/grovels

I am so sorry this update literally took forever.

Thank you all so much for your continued patience and support. It means the world to me.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Flash/DCTV

Earth-1

"Barry, please." Iris put the steaming plate down on the table, having long familiarized herself with the layout of his apartment—his and Caitlin's, now, he supposed. Barry just stared blankly at the food in front of him. "You have to eat something."

Seeing no change in his demeanor, she tried again. "Barry. Caitlin would not want you to do this to yourself, not after everything you've been through. How are you supposed to help her if you don't even help yourself?"

"Iris." His tone came out clipped, the first thing he's said in over an hour, her name spilling from his lips before he turned to look at her with a hard look in his tired green eyes. "I can't."

If it were anyone else, his anger would have been obvious and evident, the air fraught with tension and stress—but this was Iris, one of his best friends, and basically his sister. She saw right through him, finding the frustration and worry and helplessness and desperation hidden behind his front, all those emotions swirling in and around him like a lightning storm. Sinking into the chair next to him, Iris put a warm hand on his shoulder, running her thumb back and forth.

"Caitlin's strong. She'll be okay, and the baby will be too. They'll both be okay, Barry, I know it."

"They're not going to be okay, not when they're with Zoom." Barry slammed his fist on the table, startling her. He ran a hand down his haggard face. "I'm sorry."

She scooted her chair closer to him and slung her arm around his shoulder, the way she did when he woke up with nightmares when they were kids. "I know you're frustrated," Iris said calmly. "But Caitlin is a badass, and you know it. This baby? It's yours. You are both such strong, smart people. I know it'll be okay too. Its parents are tough people."

That was what brought the smallest of smiles to Barry's face, even as fear ate away at him. Every minute he sat there without his speed was a minute where neither Caitlin nor their child's safety were guaranteed.

"I'm sorry."

Iris gave him a small smile in return, her hands squeezing his shoulders one last time before they fell away. "For what?"

"We wanted to tell everyone," Barry explained, holding his hands together on the table in front of him. "About us being together, and about Caitlin's pregnancy. We were going to tell you and Joe and Wally, then work our way out."

She raised an eyebrow. "What about Cisco?"

Barry really did grin then. "Cisco was the first to find out. He overheard Caitlin talking."

"Of course he did." Chuckling a little, she rested her chin on her hands. "See? Everything is going to be okay. They're going to be okay. Besides," she said, her voice tinted with emotion. "I can't wait to be an aunt and meet my little niece or nephew."

The two looked at each other then and shared a smile, the moment breaking when a breach appeared in Barry's living room, Cisco's voice ringing clearly through the room. "Barry! Barry, you home?"

"Cisco?!"

Without thinking, Barry and Iris both stood and ran through the portal to land in the S.T.A.R. Labs Cortex, with Cisco and Joe standing in front of the console. "Everything okay?" he immediately asked.

"Yeah," the engineer replied once he closed the breach. "I just thought you might want to be here for this."

Barry raised his eyebrows. "For what?"

When Cisco didn't answer, he turned to Joe, who only gestured back to the superhero putting on his visor and picking up a very familiar-looking helmet adorned with miniature wings on the side, the one that haunted Barry the past few weeks. "For this."

Earth-2

There was a feeling of weightlessness in the deep darkness.

It reminded Caitlin of a time before all this, when things were easier and her father was still alive and they went on a family vacation to the beach—Caitlin's first time going to the beach. Her dad held her in waist-deep water, the waves fascinating her with their push and pull until one particularly big wave pulled them both under. For a moment, she was suspended in the water, closed in, held, weightless. Then her eyes burned because they had been open and she was drowning; she couldn't breathe, and the currents pulled and pulled at her until she kicked her way up by pure instinct, her father pulling her out the rest of the way and holding her close.

But that one moment before everything hit her, Caitlin had been at peace. She wondered if there would be a chance for her to go to that same beach again. Maybe she'd ask Barry, and they could make a trip out of it. She wondered whether she'd be able to take Nora to that same beach, wondered if she would be the one holding her beautiful little girl tightly in the water and Barry would be on the shore, taking pictures of them, or if Barry would be the one holding their daughter while she watched and laughed and treasured the moment and the sunlight and—

Nora.

Nora had to live.

