#fingers crossed for some good changes in 2024 y'all

[reaveries]

▬  an admiration for perennials

summary: arthur meets a woman with an affinity for cliff maids

pairings: high honor!arthur morgan pov x female!reader

warnings: sad introspective arthur, sh*t word (:o), mention of mary, dying from flu, pollen (?? this thing is so fluffy, i'm grasping for straws here)

word count: 6.2k (estimated 26-minute reading time)

a/n: i have proofread this piece so.. many.... times... i'm so ready to finally publish it and get it the eff away from me. i hope y'all like it, i'm really happy with how it turned out! (i think, i can't tell anymore). i have a part two outline in the works so if you'd like to see that, please let me know by interacting w/ the post! also, this is categorized as a reader/self-insert but at one point there is very brief character description. i try to keep that to an absolute minimum and leave it generally gray enough to remain a self-insert fic. if that bothers you, i'm sorry, just overlook it! anyways, njoy, pardners <3

masterlist archive of our own

Revised for clarity 1/5/2024.

He takes a long drag from the cigarette between his lips, letting the harshness of the warm smoke enter his chest with ease. The cigarette had nearly met its end, so he knew it was getting to be that time. He jabs it into the ashtray along with the ashes from all the other bargoers and bids the barkeep a good night, leaving some change for his good company.

Unfortunately, Arthur hadn't found the solace he was searching for in the homely saloon. He’d filled himself to the brim with watered-down beer and a few shots of whiskey when he felt especially plagued by his thoughts. But as he pushes open the swinging doors and steps into the cool night air, his head still swarms with a myriad of upsetting things. 

His life is a complicated mess, though part of him knew it always had been. It just wasn’t until recently that he realized how unnecessary it was for it to be such. On the same street where he currently stands, he’d been responsible for putting lead in the heads of countless men a few weeks prior. He didn't even know their names, and he surely doesn't remember their faces. It was a wholly avoidable disaster. Not to say he’s bothered by the act of killing, for when he finds it justified to end a man’s life, there’s often no reason to dawdle. No, the mess of it all perturbed him the most. 

Undeniably, the land he calls home is becoming a different entity than the one he was born into, a land of law and structure that spits upon his way of life. The West is becoming a docile place, its wildness broken by the cracking whip of civilization. And if the West can’t survive, then all hope is lost for men like him. The only logical step to ensure that he, and the people he cares for, won’t meet their fates at the end of a rope is to adapt to this changing world. This meant mess would have to be a thing of the past. No more massacres over stolen oil wagons and certainly not wiping out an entire town to free a man he didn’t care for from a cell he belonged in. No more innocent bystanders gruesomely losing their lives over foolishly shallow plans like the botched ferry job in Blackwater. No more lives need to be taken for his benefit or the ambitions of the man who guided him. Somehow though, that man didn’t see things the way he did.

Whenever he brought up these concerns, Dutch always told him, “Don’t be so simple-minded, Arthur. Look at the bigger picture.” 

But the bigger picture was all he could see, and it was a terrifying sight.

His heels sink into the damp earth as he makes his way to Saint’s Hotel, crossing his fingers that a room is available for the night. He made the mistake of riding his horse with a stomach full of liquor before, and somehow it almost ended up with him drowning. How he ended up sopping wet and his horse dry as a bone is still a mystery to him. So, a room at Saint's is in order since he doesn’t particularly care to die tonight, even despite the pervasive thoughts that plague him.

Just as he’s about to step onto the hotel’s wooden porch, he hears a loud banging noise come from behind him. He turns around and, in the darkness of night, sees a woman knocking on the front door of the general store across the street. She raps her knuckles a second time against the door, just as loud as the first. The door opens and out steps the store owner, looking irritated.

“Hi, I know you’re about to close, but I’ll just be a second, I promise!” She says this with her hands clasped together.

“Alright, alright. Come on in,” the man says, stepping aside so she can enter.

As the woman moves past the older man, light from inside the store hits her, and he can see her more clearly. She’s dressed simply with her hair loosely pulled back into a plait that falls past her shoulders. These things are ordinary enough, but then the light catches on a dainty pink flower tucked behind her ear on the left side.

