Flashpoint: Heroes

"Don't mind Harry." Caitlin said sweetly. "That's just how he shows he cares." She finished reattaching the heart monitor leads to his chest and urged him to lie back down. He did, but he huffily pushed her hands away.

"If I wasn't there, he wouldn't have attacked." Harry pointed out plainly. "That was Hartley Rathaway." He explained. "And you shouldn't have charged him. It was reckless."

Cisco sat up straighter in his chair and clapped his hands together. "Okay, Mr. Grumpy Pants. Let's leave the lectures for later, when everyone is feeling better. She just died and you look like shit." That earned Cisco a glare instead, directing all of Harry's grump at him now. Which had been precisely the plan.

Harry then covered his face with his hand and sighed heavily. "Any lingering effects, Bennet?" Yes, that was concern in his voice.

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"It gave you time to... do whatever it is you did while I was out. It gave Cisco time to get there and bring us all back here. I'm not just going to take it lying down when someone attacks me." No, Claire wasn't going to learn from this experience, because she's sure she made the right call. If that blast had hit Harry instead of her... she didn't want to think about that.

She did calm some, though she was still nearly as grumpy as Harry was. She was just less aggressive. "No. I think I'm alright." Nothing felt off, her breathing had returned to normal, as had her voice, and she wasn't coughing anymore. "How will I know when that venom is gone? After I had the antidote I felt the same as I always do."

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If he had hit Harry, he'd be dead. Hartley had been operating under the assumption that Harry was the Reverse-Flash, so he had no real intention of holding back. The first attack had been a warning shot, because Claire had been in the way and he didn't want to kill a civilian if he didn't have to. The second blast had been dialled up for Wells, but she attacked him and he reacted out of panic.

"...you also saved my life." Harry admitted begrudgingly. "I disarmed him, which gave Ramon time to get to us." He added.

Caitlin was smiling at them both. It always warmed her heart when Harry gave in and let the walls down. At the question, she pipped up, "We'll keep testing your blood. The effects of the venom should be pretty minimal, but I'll keep an eye on it and let you know when you have a clean bill of health."

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There it was. She wouldn't rub it in, it was enough just to hear. More of her temper and tension were subsiding, though she suspected she'd be on edge until her blood tests started coming back with the all clear. It bothered her, deeply, to be experiencing long-term effects like this. That it had affected her at all was troubling enough, but to know that even an antidote couldn't fix her right away? She had never experienced anything like it before.

"Like I said, I haven't noticed anything since that night. I felt fine, and I hadn't healed from anything to notice a difference." Days without even a minor injury, yes... it was possible. "I can keep coming back for tests, that's not a problem."

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"To be completely honest, the lingering venom in your system is so low, you might not have even noticed at all with out such a massive injury." Cait explained.

Harry sat up before Caitlin or Cisco could stop him and reached for Claire's wrist. He gave the watch a confused onceover. It was still going off. "I wonder if it got damaged in the fight." He said absently. With a couple keystrokes, he deactivated the Meta app so it wouldn't drive Claire nuts. "I'll fix it when Snow lets me out of this damn bed." He promised.

Caitlin seemed to falter a bit but recovered pretty quickly. "I think any small injuries will heal without noticable difference for you, Claire."

"And Harry won't be allowed to leave STAR Labs for the foreseeable future, so there should be fewer arbitrary attacks to worry about." Cisco added at Harry's expense.

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Somehow she'd managed to tune the sound out, but once Harry deactivated the Meta detector, she did notice a sense of relief when it quieted. "Could be, I did hit that van pretty hard. I think my main concern would be that it still works to call for help."

She offered her wrist again. "You could take a look and make sure if you want. And... thanks, guys. I'm not the best patient, but I'll hopefully get used to this. Last time I was in any a hospital bed, it was bad." There was a thoughtful pause, then she finally smiled. "Sorry you're on house arrest, Harry. What's your coffee order? Next time it's my turn."

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"I thought putting myself between you and our shadow would protect you. I think it made it worse for you in the long run." That was a sort of apology from him. Though, unbeknownst to him, it had saved him a lethal blow. "Have Ramon test the panic button." He offered.

Caitlin laughed lightly when she said she wasn't the best patient. "Oh please. The worst patient by far is Harry. I have to watch him like a hawk or he sneaks off to his lab. And Cisco here won't snitch on him."

"Hey! You don't have to share a lab with him! I don't wanna be shot!" Cisco chimed in dramatically.

"Just plain coffee with a splash of creamer." Harry answered, ignoring Cisco's antics. He was being pushed back down onto the bed by Caitlin again, because she knew if he was allowed to sit up for too long, he'd try to get up.

Cisco held a hand out to Claire. "Let's go take a look at the watch in the Cortex and see if that panic button is working."