Just like the moment where she first realized she was drowning, Caitlin felt gravity pull her harshly back down from the darkness she had been floating in as soon as Nora's name came to mind, and she forced her eyes open to see a dark room that looked like an old warehouse, the light barely being let in. The brightest source of light came from two doors in the distance, where her brain helpfully told her that there was a cliff behind them, and then she felt something cold and metallic around her wrist, her eyes snapping down to see a cuff chaining her to the dirty cot she was laying on. The next thing she knew, a pair of blue eyes were staring down at her.

Startled, she nearly fell off the other side of the cot, catching herself in time.

"Are you all right?" Hunter asked, his tone deep and worried. Goosebumps appeared up and down her arms, and she instantly recoiled away from him.

Her head was still pounding, her hand coming up to her forehead. "What…" Caitlin rasped, voice hoarse. "What happened?"

She felt the air around her crackle, making her headache worse before a single sentence came back to her like lightning.

Nora had to live.

Caitlin scrambled to sit up, fighting through the pain and vertigo to rest her hands on her…still, thankfully…slightly rounded stomach underneath her loose shirt.

"I was hoping you would tell me," Hunter said at her bedside, looking at her baby bump in suspicion and distrust. "I found you in pain, just before you fainted. I've been watching over you."

That did not make her feel better. Chills ran up and down her spine, and she fought back a hard shiver. Glancing around, she flailed for a distraction, anything to take his attention off of Nora.

"I'm—I'm cold," Caitlin managed to get out through her now-chattering teeth. Her captor narrowed his eyes at her as he studied her face, silent for a long moment before he stood up, blue lightning streaking in his wake, then before she knew it, he was back and holding something big and bulky in his hands—a space heater.

Plugging it into the wall next to her cot, Hunter then turned it on and took her hands in his larger ones. She was unable to tear them away, her body weak from the interdimensional travel, lack of nutrients, and proper rest, but it turned out she didn't have to. He let go of her the very next second, taking another step back from her cot.

"Cait—"

"Do not call me that," she instinctively hissed.

He ignored her. "Your hands are so cold. Let me help you. I care about you. Speedsters run warm."

Throwing a glare up at him as the space heater slowly warmed up, Caitlin opened her mouth to shoot a sharp retort back at him, but he only sighed. Hunter lifted his hand and reached toward her wrist, vibrating it and easily breaking the cuff chaining her to her cot.

"You're not a prisoner here, Caitlin. You're home, so make yourself at home."

Having been left to her own devices, Caitlin had pulled the cot to as close as to the space heater as possible, but it didn't help. No matter how close she got, how long she stayed next to the heater, she didn't feel any warmer. Gritting her teeth, she swung her feet over the side of the cot and slipped her shoes back on, hoping that moving around would warm her up.

Nora was half-speedster, so theoretically, if her powers were being developed and were already leaking into Caitlin, she should be feeling hot by now. The doctor frowned as she rubbed her arms up and down, pacing around the area and trying to generate heat. She hadn't yet told Barry that she had essentially already picked out their child's name, but she knew that his mother was a huge influence on his life, so she hoped that he wouldn't mind her jumping the gun on this. His mother's name was such a beautiful name, and Caitlin was a little more than attached to it at this point.

She stopped walking then, looking around. In her preoccupation with the cold, she had walked on and on into an area that resembled an old factory complete with old, rusted machinery. It reminded Caitlin of an old barn house she had stumbled into as a child, and she put a finger on the decrepit metal object next to her, running it down a ways when a loud voice startled her, making her nearly jump.

"See something you like?"

It put her on edge, and the scare just made her shiver harder as she whirled around to face the voice that had sounded behind her. White hair and piercing blue eyes greeted her, a cold smirk on her dark blue lips standing out against her pale skin.

"You're…Killer Frost."

The supervillain encased in a glass box uncrossed her arms, turning to fully face her. "And you're Caitlin Snow." She eyed her up and down. "Your little friend Cisco wouldn't shut up about you. Made you out to be some kind of a saint."

Mentioning Cisco made Caitlin just miss her friends even more, her desperation to get home bursting inside of her. It rivaled the cold that began to seep into her bones, gnawing at her. Killer Frost opened her mouth to say something else, her smirk growing, when she suddenly closed it again and gave Caitlin another once-over and then a thoughtful look. Her sharp gaze then zeroed in on her stomach, causing Caitlin to cross her arms over her midsection protectively.