He stops in his tracks.

It looks identical to the one he keeps at his bedside, a memento of his mother. However, those flowers, cliff maids, he thinks they’re called, only grow out west in the rocky terrain bordering Oregon and California. He’s a long way from California and possibly even further from a level head, so he dismisses the possibility, chalking it up to the delusions of a drunken old man.

He heads into the hotel, and thankfully a room is available, the same one as always. He closes the door behind him and starts fumbling with his gear, letting it hit the floor haphazardly in a heap. As he stumbles over to the bed, he regretfully catches a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror. He usually tries to avoid looking at himself unless it’s absolutely necessary. Simply put, he doesn’t like the look of the man who stares back at him. There’s a residual yellow blotch fading away on his cheekbone from a dust-up he’d been in a few days prior. He doesn’t even remember the reason. His shoulder-length hair has tangles he’s had no energy to comb through, and his eyes are lidded for want of sleep. They have a far-out look even when he’s staring right at himself. 

“Maybe it’s you that’s the mess,” he mumbles, then gives way to his exhaustion and collapses against the mattress. His boots, spurs and all, remain on his feet. So remain his worn trousers and unbuttoned maroon shirt, and so does the dirt caked beneath his nails that never seems to leave. 

He checks out of his room early the following day and rides out beneath a sky as golden as dandelions. His mind feels clearer after a night’s rest, and he thankfully doesn’t feel as dreadful as he did when his head hit the pillows. Dew hangs in the chilled air and mists his face as he takes the beaten winding path leading back to Clemen’s Point, this new place his people called home. As he rides, he passes by some cottages and homesteads a ways off the path. He can recall the inside layout of a few of them, and even which ones filled his pockets the most back when he first arrived in the Heartlands.

Tall, thick-bodied oak trees loom over him and dance in the morning breeze. The way the sunlight flickers through them is beautiful but unfamiliar. It quickly becomes apparent that he’s taken the wrong path somewhere along the way, but just when he’s about to wheel his horse around and turn back, there lies a cottage beyond the tree line. 

It’s a quaint wooden home with a thin stream of smoke rising from the chimney. In the window of the cottage sits a vase of pink flowers. The closer he rides, the more confident he is that they’re cliff maids. There must be at least twenty stems in that one vase.

“I’ll be damned….” He says under his breath.

Suddenly, he hears the sound of a woman grunting coming from the side of the home. He presses his heels to his horse’s belly and trots toward the noise source. When he turns the corner of the house, he sees her, the woman he saw last night, pushing a wheelbarrow spilling over with dirt. She attempts to use her weight against the handle, but it hardly makes a difference, and the wheelbarrow doesn’t budge.

He clears his throat to make his presence known to the woman.

“Jesus Christ!” She yelps and turns to face him, shocked to see she has company.

“Didn’t mean to frighten ya. D’ya need any help, ma’am?” He asks.

She looks him over with caution.

“Uh, I’m alright, thanks,” she says slowly, her brows warily drawn together.

Arthur nods his head with a tight-lipped smile and pulls the reins to head back to where he came from. He considers asking her about the flowers in the window but disregards it seeing as she doesn’t seem to care for company. As he begins back down the path, he hears a clattering noise and the sound of the woman cursing.

“Hey, mister!” She shouts. He looks over his shoulder and sees her standing with her hands on her hips and the wheelbarrow completely turned over, the dark soil spilling out onto the ground.

“I take that back.” She says with her head cocked to the side and a bashful smile.

He lightly chuckles at the sight and rides over, swiftly dismounting from his horse a few feet from the mild disaster.

“Could you help me scoop it back in?” She asks as she goes to the front of the wheelbarrow and picks up the dirt with yellow gloves.

“Sure,” he says, kneeling beside her. His hands are perpetually dirty as it is, so a little more filth couldn’t hurt. As he helps her pile the dirt back into the cart, he notices she smells earthy and sweet, reminiscent of the air before a storm.

“Alright,” she says, standing up and brushing her dirty gloves against her smock. “Would you mind wheelin’ it for me?”

He moves to grab the handles and pushes them down with ease so that the wheelbarrow can roll properly. 

“What’s all this dirt for anyways?” He asks the woman walking beside him.

