, and he asked Cisco eight questions about the Pipeline ring in the first ten minutes of the evening, and Cisco was delighted.
Barry stood up at one point during dinner and made a small toast.
He was not good at toasts. He was visibly bad at toasts. He started three sentences he didn't finish. He looked at the ceiling. He sat back down. Then he stood back up.
"To everybody at this table," he said. "And to the people who got us here. Eddie, who took a punch from a future-Wells for me a year ago. Cisco, who built a thing in a Pipeline that held a man none of us could outrun. Cait, who said the word no in a room with a god in it. Joe, who held the city together while we took our shot. Iris, who held us together while we took the shot. Wally, who's about to find out a whole bunch of stuff about his family he's going to have to forgive us for. And —"
He looked at me.
"And Harry. Who came into this building thirteen months ago carrying things none of us understood, and stayed, and stayed, and stayed, and at the end of it stood next to me when nobody had to and did things I will not forget. Whatever you are, brother. Glad you're at our table."
The room raised glasses.
I raised mine.
I did not say anything.
I caught Joe's eye across the table.
Joe nodded at me. Once. The same nod he'd given me two months ago when Caitlin had said I've been working with someone in the cortex.
I nodded back.
We ate.
After dinner, on Joe's back porch, with the wind up off the river and the city lights low, Caitlin came out and stood next to me at the railing.
She did not speak.
We watched the city.
After a while she said, "Are you going to tell them."
"Tell them what."
"Whatever it is you've still been holding."
I looked at her.
"What do you think it is."
"I think there's something about where you came from that you haven't told anyone in this house. I think it's the thing under the Harvest. I think it's the thing under why you stayed when you could have left. I don't need to know what it is. I just need to know if you're going to tell them."
I held her look.
"Maybe," I said. "Eventually. Not tonight. Not this month. I want to be — I want to be who I am with these people for a while before I make them recalibrate again. I want to know who I am with them at the next lower setting before I add another thing to it."
"Okay."
"Is that all right with you."
"That's all right with me. Just don't make it never."
"I won't."
"Promise."
"I promise."
She nodded.
She put her shoulder against mine, lightly. Stayed there. We watched the city.
---
The next morning I was at my apartment counter at eight with coffee.
The kitchen calendar still had January marked off through the twenty-ninth in pencil. Day 30 — TRAP was written on the thirtieth in red pen, and the red pen had a single diagonal slash through it now because the trap had happened a day early.
I crossed off the thirtieth.
The calendar after that was blank.
I'd not written anything in it past the trap.
I sat with the empty calendar for a minute.
Then I picked up the pen.
I wrote vacation across the first week of February.
I wrote Cait's birthday on February 4 and circled it.
I wrote Joe's PT thing on February 12 because Joe had mentioned in passing on the porch last night that he had a knee surgery scheduled and he was nervous about the recovery.
I put the pen down.
The calendar looked different with things on it.
I poured a second cup of coffee.
Outside the window, the city was waking up at the speed it always woke up at, and somewhere in the building across the street a woman in a bathrobe was retrieving a newspaper from her front doormat, and the sky over Central City was the particular January grey-blue it got after a clear cold night.
The notebook under my sink had a fresh page in it.
I had not written in it in eight days.
I took it out. Sat at the counter. Opened to the page.
I wrote, slowly:
Hunter Zolomon — contained. Jay Garrick — contained. Earth-2 watcher — unknown, deferred. System pressure — lower than usual since reverse-extraction, possibly waiting for me to recover.
Eight powers. Sixty-nine percent integrity. New floor.
Caitlin asked me to stay. I stayed.
Joe nodded twice.
Barry called me brother.
I do not know what I am yet. But I know I have a calendar with things on it and a chair to sit in at a dinner table and a person whose hand I held for the length of a coffee, and that is more than I had on February twelfth of last year, and that counts.
I closed the notebook.
I put it back under the sink.
I drank the second cup of coffee standing at the counter.
The phone on the counter buzzed at 8:47.
A text from Caitlin.
lunch?
I picked it up.
Yes.
the place with the green door?
The place with the green door.
noon.
I'll be there.
I put the phone down.
Got my coat.
Locked the apartment door behind me.
Went down the stairs and out into a January morning that was, for the first morning in a year, not the first morning of a countdown.
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