Hello friends! We've arrived-the last chapter of "One Second." I can't believe what a wild ride this story has been. You've all been so wonderful with your support, and hearing your thoughts every week has made the whole process so fun for me. This final chapter came out nearly double the length of any of the others, but I felt it would be unfair to split it up-so here it is, in all of its angsty glory!

Enjoy!

"He's out," Caitlin said, though she hardly had to. Barry's eyelids, which had been squeezed tightly together or else fluttering dazedly for the past half hour, had relaxed. Though his breathing was still hitched, the awful yelps and moans of pain—which Caitlin had once stoically accepted as part of the job—had ceased. It cast the lab into a strange, uncomfortable silence. Just sharp, tinny clangs as bloody metal spikes were dropped into the already-brimming silver bowl.

"Think we've passed the worst of it?" Cisco asked, grimacing. He was quite pale.

"Hard to say," Wells answered for Caitlin as she bent toward a particularly stubborn fragment in Barry's thigh. "The cold has certainly negated many of Barry's abilities, as was likely the intention. My guess is that these wounds healed before he was exposed." He motioned at Barry, not even flinching as Caitlin yanked out the metal spike.

"I think I'm gonna puke," Cisco said as the spike clattered into his bowl.

"Not on our patient, please," Caitlin said. The word patient bothered her the moment it came out of her mouth. Patient didn't sound right. Patient was their word for Barry mid-coma. It was a nameless, emotionless thing. Detached.

"You know, I've been trying to come up with a word or something for this situation," Cisco said. He eyed Barry's still form. "All I can think of is pincushion."

"How about sea urchin?" Wells suggested slyly. The ill attempt at humor was cut short by another clang in the pan.

"Finished," Caitlin said. She deposited the glorified tweezers on her side table and accepted the bowl of fragments from Cisco. "At least, with that bit."

"What can we do to help? Wells asked. Caitlin caught Cisco's frightened, apprehensive look at the bloodied, now-shivering Barry: the look of a cornered dog.

"Go check on Ronnie—Firestorm," she said finally. "See what you can do for them. I'm going to try to stabilize Barry and do what I can for his other injuries." She steeled herself, looking both of them in the eye. "I'll be fine on my own. Now go."

They'd been around her long enough to comply without complaint; after all, Cisco was looking as though he might follow through with his threat of vomiting, and Dr. Wells was one of their best shots for separating Ronnie and Stein again. He brushed her arm as he wheeled past, but it didn't give her the reassurance it had intended.

Alone in the medical bay, Caitlin reassessed. Her medical mind was telling her again to triage, but everything else threatened to shut down those trained processes.

You're a doctor, damnit, she thought. Act like one.

By sheer force of will, she shut down the part of her brain that was throwing a panic attack and moved toward Barry purposefully. There would be time to panic later. Right now her patient—her friend—needed her.

As her brain filled with a calming sort of buzzing, she began to process of cleaning Barry up. Unzipping the top of his uniform, she winced at the dozens of puncture marks, the fresh blood coating previously-dried tracks. Shut it off, she said. You're a doctor.

Still, she couldn't help her mind wandering back to those agonizing minutes in the van, Barry's skin so cold he may as well have been dead. The desperate attempts to warm up his core, the frantic glances to figure out what was wrong—if he was going to die, or if his unconscious state was the result of something less severe. There was no way of knowing, in that old van, with Cisco speeding down abandoned roads, what he had been subjected to.

Then the next half hour, the process of discovery, which was almost worse than not knowing. Barry's half-lucidity, the sounds ripped from his throat as she ripped metal from his skin. In those moments, she couldn't help but feel like she was implicated, and whenever Barry would look at her with those bleary, hazed eyes, she would look away. She pretended not to hear the words torn out of him, the pleas of Stop, please…just stop…

At least now, as she cleaned out his wounds, re-set his broken wrist, and wiped the blood from his face, he couldn't look at her.

When Cisco came back an hour later, she was just finishing with the bandaging.

"Hey," he said hesitantly. "How's it going?"

"Fine." Caitlin pulled up the thermal blankets and ignored Cisco's wince as he looked at Barry. The speedster had begun shivering in earnest now, his whole body shaking as if in seizure, his skin impossibly pale where it wasn't bruised. "Is Ronnie…?"

"They managed to separate themselves again," Cisco said. Caitlin's sigh of relief seemed detached, a part of her she had forgotten. "They're resting and speaking with Dr. Wells now. Barry?"