“Just a project I’m working on. It’s back behind here, mister.” She points to the rear of the cottage, which quickly becomes dense with plant life the further they step. 

She crosses her arms over her chest as they enter the more secluded area.

“Don’t get any funny ideas, alright?” She says, looking up at him out of the corner of her eye.

He furrows his brows at the slight, but he can’t deny it makes sense she’s thinking that way. He looks the part of someone with foul intentions. The brim of his hat darkens his eyes, which would normally obscure them from anyone else. But, given that he's a head taller than the woman, she sees their darkness fine. He internally curses himself when he remembers he's wearing the one jacket stained with animal blood. It's still smeared dark brown across his shoulder. Of course, he looks like a damn menace. To top it all off, the rifle slung on his back casts a long shadow across her cheek like some twisted reminder of who he is, lest a single act of kindness threatens he forgets. 

He glances at her with a small smile that raises up on one side more than the other.

“Most of my ideas are funny, ma’am. But I ain’t gonna hurt you if that’s what you mean.”

Her shoulders drop from their tense position as she lets out a half-hearted laugh.

“I’ll take your word for it, mister,” she says, slightly more relaxed than before.

The grass starts to reach his knees, and all along the path are bushes and fruit-bearing shrubs with dangling under-ripe berries. Various species of flowers grow throughout the backyard in no organized manner, like they’d been living here long before anyone else. White bark trees stand tall amidst the entropic garden. Dark moss creeps up their trunks, and instead of leaves, canopies of draping blossoms erupt from the branches like something out of a storybook. They hang limply in the air, and when the wind tugs on them, they sway in synchronization while their blossoms flutter away in the breeze. It’s all so beautiful. He’s never seen an abundance of such natural beauty in all his life.

“Is this all yours?” He asks, turning to the lady with a near slack-jawed expression. 

“It is now,” she says, nodding her head. “My mama used to care for it, as did her mama before her. But uh- well, the flu took my mama a few years back, and as fate would have it, now my grandma’s flame is startin’ to flicker too. So it’s left to me to care for all this.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” he responds. Her voice sounds sad, and it reminds him somewhat of Ms. Adler, the widow staying with them for the time being.

“It’s okay,” she says, waving him off. “Sometimes in the darkness, there’s light, and this is definitely the light. I get to care for this thing, and in a way, it cares for me too. Gives me purpose, ya know?”

“S’Good to have somethin’ that makes you feel that way. Lord knows most people don’t.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that. Oh! I’ll hold the door open for ya.” She leaves his side and jogs ahead of him.

“Door? What door?” Arthur looks around, but he sees nothing but trees and plants.

Suddenly, she reveals an entrance blocked by the tall grass, and he realizes that a small building made entirely of glass is right before him. It camouflaged against the greenery and the vines that drape across it. Now that the door is ajar, he sees inside plants of all kinds strewn about in terracotta pots and deep soil beds.

“What in the….” He begins to say but trails off, caught off guard by the unexpected reveal.

A sort of giddiness takes her when she sees his expression, and she waves her hand excitedly to usher him inside. 

“Come in! Come in!” 

He rolls the wheelbarrow inside the structure, and once again, he’s greeted by the humble beauty of the natural world. Leaves spill out of pots hanging from the rafters, creating curtains that brush against him as he passes through. She gently closes the door behind him, and the air starts to feel thicker, heavier, like he’s being swaddled in a damp blanket.

The pots each have their own label, but the writing is so messy that he can hardly make out the names. Of the ones he can read, he recognizes names such as Sparrow’s Egg, Clamshell, and Dragon’s Mouth. They’re exotic flowers that the corset man in Saint Denis once asked him to collect, but he never got around to doing it. If only he had enough time to frolic through fields and pluck orchids. He’d prefer that over the menial errands he’s been consumed by as of late.

“Back here!” The woman shouts.

He can’t see her behind the tall plant-filled shelves that take up the center of the room, so he pushes past the vines and turns the corner to see her standing next to an empty plant bed. She looks at him expectantly because his task is clearly to dump the soil. But his mind is elsewhere. Behind her is another plant bed. This one is full and brimming with cliff maids so densely packed that he can hardly see the soil they’re in. He’s never seen so many of these flowers in one place. Whenever he found one in the wild, it was usually nestled between two rocks and sprouted three or four blooms. They weren’t nearly as impressive as the ones infront of him.

