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The offer echoed in her head all night, every night since the Legends had returned. It haunted her. She shouldn’t need to work out her problems – she was good at pushing them back down, and everything that happened with Jay, she was content to push that problem down too. But Cisco wasn’t wrong; it left her heart cold.
And it was just nature that to fix what was cold with heat.
If you need something to burn, just call me.
Heatwave had just walked up to her, after Barry had finished the explanation about what happened on their end while the Legends were gone, and told her lowly that his partner was dead, had died a hero, and he needed a way to work it out. That Caitlin, Mick and Sara’s futures were all turning out in ways they hadn’t expected even a month ago – someone they each cared about was dead. That was when he had offered.
If you need something to burn, just call me.
At the time, she had just shook her head at him, not even having the drive to glare anymore. She felt cold, dead inside, how would fire help her? She wasn’t a pyromaniac like Rory, she couldn’t work her anger out on the next villain like Sara could.
What could she do to get her anger out? Nothing. Nothing but push it down, and pretend like Jay had never happened. Like she hadn’t started to see a future with him, like she hadn’t cried and cried and cried when she had thought he was going back to Earth 2, when she had thought he was dead, when she found out he was Zoom.
It took her the longest time to finally get past Ronnie’s death, when he’d returned and again when he died. She had taken the same advice everyone seemed to tell her: move on. Spend time with friends. Find someone else. Eventually, maybe, someday, her heart wouldn’t be so heavy, and that was exactly what she did. And look where it got her.
If you need something to burn, just call me.
No one understood. Barry was the closest – he had suffered loss, they all had. Cisco, Iris, Sara, Jax, Barry, Joe, Wally, all of them. Even Hartley, as much as she had never liked him, he wasn’t even part of the team anymore and he had suffered loss of a different kind. But yet, no one understood, because they didn’t hold their sadness, their anger in.
Barry and Iris could talk things over. Sometimes they froze out the people that cared the most, but they always went back to them. They always worked it out, and they came out of the ashes better than before. Cisco had to deal with his own death, and he had nightmares still, but he’d learned to deal with it. Maybe Hartley had taken to being the Pied Piper as his coping method, and maybe Joe had taken to lying to others as his, but they didn’t hold it inside.
Joe had come clean to Iris about her mother, and when Francine had died, they were so sad, but they had gotten through it. Wally’s coping method was street racing, but he got through it. Sara had sent some villains to the hospital instead of the prison, but they had all gotten through it.
All Caitlin could do was keep it bottled up inside. All she could do was hopelessly feel her heart getting colder, and colder, and she didn’t want to turn out like Killer Frost. She didn’t want to become her Earth 2 doppelganger, but if she was being honest with herself – and she rarely was anymore – she knew just what would break her to make that happen.
If you need something to burn, just call me.
She had no way of coping. Nothing worked. Nothing made the pain, the sorrow, the guilt, the anger go away. Not about Ronnie, not about Jay. She had tried everything. So she could hardly be blamed when she picked up her house phone that night, almost two weeks later, and dialed a number that had been slipped into her pocket along with those words.
If you need something to burn, just call me.
ꬹ
A black motorcycle pulled up to the corner of Caitlin’s apartment that next night, Lisa Snart on the front of it. Caitlin walked silently down the steps to where it was waiting, and nodded at the woman. She handed her a helmet in greeting.
Just like Mick had said, they arrived at the outskirts of town, the arsonist standing next to a broken-down bridge, back to the motorbike. He didn’t turn around until Lisa flipped the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered out.
Caitlin felt a bit compelled to say something to the woman, but all that came out was a shudder and, “I’m sorry for your loss.” It was the same words everyone had told her when they had thought Ronnie, and again Jay, was dead.
Lisa nodded at her again, face emotionless and turned to walk the opposite direction towards an old warehouse, but Caitlin grabbed her shoulder.
“That’s not what I meant to say,” she said quietly. “I always hated those words.”
“Then what did you mean to say?” Lisa demanded. She turned her shoulder and pulled it violently out of Caitlin’s grip.
The woman sighed. “Mick told me he died a hero,” she started. “I didn’t like him very much, Lisa, but I know the feeling of someone dying for the greater good and people tell you that was great, that was heroic, but that’s not what you want to hear. All you want to hear – all I wanted to hear when they said that to me was that he was alive. I didn’t want Ronnie to be a hero, I just wanted him to be my husband, right by my side.”
Lisa choked out an agreement. “He didn’t need to be a hero for people who didn’t appreciate him,” she answered. “All he needed was to be my brother. That should have been enough. I thought it was enough.”
Caitlin paused for a second, she couldn’t believe she was doing this, and then pulled the shaking girl into her arms. “I’m sure it was,” she reassured her. “All you can do is honor his memory. Don’t let anyone forget him, Lisa, that’s all you can do.”
She hugged back without much more than a thought. “Thank you Doctor Snow.” She whispered. “But don’t think I will be honoring his memory legally. Lenny would rather me be robbing banks.”
“Good,” Caitlin said before pulling away.
Lisa walked towards the warehouse, and she turned around to face Mick. He was watching her closely, but she didn’t care. All she cared about was that heat gun in his hands. It had taken her almost two weeks to admit it, but she needed an outlet for her pain, and chances were that burning something might help.
He handed it to her wordlessly, flicking a switch to make the gun light up, and gestured at the bridge in front of them. She pulled the trigger and watched the flames erupt, catching the rotting wood and lighting it up.
It was calming.
When the bridge was nothing but flames, and then nothing but smoke, she let go of the trigger and turned back to Mick. He dragged his eyes away from the sight and grinned maniacally down at her. “Well,” he said for the first time since she’d arrived. “How does it feel to burn your first bridge?”
“Good.” She said firmly. “As long as it’s not my last.”
His smile widened. “Don’t worry Snow,” he replied. “You can burn this whole place down, and no one’ll stop you.”
“Good.” She repeated. “Because I’ve got a lot more problems to work out.”
ꬹ
If you need something to burn, just call me.
Caitlin was oh so glad she had.