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The year Caitlin Snow turned ten years old, there were only a few moments, a few fragments of memory she could remember and hold on to as she grew up.
The first was this: her father was dead. She vividly remembered the look on her mother’s face and the way she cried and cried, and then all of a sudden, Carla Tannhauser stopped crying and gripped her daughter’s hand tightly in her own. She supposed she had been fortunate then- a woman like her mother could have easily pushed everyone aside and buried herself in her work to deal with her grief, but Caitlin was more like Carla than she realized, because Carla taught Caitlin to pick up the pieces, held her hand, and told her to start over.
That was the second memory: her mother’s hand in hers through the whirlwind going forward.
After that, after months of house-searching and planning, Carla took her daughter and moved to Central City to start over just after Caitlin’s eleventh birthday, and the pieces of Caitlin’s shattered life stitched themselves into some sort of haphazard mosaic that could and would easily fall apart at someone’s fragile touch.
Caitlin had never been good at making friends, and her loneliness threw the child into a fit. Those few months saw her and her mother in fight after fight, argument after argument, just so angry at each other and their situations. She saw bullies at school, laughing at her for not having a father, for having her nose buried inside books, and Carla slaved away at the lab, the thrill of the world of science dulled by the difficulties she faced at home. Time after time, she wondered whether it would have been better for Caitlin to have stayed away from Central City, whether she should have thrown all of her time into her career to face her grief and the consequences of the things she had done, of the ways she felt she failed her daughter.
Carla Tannhauser did not ask for help, but for Caitlin’s sake, she would try.
The third memory Caitlin held onto was the easiest and brightest memory of them all, and would be until the end of her life.
She didn’t understand why her mother had brought her to this little office, didn’t understand what she meant by “support group”, but there was no way Caitlin was going to be left home alone. She had been told to wait in the little waiting room in the little office she knew was filled with adults in the next little room, left to her own devices to entertain herself. This meant, usually, that she had some sort of book in her hands as she sat in the uncomfortable little armchair in that uncomfortable little room, the fire burning in the fireplace making her feel uncomfortably hot, no matter how far away she sat from it.
The book she was reading today was on the human brain, which Caitlin felt strangely fascinated by. It might have been the influence of her parents, but already she knew she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up.
“Hi.”
She hadn’t even noticed that in her distraction, a young boy was in the room with her, standing just in front of the armchair she sat in. He looked to be about her age, his brown hair swept to the side, and his earnest green eyes alight with interest and warmth. He held his hand out for her to shake, and she took it, confused.
“Hello.”
“I’m Barry,” the boy said, introducing himself. “Barry Allen.”
“Caitlin. Snow,” she replied, still unsure. Kids didn’t go up to her to introduce themselves. The other kids at school didn’t even like her. No one liked the new girl. They all had their own friends.
“Are you new here?” he asked her, taking a seat in the armchair next to her that was closer to the fire.
There was a small part of her that was annoyed by his interruption- she wanted to get back to her book, but Caitlin had been alone for so long with just her mother for company that she found she mostly didn’t mind talking to him. He seemed nice enough to her.
“Mother and I just moved to Central City a few months ago,” Caitlin told him, sticking her chin out in an attempt to look more confident.
That was the moment that Barry smiled, truly smiled at her, for the first time. “I grew up here,” he said.
An awkward silence ensued between the two, and Caitlin nearly turned back to her book, but her father had always taught her to have manners, and even she knew it would be plenty rude to just turn away when the boy was smiling so sincerely at her and wanted to talk to her. So instead, the girl stuck her bookmark into the pages and dutifully closed it.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He looked surprised at the question. “Um. Dad said…my mom, she…she died. A few months ago. There was this yellow lightning in my house. And then I was on the street. Then I ran home, and my dad was there, and my mom died, and then Joe came over.”
She looked at him uncertainly. “Yellow lightning in your house?”
“I’m not crazy,” Barry said quickly. “I know I saw yellow lightning inside my house, and then my mom died.”
Caitlin stopped then, her young mind running as quickly as it could to try to understand what Barry was saying. He seemed almost…afraid as he said the words out loud, and for the first time, he was the one looking uncertainly at her.
“I’m sorry,” she finally told him.