“What is it?” She asks when he remains in his spot. She follows his gaze and gasps.

“Why, are you a gardener too, mister?” Her voice gets high with excitement.

“Who, me?” He laughs. “No, ma’am. I’m no gardener. I’d make for a pretty awful one seein’ as I’m not too good at keepin’ things alive.”

“Oh, forgive me. I just- you seemed interested in the perennials. Most people aren’t, considerin’ how unassuming they look. Pretty things but nothing outwardly special about ‘em.” She moves towards the tall blossoms and reaches out her hand to stroke the petals. 

“You know, they don’t like it here,” she continues. “They like the sun, which would be easy enough if they liked the heat that came with it, but no, it’s the cool shade of cliffs and rocks they like. These little blooms aren’t easy to care for, but if you can figure it out, they’ll live all through the years. That’s what perennial means, after all. Anyways, these guys are my favorite. I think it’s cause they give me such a hard time.”

She twiddled with the petals between her fingers as she rambled about the flowers. When she finally looks back at him, it’s like she has stars twinkling in her eyes. There’s a new liveliness about her, something that sparked when she was given room to air out her affinity for the pink blossoms. Arthur stands there, attempting to wrap his mind around the unlikely chance of finding someone who holds this particular flower as close to their heart as he does. He doesn't notice his aforementioned heart beating a little faster in his chest.

“I- I like ‘em too.” The words clumsily stumble from his mouth when he realizes she’s waiting for him to speak. He quickly gathers himself. 

“I mean, it was my ma that liked ‘em, but I guess she sorta rubbed off on me. They're pretty little things.”

“You’re kiddin’... what are the odds?” 

He can tell she’s thinking about something during the half-beat of silence that follows, but he can’t find any hint of what it is when he searches her face.

“I never got your name, mister,” she says abruptly.

“Arthur,” he says. “Just Arthur.”

“What, you ain’t got a last name, Just Arthur?” She laughs.

He considers telling her his real name but quickly dismisses it. On the off-chance she recognizes it from the bounty posters, it would mean that whatever was happening here would come to an unfortunate end. Of course, no harm would befall her, but he’d have to leave and go right back to his mess of a life. He’d rather stay here, in the sanctity of the greenhouse, with this person he strangely feels like he was meant to meet. 

“Oh, I didn’t realize we were on a full name basis, ma’am,” he says flippantly, but he can’t help the smile that forms when she raises her eyebrows at him.

“Well, Arthur, you have good taste,” she says playfully, but her gaze falls to the wheelbarrow he’s still holding, and her eyes widen. “Oh, that must be heavy. I talked so long, I forgot you still had that. Go ahead and pour it into that empty bed right there.” She gestures with a quick wave of her hand.

He looks down at the wheelbarrow he also forgot he was holding and does as she says, tilting the lip of it into the wooden frame and letting the soil spill out. 

She smiles at him and pats his shoulder before leading him out of the greenhouse. They step back outside, and the cool air is a welcome feeling. He props the wheelbarrow against the wall of the structure while she shuts the door behind her.

“Thank you again. I would’ve had a much harder time without you there,” she says.

He wipes his soiled hands on the front of his jeans and opens his mouth to speak, but when he looks at her, she’s already looking at him with a gaze sweet as honey. It makes his breath catch in his chest. Not many women have looked at him like that before, and hardly any were as easy on the eyes as her. A thread of sunlight catches her eyes and reveals faint traces of amber, like sap spilling from the source. Her long lashes flutter when she blinks, and they rest against the soft edge of her brow as she looks up at him. Her hair, woven into a braid, is loose, disheveled like she’d slept in it. Stray strands feather around her jaw and frame the angles of her face, not unlike ornate golden borders that surround paintings in a gallery.

He clears his throat upon realizing he’s been gawking at the poor woman like some boyish fool.

“Ah, it was nothin',” he says, directing his attention elsewhere as heat creeps up his cheeks. 