"If you're still brunette, that means your powers haven't come in yet, right?" Killer Frost said in her signature satisfied drawl and almost ethereal echo. Caitlin's eyebrows furrowed, her answer coming out through near-chattering teeth.

"I wasn't affected by the Particle Accelerator explosion."

At that, Killer Frost laughed, a dry, dragging sound that made Caitlin's hair stand on end. "No, apparently," she agreed, sounding gleeful. "You weren't." With that, she laughed again, until she was practically doubling over. Her white curls hung like a curtain between them, leaving Caitlin feeling even more outcasted and vulnerable than before, as if left in the cold as the villain continued to laugh. When she finally recovered, Killer Frost straightened up, observing Caitlin as if she were prey.

In a way, Caitlin supposed she was—trapped with no way home. Killer Frost could do anything she wanted to her.

"You look cold, Caity," she commented, tone light.

The brunette grit her teeth and tried her best to stop her shivering. Her doppelganger was right though; she was freezing, and if only for Nora's sake, she had to get warmer. She just prayed to anyone listening that her baby's developing powers would keep it warm as well, despite her mother's lack of. The supervillain approached the glass, smirk still plastered onto her face. Caitlin narrowed her eyes.

"What's so funny?"

Raising her hand, Killer Frost let freezing mist fall from her fingers, cocking her head to the side. "You don't sense it, do you?"

She made no move toward her, cautiously keeping her distance. Killer Frost laughed again, a condescending sound that was directed straight at her. "Oh, Caity. You're in for a ride."

Still eyeing her carefully, Caitlin pressed her lips tightly together as her doppelganger sighed.

"Tell you what. Let's make a deal. If you can get me out of this carbine box…I'll tell you what's so funny. And you know what? I'll sweeten the deal. Get me out of here…and I'll help you get home."

Just as Caitlin was considering her offer, a series of raps sounded behind her, startling her again and causing her to turn and see…someone, slumped onto the floor of a second carbine box with a heavy iron mask attached to his face.

"Who is he?" she asked, taking a step closer. The man knocked against the carbine wall again.

"Don't know, don't care," Killer Frost replied with a hard bite in her tone. "But if he's here, Zoom must need something from him." She waved her hand again, mist still falling onto the dusty floor. "Doesn't matter now. I'm not going to stick around for much longer."

There was nothing around for Caitlin to use—her first thought was to jerry-rig jumper cables and a generator to heat up the carbine, but for all the old machinery that was there, none of them were what she needed.

"What's the holdup, Caity?" Killer Frost asked, arms crossed and leaning against the wall of the box.

Caitlin huffed, but then an idea came to mind, one so absurd and so risky that she almost didn't want to try it at all. Doing so would mean revealing her greatest weakness to her supervillain counterpart in front of her, and she didn't even know whether or not it would work. She weighed the pros and cons in her head, brain whirring furiously.

Killer Frost was right—there was no way she was going to get home on her own, not in her condition and definitely not by relying on Nora's still fledgling powers. Zoom was bound to come back at any time, so whatever she needed to do, she had to do it, and do it fast. Her chances of escape with Zoom were next to nothing, but with Killer Frost…maybe she stood a fractionally better chance with her. If she could free her, if Killer Frost kept her word…Nora would be safe.

Blowing out a breath, Caitlin steeled herself and approached the carbine wall, squaring her shoulders. Killer Frost straightened up, walking to stand in front of her.

"Well, Caitlin?" she asked, carefully pronouncing each syllable.

She prayed she wouldn't regret this. Rubbing her hands together, Caitlin concentrated on her baby, trying to attune herself to her baby's power like she had seen Barry and Cisco do, willing and reaching for the Speed Force. If the Speed Force was a living thing, it could, theoretically, hear her. She prayed it was enough.

Caitlin pushed through her cold, her uncertainty, her fear, her doubt, struggling against an unmovable wall, and then she was falling and falling and falling and falling and then something brushed against her fingertips and sent a jolt through her body, electrifying her. She had never felt more alive.

She hadn't yet opened her eyes, but she could feel the purple aura that enshrouded her, feeling and knowing the same purple lightning dancing in her eyes, and she simply reached forward to grasp the budding power that was the life growing in her belly at that very moment. It surged within her, purple lightning crackling in both her palms. She opened her eyes to see Killer Frost's wide ones, then placed both hands against the carbine and pushed, expelling the power from her to the glass in front of her.