He nodded then, the tension in his shoulders seeming to leave a little. “It’s just…no one believed me when I told them. Joe said it was shock. I was in shock. They almost made my dad go to jail. He only didn’t because they couldn’t prove he did it, even though some people thought he did. He didn’t kill my mom.”
“Shock results from a drop in blood pressure,” Caitlin replied almost immediately. She didn’t quite know what all those words meant, but she read it in a book she found on her father’s shelf before he died, so it must have been true. He looked at her in surprise, almost in awe. Nervously, she gripped the book in her hand tighter, trying to find a way to move past her awkward outburst before finally settling on the one thing she felt like she should tell him. “I believe you.”
Barry looked so relieved that it made her feel so warm, it was nearly stifling. Caitlin thought she had to explain her side of the story then, to make up for Barry sharing his. “My dad died too. He was sick.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured sincerely. The two kids fell silent for a little while then, both of their young hearts involuntarily and suddenly bonding over the shared pain of losing a parent. Caitlin stared at the ugly oriental rug on the floor; the more she looked at it, the more she hated it, and then she had the urge to keep talking, to keep the unpleasantness of the small, overly cozy and uncomfortable room from overwhelming her. She went back to her earlier question. “What are you doing here?”
“Dad said that this was a help group for people who don’t have husbands or wives anymore,” he said. “They all just come here for help, I guess.”
“There aren’t any other kids here,” Caitlin noted. She and Barry were the only ones in the waiting room.
When she turned back to look at him, he had a light, boyish smile on his face that made her chest feel all fluttery and warm and had nothing to do with the fireplace crackling next to them.
“That’s okay,” Barry replied. “That just means we have our own help group all to ourselves.”
“Caitlin!”
Caitlin whirled around when she heard her name being called, right before she could walk through the door to her next class. Who else should be there across the hall from her but Barry Allen, her new friend from a few nights ago? She wondered whether he had always been in that classroom across from hers, just that they had never noticed, never talked, never interacted before.
“Hi, Barry,” she called back to him, and he excitedly ran up to her, the taller girl next to him in tow. “Hi,” Caitlin offered, uncertain of this new face.
“Hey Caitlin! This is Iris, my best friend. Iris, this is Caitlin. I told you about meeting her, remember?”
When Iris smiled, it was one of those smiles that made Caitlin feel a little bit more at ease. She stuck out her hand. “Hi, Caitlin! Barry told me you’re new to Central City.”
A little self-conscious, Caitlin started chewing on her lip, and her right hand came up to tuck her hair behind her ears before returning Iris’ handshake. “Um. Yeah. We moved here just a few months ago.”
The bell rang before the kids could talk much longer, but Iris wasn’t one to be deterred. “Do you want to eat lunch with us?” she asked with a kind smile on her face. Lunch was after this period, and so far after getting to Central City, Caitlin had spent those lunch hours alone.
She nodded, almost shyly, but then Barry grinned his bright grin, and that was that.
Iris and Barry quickly found out that she only lived a few blocks away from them- three blocks from the Allen house, precisely- and then had resolved that very day to walk home with her every day after school. Caitlin had never known what it was like having good friends, close friends, best friends, and here they were, after all the storms that had blown their way. Barry had told her about his mom, she told him about her dad, and then Iris shrugged and said she didn’t have a mom either.
That day was the fourth memory Caitlin would find herself holding on to in the years to come. She walked into her house with Barry and Iris trailing behind her, opening her mouth to call out to her mother when she saw Carla in the kitchen with two men in front of the counter.
“Dad?” Barry and Iris both asked, confused, at the exact same time. There was a beat of silence, and then all three adults started chuckling, and Caitlin could vividly remember the light of the afternoon sun streaming in through the kitchen windows, warming her in a way that she couldn’t describe.
“Caitlin, honey,” Carla said. “This is Doctor Allen and Detective West.” She raised her eyebrows. “Apparently, these are your friends’ dads.”
Both Barry and Iris’ dads walked toward the kids, Henry and Joe stretching out their hands for Caitlin to shake. “Just Henry, dear girl,” he told her with a wink. “It’s nice to meet you. Welcome to Central City.”
“Joe,” Joe said with a warm smile, introducing himself. “Detective at the CCPD. Let me know if you or your mother run into any trouble, okay?”