A dragonfly jitters down from above and lands on the stem of some thyme growing over a narrow creek. Water trickles over smooth stones into a basin where leaves float along the surface. Some of them sprout delicate white flowers that open up to the sky. A thought comes to him as he looks at them.

“If it’s not too much trouble, would it be alright if I draw a picture of this place?” He asks. He’s never had to ask anyone permission for this sort of thing before; it felt unnatural. But it certainly would’ve been more so if he’d asked her what he really wanted, which was to draw her alongside it.

She tilts her head and looks up at him curiously.

“How charming…” She says, then ponders it for a second. “I don’t mind as long as you let me see it after.”

He chuckles, “Alright, just don’t make fun of it.”

“I would never!” She says, feigning indignance. “My mama taught me manners, Arthur! That means if it’s bad, I’ll just make fun of it in my head. Now go do your thing. I also have some work to do.”

She waves him off with a smile and steps back inside the greenhouse, closing the door behind her. He lets out a sigh, the tight feeling in his chest relinquishing now that he’s finally alone. He walks over to a bench along the path and sits down, taking his journal from his satchel and flipping to a new blank page. Before him, tall pink flowers that smell of vanilla cast long, dark shadows over the smaller flowering shrubs surrounding them. If they weren’t so dainty looking, their height and the size of their leaves would give the impression they own the place. He gives them the most detail in his drawing. Then he starts to etch the dirt path, adding the indentation the wheel of the wheelbarrow had left behind and the imprint of the woman’s footprints next to his. Just as he finishes up the sketch, adding minute details in the leaves, he hears light footfall behind him.

On instinct, his hand moves to hover above his holster, but once he sees what’s behind him, he feels ridiculous for it.

“Hey,” she says quietly, a sheepish smile on her face. She holds nearly a dozen cliff maids in her hands, stems clipped and bound together with a thread of twine.

“I thought you might like to have these.”

He looks at her for a moment, unsure what to do or say. She’s giving him flowers. No one has ever given him flowers before. That was usually something a man might do if he were sweet on a lady, a gesture shared between lovers. But maybe for a woman who spends all day surrounded by them, it must not have the same romantic meaning he knows it does.

“Those are for me?” He asks. His hands hang loosely at his sides. He doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

She nods. “If you want.”

The talkative woman from earlier seems to have been replaced by someone different entirely, her sentences suddenly simple and sweet. He also struggles to find the right words.

“That’s too kind of you. Truly.” He reaches out to take them, and she places the bundle gingerly in his hands. 

His hold is gentle for fear he’d snap the stems if not careful. He knows he has to look a little silly. A man as rough around the edges as himself, with ammunition draped across his chest and pistols hanging at his hips, holding an overflowing bouquet of pink blossoms as a gift from a lady. If Dutch could see him now, he’d tell him he lost his edge. But if this is what it feels like to have gone soft, then he doesn't mind that much. The warmth in his chest is too comforting a feeling to let go of.

Her sudden gasp brings him out of his head.

“Is that the drawing?!” She points at the journal lying open on the bench. There’s no time to answer before she reaches over the seat to hold the leatherbound book in her hands.

“Wow… I- you captured it perfectly,” she says, her mouth slightly hanging in awe. “I didn’t expect anything like this.”

“You’re just minding your manners.”

She lightly thwacks him on the arm.

“You’d know if I was, I’m not a good liar. No, this is something special.”

He hardly knows a thing about this woman, and yet for some reason, her songs of praise feel so good that he wants to make ten more drawings. Hell, he’ll move as much dirt as she wants if it means she’ll look at him the way she is now each time. As her eyes flit between him and the sketch, he feels a fondness growing that he could’ve never anticipated when he first laid eyes on her. God, he almost feels like a boy again. It’s a feeling he hasn’t experienced in ages since he was last with Mary. Though, admittedly those feelings were guided by something less innocent than what he feels right now. What’s happening to him?

She clasps her hands together and takes a sharp intake of breath.

“Arthur, would you, um- would you like something to drink before you head out?” She asks. “I have just about anything.”

Without giving it much thought, he opens his mouth to answer, but a ringing noise sounds before the words can come out. It’s a clear jingling sound of a bell, and it’s coming from the house. 