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She was going to make a note of everyone's coffee orders, sooner or later. And their favorite foods. Barry wouldn't be the only one to get to enjoy her cooking.

"I dunno, you might have to strap me down," Claire joked, moving to accept Cisco's offer to head to the Cortex. Her balanced seemed to be fine, no trouble getting out of bed, which was a good sign, as far as she was concerned. She was still a little dusty from the fight, but other than that, she was fine.

Taking the watch off, she offered it to Cisco and let him lead the way. "So, what is this Cortex thing, anyway?"

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Careful Claire, or Cisco will fall in love too if you feed him.

"I try to make it a habit not to strap down my patients." Caitlin teased. She then filled a syringe and loaded some medication into Harry's IV line. He settled himself back and tried to relax.

Cisco took it as they walked. The Cortex was the large, round room just outside the med lab. Monitors, consoles, and computers in a semi circle, on the other, a mannequin with the Flash suit stood proudly on display. Cisco walked to the main group of computers.

"The Cortex is sort of our command hub. Dr. Wells named it since this is the brain of the whole lab. ...or, well, I guess Eobard Thawne named it. We do all of out operating with the Flash from here." He gestured to the large hanging screen in the centre of the room, they keyed something on the touch screen console in front of him. He hit the panic button on the watch and an alert went off in the Cortex. That screen jumped to life with a map of Central City. It zoomed in on STAR Labs with a red pulsing target icon with Claire's name over it.

"Looks like the panic button is working just fine." He said and cleared the alert. Cisco opened the Meta app and made a soft "Huh." sound. "Weird."

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Try as she might to pay attention, her gaze was drawn to the Flash suit. This was pretty much the first time she was seeing it. She was still listening, but it was hard to look anywhere else. Though the alert when Cisco pressed the panic button did pull her back to looking at the screen with the map, noting her little icon there.

That was reassuring, Claire had to admit. She liked having that lifeline, just in case. Damn, she really was staring to be more careful. That felt weird.

Speaking of weird, it was a bit unsettling to hear Cisco declare the issue with her watch as such. Her eyes narrowed, hands on her hips. "That doesn't sound good. What is it?"

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"It's just..." Cisco's gaze travelled to the med lab. The room itself was all glass walls on the Cortex side, allowing them to see right in to Harry and Cait. Immediately, Cisco seemed on edge. "The Meta-human Alert App is working just fine. Harry programmed it to ignore me and Barry. I just reactivated it to see what was going on and it's silent out here." He was talking quietly so his voice wouldn't carry to the med lab.

He pulled up the footage from the attack and reviewed it on one of the screens. Claire would be able to see Hartley hit her with the green sonic attack and she went down. The angle barely showed Harry drag himself up the side of the van, get the pulse rifle and fire on Hartley. The gauntlet fell. When its safety measure went off and it shrieked, Harry went down, holding his head followed soon after by the camera going black.

"Claire, I need your help. That might not be Harry."

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The change in Cisco's tone and mannerisms was contagious. She felt herself growing more tense immediately, and when he said that Harry might not be Harry, her blood ran cold. There was one extremely obvious answer, but she quickly ran down other possibilities.

Sylar could shapeshift, he'd done it to become Nathan. He wouldn't ping as a Meta, though. At least, Claire was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to alter his DNA to that extent. Besides, she also felt confident that even if he showed up in Central City, he wouldn't resort to shady tactics like this. No, he'd show up and be the same old nuisance he always was.

Perhaps some other Meta who could shapeshift, that was a possibility. Still, if she was going to Occam's Razor this, her instincts pointed toward one man.

"Is it who we think it is?" Claire's voice was lowered as well, her gaze drifting toward the glass walls of the med lab. "What do we do?" She saw one immediate priority. "We gotta get Caitlin out of there."

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Do you know how hard it has been to keep all of this from you? Especially from you.

"I can't think of anyone else it could be." Cisco had gone pretty pale. Because, the truth is, I've grown quite fond of you. Images of that vibrating hand passing through his chest and stopping his heart flashed through his mind and left him with lead in his gut. And in many ways, you have shown me what it's like to have a son. Cisco jerked himself out of the memory and walked slowly towards Claire.

"We have tranq darts designed to knock out speedsters for six hours. If we can get to them, we might be able to alert Caitlin. He seems to be letting her give him meds, probably because he knows they'll burn right out of his system. If we clue her in, she can inject him with the sedative and we can lock his ass in the Pipeline. The cells down there negate Meta powers."

Forgive me, but to me you've been dead for centuries.

Cisco walked past her stiffly and to a locked cabinet. He pulled out a silver dart, holding it out to her. "Go in. Tell her you're still having trouble breathing or something and slip that to Caitlin. She'll know what to do with it. I'll call Barry." Cisco's voice was a bit shaken.