Caitlin had lost her family, but gained another one in the wake of tragedy. Her mother had chosen to stay and work through their grief together, and Barry, Iris, Henry, and Joe were always there to look after them. The Tannhauser, Allen, and West houses were always open to her, to them, and she grew up not wanting anything that her family around her couldn’t give, and bit by bit, the loss of her father seemed to not lessen, but to let her breathe again. She knew it was the same for Barry, for Iris- some days, the three of them could only huddle together, their grief closing in so tightly around them it felt impossible to escape. Caitlin Snow grew up surrounded by people who loved her, and that didn’t change throughout her school years, her college days, and in the days she became Dr. Caitlin Snow preparing to be Dr. Caitlin Snow-Allen, and even adding Cisco into the mix her senior year of high school.
That didn’t change when the Particle Accelerator at S.T.A.R. Labs, once the most renowned laboratory in the world, exploded, leaving only death and destruction in the wake of the explosion. Caitlin recovered from the initial insanity of the night only to find out her fiancé had been struck by lightning in the freak storm after the explosion; her family had rallied around her and Barry immediately, ready to help in any way. Iris had all but ran to S.T.A.R. Labs to envelope her in a tight hug and had driven them and Cisco to Central City Hospital, where Joe, Henry, and Carla were already waiting by Barry’s side.
And then they waited.
And they waited.
And they waited.
They waited at the hospital, they waited when Barry was taken from the hospital to S.T.A.R. Labs, and they waited at S.T.A.R. Labs, waited for nine terrible months where his fate was uncertain at best.
Then came the miracle.
“This is amazing!” Barry Allen yelled into the comms after another successful detainment of a metahuman in the S.T.A.R. Labs Pipeline. He had sped from the Labs after that for a quick run while Cisco and Caitlin made their way back up from the Pipeline to the Cortex. Cisco eyed the vitals screen that one Caitlin Snow-Allen was keeping track of.
“Dude, you’ve been at this for nearly a year now, and you still act like it’s day one of being a superhero,” he retorted, but there was no heat to his comment, just his usual teasing.
Right after Cisco finished speaking, there was a woosh of air, and then Barry was there in the Cortex dropping a kiss onto Caitlin’s forehead. His wife’s lips immediately quirked up into a sweet smile as her eyes fluttered close at his touch, and even he couldn’t stop a teasing, “Awww, still the sappiest couple I know.”
Barry playfully rolled his eyes. “Please. I know that’s not true; we’re friends with Felicity and Oliver.”
“Yeah, okay.” Cisco snorted. “But Felicity and Oliver aren’t married.”
“Yet!”
The shrill sound of Caitlin’s ringtone broke through their conversation as Iris’ voice came over the speakerphone. “Cait?”
“Hey, Iris,” she greeted her friend.
“Hey. Is Barry okay? I saw the news with Carla and Henry; we’re all at Jitters, and dad and Eddie aren’t answering their phones. That was a seriously dangerous metahuman.”
“Hey Iris,” Barry spoke up, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m fine, we’re all back in the Lab now. We’ll head over to Jitters to meet up with you guys in a bit.”
“Good,” Iris replied, sounding relieved. “Oh, wait- your dad said don’t come to Jitters, just meet back at your house. Family dinner night, he wants to see everyone and make sure everyone’s okay. Oops, that’s dad and Eddie calling back. I gotta go, see you guys later. Love you both!”
That was their life now, Caitlin supposed- learning to navigate married life while she and Cisco acclimated to the new parameters of their careers at S.T.A.R. Labs alongside Dr. Wells and her fiancé turned husband turned superhero, Barry waking up from his coma and becoming the Flash, saving Central City from dangerous metahumans, and, apparently, getting kidnapped every few months. Caitlin was so tired of it, and she knew her family was too; Joe nearly broke a wooden spoon in the kitchen last time the subject came up, and Carla’s face was ice-cold when the news showed a clip of Captain Cold’s incarceration at Iron Heights.
There were the kidnapped days. There were the good days. There were the days where they could pretend to be a normal group of friends doing normal things, grabbing drinks from bars and drunk karaoke (“that was once, okay, are you going to hold this over me forever?” Caitlin, decked out in huge sunglasses and wrapped in a giant scarf, said to her laughing husband who proceeded to point to his left ring finger) and family dinners every week at someone’s house. There were the weird days, like meeting Professor Stein and realizing that Ronnie wasn’t dead, and Team Flash added two more to its number. There were the bad days. And there were the worst days.