“Oh, never mind. It seems like my grandmother needs me,” she sighs and hands back his journal. “Maybe another time?”

“Another time,” he agrees with a thin smile, deflating slightly at the abrupt goodbye.

She walks briskly to the back door and slips inside the house, the door swinging shut loudly behind her. He approaches his horse he’d left hitched to the woman’s front porch and goes to find a place to secure the flowers. As he’s slipping them through a notch on the saddle, the front door flies open.

She steps out, looking grateful he hasn’t left yet.

“Hey!” She calls out to him. She stands at the edge of the top step with one hand on her hip and the other shading her eyes from the sun.

“I’m sure you know already, but those can only last so long now that they’re cut. Perennials live all through the years but only when they’re planted,” she says, shifting her weight on the step.

Arthur’s mouth parts slightly as he searches for the words to respond.

“Oh. Alright.”

She sighs and brings her hand to her forehead in an exasperated motion.

“Okay- what I’m trying to say but failing at, is that when those flowers start to wilt, you come and find me.”

He tilts his head down, so the brim of his hat hides the smile forcing its way onto his lips. He hadn’t been sure if she was just being polite before, if every word was mere courtesy. But now, part of him felt that maybe some of it was more than that. He could at least tell for certain that she liked him, and that was enough.

“I’ll do that, miss. You take care of yourself, now.”

She then waves him goodbye before heading back inside.

The sun has risen high above his head by the time he returns to camp. Everything seems to be just as he left it a few days ago. Dutch is sitting outside his tent with a book in his hands, a finger pensively to his lips. Some men are sharpening their weapons or cleaning their guns and talking to one another while they work. Over by the campfire, Micah gestures wildly to Bill and Javier, who sit on the log by his feet. 

“If we leave at dusk, they should be sittin’ pretty at the station a while before leaving for town. So once things get movin’, I say Javier handles the lockbox, I’ll deal with Walton and his lady wife, and Bill, you hang back in case anyone else shows up.”

Javier looks up from polishing his pistol, “You don’t think Walton’s going to have any extra protection? He’s carrying a lot of goods, it’d be stupid for him not to.”

“Well, that’s what Bill’s for. Ain’t that right, Bill?”

Bill nods his head with a serious expression. “Damn right.”

As Arthur listens to this conversation, it’s as if he can see a dark thread spinning and tangling itself into a knot. A knot on top of a knot, on top of another. Soon enough, the thread will become one giant, twisted mess so tightly entwined it’ll be nearly impossible to unravel. The way things are headed, this seems like the only plausible ending for his people. But before that happens, the Pinkertons will likely find them again, and they’ll be packing their things again, only prolonging this mess of things a little bit longer, letting it become bigger than it ever needed to be. People will keep dying for nothing like they always have, and maybe he’ll be one of them, an unfortunate tally added to their death toll, necessary for the bigger picture.

The young woman had the right of it. Her words still echo in his head even now. 

Perennials live all through the years, but only when they’re planted. Only when they’re planted. 

The world won’t open its arms to drifters, even with a pistol pressed to its head. It’s past time they grow some roots, start living like people, and stop living like wild animals backed into a corner. Sure, there’s no glory in honest work but there sure as hell isn’t any in dying. Arthur had given this idea some thought before. He wouldn’t mind settling, living a simple life working odd jobs, or even finding work on a ranch somewhere. A peaceful life, a predictable one; it sounded just fine in his head.

He passes by Mary Beth and Tilly, scrubbing clothes on a washboard and laughing. Tilly looks up from her busy hands and waves at him.

“Hey, Arthur!”

“Hey there, Miss Jackson,” he says with a friendly nod.

He finds his tent and sets the bundle of flowers down on the cot before reaching into his satchel. 

“Are those flowers, Arthur Morgan?” 

He jumps as Tilly’s voice is suddenly right behind him.

“What the hell! Don’t sneak up on me like that, girl,” he says, turning to face her and Mary Beth standing just outside his tent.

“My goodness, they are!” Mary Beth says, her hand flying to her mouth. “Where did you find those?”

“A lady,” he responds, biting his cheek to force away a smile he doesn't want them to see. He doesn't want to be stuck rattling off every detail to the excitement-starved women. 