"Judging by the shivering, he's already warming up, which means his healing should start to kick in. It'll likely be a longer process than usual," she said matter-of-factly. "Puncture wounds. Blood loss from those wounds and multiple blood draws. Bruising, obviously. Electrical burns. Plus a broken wrist, broken nose, and hypothermia."

"Electrical burns?"

"Electrical shocks," Caitlin said flatly. "A common method of…interrogation…torture. On the plus side, nothing major is damaged. Hypothermia could have been worse. He'll recover…just fine."

At these words, she paused, unable to move, her throat suddenly stuck. All at once it hit her. She tried again to speak, her mouth dry, and dropped, landing hard in her chair and splitting at the seams. Cisco was at her side instantly, one hand wrapped around her shoulders, drawing her head to his chest.

It was a good thing, she thought again, that Barry couldn't see her. It was unbecoming for a doctor to do this—break down at her patient's bedside, sobbing violently, uncontrollably, over the sound of a heart monitor confirming life.

"Grief gets the best of us. That's what I've always thought."

"Certainly. But surely this…"

"It's impossible to know what happens in a person's mind. Impossible to know if they were born a villain or made into one. Y'know, if something just snaps."

"You've heard what they're calling her?"

"What's that?"

"Killer Frost."

"Hey, dude, you with us?"

No, he didn't want this. He didn't want any of this.

"Barry?"

He shuddered and pushed himself deeper into the comforting darkness.

A hundred miles away, test tubes full of blood went missing. Important documents, clipboards, entire computer systems simply vanished.

As did a certain General.

A hundred miles away, a man removed his yellow mask in the muck of a sewer, his eyes red-hot with anger.

Everything had been so jumbled in Barry's life lately, he wasn't entirely sure what was real and what was a dream. On the one hand, he thought as he pried open his eyes, his vision was much too unstable to be hooked to reality. On the other hand, the steady beeping, the contour of a hospital bed, the chills running through him all felt familiar, tangible, in a way that dreams never did. He blinked, trying to reconcile sight with feeling, and all of a sudden a black mug obscured his vision.

"Here, drink this."

"Give him a minute, Cait."

The mug retreated. Moving his stiff neck as little as possible, Barry followed it and alighted upon Caitlin, looking battle-weary but relieved in a metal folding chair. Cisco, beside her, also looked ragged around the edges—then again, Barry probably shouldn't have been judging. As he shifted in bed, he was reminded of the aches in his muscles, the various damages to his face and chest. Everything was bandaged neatly, secured, much too clean.

"How are you feeling?" Caitlin prompted.

There was no way to answer honestly. "C-c-cold," he managed, even though the word hardly seemed strong enough. Caitlin again brandished the cup.

"Drink this," she instructed. "We need to work on getting your body temperature back up. You're lucky none of your extremities were compromised."

"L-lucky." He lifted his left arm and was reminded painfully that his wrist was broken. He winced and dropped the arm. "Well, almost lucky." With the other hand, he accepted the mug of what smelled like chicken broth and pushed himself shakily up into a semi-sitting position. His words, or perhaps the struggle following, sparked a still quiet. He drank. The soup burned down his rough throat.

After a few sips, he unsteadily handed back the mug. "W-what h-happened?"

"That depends," Cisco said, glancing at Caitlin. "What do you remember?"

Barry tried shifting, but his muscles were so tight that he fell back and scrunched up his eyes. Localized pain he was used to; he wasn't prepared for this all-encompassing hurt. "Eiling," he finally replied. "Scientists." The word, and the memory, made him practically gag. Caitlin and Cisco's eyes flickered, and he quickly regained his composure. "Then you g-going all sucker punch and Ronnie b-blasting his way out with f-f-fire. Ronnie…"

"Is just fine," Caitlin responded, urging the mug of steaming soup again. Barry gladly received it, despite not being able to lift his arms above the level of his chin. The broth created a pit of warmth in his stomach, and the sides of the mug seeped feeling back into his fingers. "He and Professor Stein were able to separate again. After…blasting his way out of the facility, as you so eloquently put it."

"We couldn't have done it without him," Cisco said. "Those guys outside had guns. Lots of them."

Barry decided, based on Caitlin and Cisco's hesitancy, that he wouldn't be getting any detailed information for a while, so he took another sip and dropped his trembling hand to his chest. "Thanks for doing it, anyway," he said quietly. "I wasn't sure I'd ever get out of there."