Barry Allen regretted many things in his life, but going back in time to when he was eleven years old, able to see his mother one last time and tell her he loved her, to be secure in the knowledge that she loved him so very much, and then keeping the timeline intact was not one of them. He had made it back to the present day at S.T.A.R. Labs, but he had not counted on Eobard’s fury as soon as he was spat out of the wormhole. Flash and Reverse-Flash were locked in a fierce battle, and then-
The gunshot rang so loudly in the room, echoing in Barry’s ears and his legs buckled underneath his weight when the Reverse-Flash released him. There was Eddie’s face, Eddie’s pale, handsome face, and the blood that was blossoming on his white shirt over his heart. Joe scrambled to his feet, running over to his partner and future son-in-law.
“Eddie!” he roared. “What did you do?!” He reached him just as Eddie fell to his knees. “What did you do?! WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
Joe’s eyes were shining with tears; he gently lay Eddie on the floor, his partner no longer having the strength to support himself. “No such thing as a coincidence,” Eddie managed to grit out, his breathing coming out in rapid puffs of air, a small, victorious grin on his lips.
“What’s happening?” Barry asked dazedly, lost between the past and the present, all the hits he had taken, Eddie’s stupid, stupid move, and Eobard’s constant flickering.
“Eddie’s his ancestor,” Cisco responded, pointing to Reverse-Flash with wide eyes. “If Eddie dies, he’ll never be born- he’s being erased from existence!”
Eobard Thawne’s cowl was thrown back, and all watched in horror as his face changed, younger and younger, until Iris’ agonized scream pierced the air and drew their attention. “NO!”
She ran to Eddie’s side, falling to her knees next to him just as Caitlin and Ronnie made it down to the battle, Caitlin immediately making her way to her injured husband to help him up.
“No! Eddie! Eddie, no, no!” Iris was sobbing by the time she made it to her fallen fiancé, pulling him to her. “Eddie, stay with me, okay? Stay,” she pleaded, her tears streaming down her beautiful face.
Eddie took gulps of air, putting on his bravest smile for her. “He was wrong,” he gasped. “Turns out…I’m a hero after all.”
Iris only cried harder. “You are, Eddie, you are my hero.”
“That’s all I ever wanted to be,” he told her, struggling to get the words out. “Your hero.”
One moment Eddie was there, gasping for air, alive, and then the next, he was gone; Iris’ sobs echoed in the room, and tears shone in Joe and Cisco’s eyes. Caitlin buried her face in Barry’s neck, unable to watch her best friend’s heart shredded to pieces in front of her, and he held tightly onto her.
No one spared a glance at Eobard as he faded, even as he screamed.
Iris moved out of her and Eddie’s loft and back into the West house, and Barry and Caitlin and Cisco and Henry and Carla stopped by as often as they could. She was surrounded by family, by people who loved her, and things looked up when Wally came into the picture. He was one more person to love, one more person who loved her.
Three years later, Iris West found a new someone to love too. She fell in love at first sight in Central City Hospital, with a sleeping Nora Snow-Allen tucked into her arms. Her goddaughter was the light of her life, and then Caitlin hugged her so very tightly two years after that, right after giving birth to her godson.
Eddie Snow-Allen burrowed deeper into his godmother’s arms as her tears poured from her eyes. Iris pressed a gentle kiss onto his forehead, rocking him slowly in the room while Caitlin and Barry got some rest.
“Your godmother loves you so much, Eddie,” she whispered to him quietly. “And your mommy and your daddy and your big sister Nora. And your Grandma Carla and Grandpa Henry and Grandpa Joe and Grandma Cecile and Uncle Wally and Uncle Cisco and Uncle Ralph. We’re your family, okay?”
Eddie yawned then, and then Iris smiled and made a mental note to tell him someday all the stories of the brave man he had been named after. She started to hum the first song that came to her mind, knowing that one day she’d tell him the story behind his parents’ favorite song.
Summer days, driftin’ away
But oh, oh those summer nights…