“Like, you purchased them from a lady?” Mary Beth leans forward and raises her eyebrows.

“They were… given to me,” he reluctantly admits as he places the stems inside a gin bottle on the table. He moves a few of them around so they look nice.

“Don’t tell us they’re from Mary, Arthur.” Tilly's voice goes low with disappointment, no longer seeming excited.

He grimaces at the thought. “No! No, they’re not from Mary. I met a woman earlier today, and she gave them to me, that’s all.”

The two women quickly glance at each other and share an enthusiastic look.

“Arthur Morgan, you’re in love!” Mary Beth nearly squeals.

He scoffs loudly, “I am not in love. I hardly know the woman!”

“Well, she’s surely in love then. What kind of person just gives someone flowers if they ain’t sweet on’em?” Tilly says matter-of-factly.

“Exactly! So when are you gonna see her again?” Mary Beth asks.

“I don’t know,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. He should’ve known this conversation would happen. He should’ve sucked up his pride and said he purchased the flowers for himself to have avoided it entirely. “She told me to come back when they start to die, so whenever that is, I guess.”

Mary Beth hums and looks past him at the flowers in their makeshift vase. 

“Hmm… well, they look a little limp if you ask me. Dare I say… dead even? What do ya think, Tilly?” 

Tilly nods her head dismally, but even she can’t hide her smile, “Yeah, look at ‘em. They’re all sad-lookin’. Seems like you’ll need to head over first thing in the morning. Just to be sure.”

He shakes his head and laughs, “Alright, out. Both of ya. I can’t take it no more.”

He takes both women by their shoulders and guides them away from his tent despite their protests.

“We just want you to be happy, Arthur! Is that so bad?” Tilly cries out.

“I know, I know. Thank you, ladies. But I’m happiest when people ain't meddlin’ in my private business. Now go on.”

“This ain’t the end of it, Arthur!” Mary Beth calls out as they both walk away. They start talking animatedly as they return to work and keep throwing glances that he can only shake his head at.

Later that night, Arthur sits alone at one of the tables, eating his stew and staring off into the water. Most everyone else is off doing their own things, evening chores, and such. He's in the middle of bringing the bowl to his lips to get the last bit of broth when Mary Beth sits down beside him.

She keeps her word, not letting him hear the end of her numerous questions. Some of them he entertains, like when she asks what the garden looked like, and if she can see his drawing to get a better idea. He can practically see the story forming behind her eyes.

"What's she look like?" She asks, leaning against her hand on the table. "I'm picturing a sort of Isabelle Standish type in my head."

"Ah, come on now. You can't ask those sorts of things."

"Oh, Arthur! Please! This is the most exciting thing I've heard in so long. Just give me something to work with!" She gives him a pleading look, to which he dramatically rolls his eyes at.

"Alright. Well, she gives them girls on cigarette cards a run for their money, I'll tell you that."

She giggles, and asks him, "So when are you gonna see her again?"

He shrugs his shoulders, "I don't know yet."

“You don’t want to keep her waiting too long,” she says, in warning.

“Nah, I think she’ll be plenty busy without me. I’ll give it a few days.”

“A few days? But what if tomorrow another man comes by and sweeps her off her feet? What if she gives him flowers and forgets all about you because you took too long?” Her voice gets higher as she spitfires these potential events. 

“Mary Beth. If I visit her tomorrow, I’ll look like an idiot.” His face scrunches up, cringing at the thought. "And if that's really what happens then I can't do nothin' about that."

“Well, if I were her, I’d find it romantic,” she says and pats his hand on the table.

“Yeah, well, you find a lotta odd things romantic,” he chuckles, thinking back on the strange things in her novellas that have made her kick her feet.

For a second, it looks like she can’t tell if she should be offended. But then she joins him in laughter, giggling at herself.

“You might be right about that!”