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She shivered, thinking back on all that she'd heard about Eobard Thawne, from Barry and Harry, and from the man himself. It was possible Thawne could be making a move of his own accord and just happened to find her here, but she would have expected more of a confrontation at the discovery.

Nodding, she took the dart from Cisco, palming it. "Sit tight, I got this," Claire assured him, gently patting his arm with her free hand.

Then she turned, allowing herself one deep breath to calm her suddenly rising nerves, and headed back to the med lab. Just before entering, she put on the heavy breathing and panting like she'd been experiencing before. The hand with the dart in it was balled up to her chest, her eyes wide as she made a beeline for Caitlin.

"Hey," she almost wheezed, "I don't think I'm quite a hundred percent yet. Just getting super winded from that short little walk." Her speech was slower and more deliberate, like she was truly trying to catch her breath with each word. "Cisco thought I should have you take another look."

Her free hand grabbed Cait's, and it was easy enough to feign a look of fear (partly because she was a little scared) and make like she was grabbing Caitlin's hand with both of hers as she slipped the dart against the other woman's palm. "He said you'd know what to do," Claire added softly, ramping up the fear.

She did have a penchant for the dramatic, especially where these unknowns about her ability were concerned.

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At first Caitlin looked worried and started trying to calm her down, but as soon as she felt the dart, her eyes went wide. "Are you sure?" She asked carefully as she took the dart. Then she looked over her shoulder at Harry, who was now watching with alarm. His gaze was fixed on Claire. He was looking at her like he did Jesse when she was in trouble. A worried father.

"Breathe slowly for me. Deep and slow." She instructer then steered Claire to the doorway so she could grab her stethoscope off the wall. It put some distance between then and Harry. She whispered, "If you two are wrong," she put the stethoscope on and mimed listening to Claire's chest "this will stop Harry's heart. Are you sure?"

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All of a sudden, she wasn't sure. But like Cisco, she couldn't think of a more likely possibility. Claire too had caught a glimpse of Harry as Cait led her back toward the doorway. That concern had looked genuine.

But then Thawne had seemed genuine with her, too. He was good at playing the part, that was how he'd won her over in the first place. Not that Cait or Cisco knew about any of that.

If they were wrong, maybe her blood could save Harry. She wasn't sure if him being from Earth-2 made his blood any different, but--

That was it. That was how she could be sure. If Harry wasn't Harry, the iPhone in her pocket wouldn't be getting a signal. Unless it had been damaged in the fight with Hartley. There was only one way to find out.

Feigning a dizzy spell, she laid on a little more panic as her hand clumsily reached into her back pocket. If Harry was, in fact, Harry, that would have to mean Caitlin was a Meta. Cisco had specifically said the Meta app only blocked the signal from himself and Barry.

Unless it was pinging because of the Meta toxin in her own system? But it couldn't be that, or else the device would have alerted as soon as Harry had given it to her.

No. If it wasn't Harry, it had to be Caitlin. She was used to pretending to be drunk when she cheated at drinking contests, so putting on an affectation of being dazed and confused wasn't too much of a stretch. She made like she was going to unlock her phone and make a call, seemingly forgetting about Harry's cellular dead zone.

"Hang on, I'm freaking out, my dad will be able to help calm me down--" Claire looked anxious, checking to see if the 5G symbol would pop up in the top corner of her screen...

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Caitlin had no idea why they suspected Harry of being Thawne but she picked up on the suspicion immediately when the dart came into play. There was no other reason they would have brought out the speedster tranq. She was relieved when Claire seemed to hesitate, because if they did use it on Harry, she had no idea if she could save him.

~~And for the record, his blood type is PZ Negative, so yes, it's different.~~

When Claire got her phone out, she would see that there was no signal. Harry was starting to sit up on his bed, looking worriedly at Claire. "Snow, help me synthesise another batch of the antidote for her." He said gruffly, as he began pulling the leads off of his chest again, right back into worried father mode. He didn't want to see her struggling.

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Never in her life had she been more relieved to see that she wasn't getting a cell signal. She sighed, phone-hand dropping to the side while the other went to her forehead.

"It could just be a, uh... panic attack, now that I think about it. I've had those, getting all worked up over nothing," she explained with a self-deprecating little frown. Harry was Harry, she could be sure of that. But what about Caitlin? Sure, she'd caught on to the warning as Cisco had predicted, Claire didn't know her well enough to fully make that call.

She shuffled across the room to Harry's bedside, slipping her phone back into her pocket and then reaching out to try and reassure him. "Hey, take it easy. I'll be fine," she told him, her breathing closer to normal, though not quite there yet. A genuine fear was rising, making her uneasy.