"We wouldn't have left you there," Caitlin said softly.

"It was dangerous," Barry said. "Too dangerous for you guys."

"It was necessary, man," Cisco said.

"You could have been killed," Barry insisted.

"You could've had a lot worse," Caitlin said.

"A lot of things could have happened," Cisco cut in. "Let's just be thankful that they didn't."

The hot mug was burning Barry through his bandages, so he opted again to sip. It seemed the right thing to do, given the stillness that followed. He hated the sound of the heart monitor. It always made him feel like he was dying. A wave of pain overtook him, and he convulsed once more. All of it felt exceedingly personal, and he wished the two of them would stop staring.

"I t-take it this isn't going to be a quick fix?" he said at last.

"You went through trauma, Barry." Caitlin took the mug back from him. It was getting too heavy to hold. "These things aren't supposed to be quick fixes."

They knew too much about him—Caitlin and Cisco. They had likely discovered the account of his hours in the facility, they had fabricated their own narratives, they had catalogued his injuries and his exhaustion like they were scientific facts. The thought made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, the heat flow to the hollows of his cheeks. Their eyes bore into him, searching him, constructing sympathy and concern from a story of their own creation. They didn't know what had happened—didn't know the words and the fear and the hours of useless wailing—but he was sure they'd guessed it. He'd have to tell it, too, eventually.

Suddenly, Eiling's face flashed behind his closed eyelids. He jerked to alertness again, not realizing that he'd drifted off. Caitlin and Cisco were still there, watching. He listened to the heart monitor slow, gradually, tried to wipe at his face.

"Thanks, anyway," he said, in a stunted attempt to continue the conversation. "Thanks for saving me." Then, the truth: "I wish you didn't have to see this."

His hand shook so badly from cold and panic he was forced to drop it before he could fully scrub away the wetness from his bruised cheeks.

"No," Caitlin said. "You've been so brave—"

"I wasn't brave," Barry said hoarsely. "I b-begged him…I just wanted it to stop…he b-beat me. He won."

"He didn't beat you," Cisco said.

"That's not what it feels like."

"Listen," Caitlin said. "We're here, and you're safe now. We're all safe. To me, that sounds like a victory. And not a small one, either."

Barry paused, clenching his jaw as he rode a fresh wave of pain. Caitlin and Cisco waited.

"I feel like crap," he said, finally answering Caitlin's first question. It was accompanied by a watery half-chuckle; it was the understatement of the century, but again, it somehow felt sufficient.

Caitlin and Cisco both chuckled with him, the breach opened, and some of the tension siphoned away.

"Just imagine what Eiling will be feeling once Dr. Wells is through with him," Cisco said.

Barry attempted a smile at this.

"I'm not sure even he deserves one of Wells' famous stern lectures," he said. A spasm of pain stopped him, and he grimaced. "Actually, I take that back."

Another shudder rippled through his body, and he couldn't help the slight whine, his abused body betraying itself. Unexpectedly, Caitlin reached forward and grabbed his hand, and he was brought back to his time in that cold room, her hands brushing the frost out of his hair, her presence itself a reassurance that he would be alright.

"You deserve so much better, Barry Allen," she said.

He considered his, wrapped his stiff fingers around hers. His attempted smile tugged at his split lip, but in that moment, he didn't care.

"Maybe," he said, looking both of them in the eye. He saw it now, the snapshot of this reality: the three of them were all there, alive, whole. The memory of the facility, the threat of Eiling and everything he had done, would creep up to haunt them, but not now. Now they were here, healing, temporarily shielded from the worlds that threatened to crush them. Barry blinked, and his own world—Caitlin and Cisco and the beep of the heart monitor—remained. "Right now, I don't think I'd have it any other way."

Fin!

Like I've said from the beginning, thank you so much for giving this story your time and attention. It definitely pushed me, but it was also such a blast! I honestly cannot express my gratitude to those who came back week after week, to those who subscribed and favorited and reviewed and all that jazz. This community is the best.

I'm not done with you yet, either! Keep a lookout for a few standalone fics coming out soon, including a short companion piece to this fic (which I'm hoping to work on next). Because I cannot get enough of these characters, and telling their stories makes me happy.

Once more, a shameless plug to my Tumblr, pennflinn, where I love discussing everything and anything Flash. I'm always happy to take requests for fics!

Thanks again-till next time,

Penn