It was almost surreal as time slowed down; Caitlin could actually see, hear, feel the vibrations running through the carbine, the way the glass was reacting to Nora's power, and the exact moment the glass gave way before it shattered cleanly underneath her hands.

Taking a step back, she watched Killer Frost look around, taking in her freedom before her gaze slid back onto Caitlin, a smirk growing on her lips.

"Well, well, what do you know," she purred, stepping over the shards in her heeled boots. "Looks like there's more to you than meets the eye after all."

It was pure luck at that moment that Caitlin saw Killer Frost raise her hand to shoot a frost blast straight at her, only managing to duck at the last minute. Still connected to the Speed Force, Nora's speed helped to slow time down, allowing Caitlin to escape unscathed.

"What are you doing, I thought we had a deal!" she nearly shrieked, her adrenaline throwing her senses into overdrive. The cold was back; even with the Speed Force's energy thrumming through her, it wasn't enough. Caitlin felt colder than ever, and she immediately started shivering again.

Killer Frost rolled her eyes. "Ugh, is everyone on your earth this gullible? Please, Caity. Now that I know your kid has powers, and with what it's done to your powers? I'd be stupid to not get rid of you first."

"My powers?" Caitlin echoed, wrapping her arms around herself in a futile attempt to retain any sort of warmth.

Her doppelganger laughed, walking directly in front of her and squaring her stance. "You asked me before what was so funny. Well," she replied, leaning forward to look her in the eyes. "Here it is. Your powers have started leaking, and now, it seems that they've been tampered by your baby that's apparently half a speedster."

She paused then, tapping her index finger on her chin as her eyes filled with mirth. "Who's the daddy, Caitlin? Is it that breacher who came to our earth a while back? He really was quite handsome in a suit."

Caitlin was not about to answer any of her questions; instead, she readied herself and pulled on her connection to the Speed Force to access Nora's powers, purple lightning surging around her when she prepared to run…only to slip and fall on her side when Killer Frost let out another blast. Her heart stopped, the millions of things that could go wrong with a pregnancy from a fall immediately coming to mind.

Pure fear took over then, red filling her vision as Killer Frost prepared another ice blast in her direction. Caitlin put her hands in front of herself, squeezing her eyes shut as she let out a shrill scream.

"NO!"

The next thing she knew, a loud thud hit the ground, and she cracked her eyes open to see the supervillain getting up from the floor…covered in ice.

"Well, Caity. Looks like you've got some badass in you after all," she said in a harsh tone, her lips pulling up into a savage smirk, cold as ice. "See? We're not so different from each other."

While her doppelganger snarled and readied her next attack, Caitlin just stared at her own frost-covered hands in shock, her brain short-circuiting instead of processing what had just happened. It was over so quickly, and had come to her so naturally that it felt like nothing at all when the ice blast left her hands, as if it was meant to do that all along.

That thought, more than anything else, terrified her.

"No matter," Killer Frost continued, raising her hands toward her once again after getting her footing on the slick ground. "You'll be dead before you turn into any more of a threat. And a nuisance." More mist fell from her hands, crackling as it met the iced-over floor. "It was nice to meet you, Caitlin."

With that, Caitlin barely had time to register the long icicle forming in the supervillain's hand, sent hurling in her direction. She tamped down on her fear the best she could, but she wasn't fast enough; the icicle was headed toward her, and there was no way for her to outrun it on the slippery floor without risking further injury to herself and Nora. There was no way out for her…she and Nora were going to face their ends, right here in this old, musty warehouse in a world they didn't belong in.

She closed her eyes, her last thoughts of a boyish grin and green eyes, and of a beautiful little girl with those same eyes, brown curls framing her face.

The Speed Force tugged at her then, completely enveloping her as she heard the streak of lightning from somewhere behind her, her hair flying back as she wrenched open her eyes to see Zoom, holding Killer Frost up by the throat and the icicle that was slowly turning red buried deep in her abdomen. Caitlin let out a loud, gasp, her hands coming up to cover her mouth in horror.

"Yes," Zoom hissed at her before dropping her to the floor. "It was nice to meet you."

He turned to face her then, still on the ground and in shock. Through his gray mask, his soulless black eyes surveyed the area, the ice covering the entire floor. "Did she do this to you?"

Without waiting for an answer, he picked her up, carrying her back to her cot and sat her down. "You try that with the man in the other cell," he warned, a clear threat in his words, "he dies too."