It would've been suspicious to immediately run back to Cisco, she figured. Hopefully he'd be able to see the change in plans from the Cortex and adjust whatever he was planning to do. Barry would get there in seconds if Cisco alerted him, provided he was able to get away from his CCPD work. For now all she could really do was play along with this ruse.

There was a possibility that Caitlin was herself, and there was a hidden Meta among them. Perhaps that chilled her most of all, but she was putting on her brave face. She didn't want to see Harry any more worried than he already was.

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"Panic attack?" Harry parroted, looking as if he didn't quite buy it, but was still worried nevertheless.

Cait pocketed the dart, assuming things were fine at this point just as confused as Harry. She moved to their sides and started hooking him back up again. "Harrison Wells, if you take these heart leads off again, I'll sedate you again." She threatened and he glared. "You have internal bleeding and a ruptured eardrum. You're staying in this bed."

Yet again, Harry was gently pushed back into the bed but he didn't take his eyes off Claire. "Are you sure you're okay, Bennet?"

If she looked, Cisco had his phone in hand, but it looked more like he was hesitating. He'd been watching.

Edited Date: 2025-09-01 06:56 pm (UTC)

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Everything about Harry's mannerisms indicated that this was a normal exchange for him and Caitlin. He didn't seem suspicious of her, just mildly annoyed. So... not too different than what she herself had experienced from him.

Claire leaned against the bed a little. She'd give herself another moment to calm down - for real as well as pretend - and try to figure out what to do next. If Caitlin wasn't herself and had managed to fool Harry, she didn't want to leave him vulnerable, not after she'd handed over the perfect means to kill him. But if they both were, in fact, themselves, she also didn't want to leave them open to whoever or whatever could be in the lab, unseen.

She looked back toward the Cortex, seeing that Cisco was watching them. The look on her face was lost, bordering on desperate. What signal could she possibly give that would clue him in to what was going on without being obvious? Nothing came to mind. Any kind of gesture might be suspicious. She had to hope he'd see the look on his face and either call Barry anyway, or return to the med lab to further investigate himself.

There was a small smile as she looked back to Harry, and a dash of sheepishness. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Guess I'll have to follow my own advice and take it easy until this toxin is out of my system."

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He seemed to relax a bit and reached for her wrist, checking her pulse for a minute. When it seemed calm, he let her wrist go. "You be sure to tell Snow if there's any change at all."

Cisco held the phone to his chest and leaned into the med lab curiously. "Everything okay?" He asked nervously, which made Harry raise an eyebrow. He could read Cisco like an open book. They spent most of their waking time together. Cisco looked like he didn't know if he should step inside or not. "Claire, can I...?" He gestured to the Cortex with his thumb.

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She didn't pull away, deciding she'd rather let Harry have the extra reassurance that she was fine. It was also a little reassurance for herself, though. Calling her dad really would have made her feel better, and knowing that Harry was himself was the next best thing.

"I'll be fine," Claire told Harry one last time, then gave his hand a squeeze before calmly returning to the Cortex with Cisco. It would look like she was actually taking her own advice and taking it easy.

As soon as they were out of earshot, though, the relaxed demeanor melted away and she looked to Cisco with a worried frown. She had her back to the window, her voice low.

"Keep an eye on them," she warned first, then continued, "Caitlin stopped me, asked me if I was sure, so I had to double-check. My phone's a paperweight in here; that's Harry. I'm assuming Caitlin is herself too, but if not... she has that dart, and if she's not the Meta, then we're all in some deep shit."

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Harry seemed to accept that and tried to get some sleep. Caitlin busied herself with cleaning up in the lab.

"It's a good thing she did. God, I almost killed Harry!" Though his voice was quiet, it was stricken. "What the Hell is happening?"

After a moment, Caitlin joined them in the Cortex and the watch started sounding again from its spot on the console, not far from Caitlin. Her brown eyes darted to the noisy device, then to them like a deer in headlights.

"Wait, is that why you thought Harry was--?" She asked, backing away from the console.

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Claire turned as the watch started going off again, and she tried to read Caitlin's expression. Was that fear at being found out, or was she worried about a possible threat, the same as herself and Cisco? Again, she didn't know the other woman well enough to know. Even with Harry it had been tricky - she needed to check her phone to be certain, while she didn't have a test like that she could pull with Caitlin.

"We're just trying to figure out the real nature of the malfunction," she said smoothly, trying not to raise the alarm any higher than it already had been. "Could be something wonky with the sensor? Like when dust gets in your smoke detector." It was just the kind of semi-rational, though probably incorrect, argument a layperson like Claire would make in a troubleshooting discussion.

There was, of course, the possibility that someone was impersonating Cisco. If a Meta was impersonating him, the watch might not follow its programming to ignore his presence, because, well... it wasn't him. She was making sure not to turn her back completely on either of them.

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