Following his talk with Mary Beth, he retreats to his tent and slumps in his cot. He closes his eyes and turns to face the side of the wagon, but sleep doesn't come easy. The cot creaks beneath him as he shifts, trying to get comfortable. He groans and rolls over, opening his eyes to stare into the darkness. Against the dark canvas of his tent, he can make out the silhouette of the cliff maids standing tall in their bottle. He traces the outline of their leaves and thinks back to the woman and her garden, the tranquility of her home, and the opposing restlessness of his heart whenever she looked at him. Before he’s ushered into unconsciousness, a strange thought enters his head that he can only explain away as the delirium of drowsiness. It was that in the distant future, he could see himself settling down, working odd jobs, or finding work on a ranch, sure. But maybe, the preposterous idea of taking care of flowers wasn't so bad neither.

#red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption 2 x reader #rdr2 #rdr2 fic #rdr2 x reader #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x female reader #im so down bad for this man #sigh #that just means more fics for yall #also i made the flower text break! #ik its hard to tell but i did use a cliff maid as reference for the flower

[mosylufanfic]

Out of the Nest

Y'all I am So Intrigued by the icy way that Nora is treating Iris as of 5x02 (and of course, poor Iris not knowing why). Here's my exploration of a possibility, with future Killervibe and Killervibe babby because you know. It's me.

Apologies for the terrible title, I just can’t seem to find one. I’ll probably figure one out the moment I post.

Out of the Nest

Slamming doors were unfortunately not a new sound in the Snow-Ramon household these days. So when the crash reverberated through the ground floor and echoed down into the basement workroom, Caitlin looked up from her microscope and prepared herself to play umpire.

But only Cisco came storming down the stairs, muttering under his breath in Spanish. "And you're grounded!" he yelled back up the stairs.

"I didn't do anything wrong!" their daughter shrieked back. Another door slammed, and footsteps thundered up the stairs one floor above.

"Motherf -" Cisco breached away, and a proximity alarm went off. Caitlin checked it, and just sighed when she saw it was the one on the roof.

Cisco breached back a moment later, red in the face. "She left from the roof. Broad goddamn daylight, not even wearing her sky camo."

"Imagine that," Caitlin said. "A sixteen-year-old girl, behaving recklessly."

Cisco was exaggerating somewhat. It was almost dark out, far less risky for Rebecca to be in the sky. And if Caitlin knew her daughter, she was headed out to sea, where nobody would see her but a few random boats and fish.

Of course, it wasn't totally risk-free. But then, nothing was.

"Do you know what your daughter did?"

"Oh, so she's my daughter now?" she asked, adjusting her magnification and checking her sample again.

"She was walking around Freedom Park at dusk, all cute little girl texting and ignoring the world, with her purse open. The only thing missing was a holo flashing over her head saying MUG ME!"

Caitlin jerked away from the microscope. "She what?"

"Yeah, thought that would get your attention." He crossed his arms.

The last time Rebecca had provoked muggers on purpose, pictures of the "Angel of Coast City" had spread all over social media. Thankfully, nobody had gotten a clear shot of her face, but a teenage girl with a five-foot wingspan was distinctive enough.

It had required half a day of feverish hacking and trolling on Cisco's part to make everyone think it was a hoax or a publicity stunt, while Rebecca sulked in her room and Caitlin tried to talk sense into her.

"You always take Dad's side!" their daughter had stormed. "Don't you even trust me?"

"This isn't about sides or trust, sweetheart, this is about your safety. You're sixteen!"

"I'm not a normal kid, but you never let me do anything! Why do I have these powers if you're never going to let me do anything?"

"We're not saying never, we're saying not yet. Maybe next year - "

"You said that last year!"

She wasn't wrong, but the memory of the messes they'd gotten into with their own powers at the beginning chilled Caitlin's blood. And they'd been grown adults with the fully formed pre-frontal cortices to show for it. Rebecca was impulsive, arrogant, and reckless - in other words, a normal teenage girl with extraordinary powers.

And she'd done it again?

"Oh, she's so grounded," Caitlin growled now.

"Not only is she grounded," Cisco said, pawing through a drawer, "I'm locking this on her wrist when she's asleep tonight." He held up a power dampening cuff.

"No," Caitlin said.

"But she - "

"I said no." Grounding was fine. Locking her own powers away without her consent was not. She was their daughter, not some criminal they were dropping off at the police station.

Cisco opened his mouth, saw the look on her face, and set the cuff back in the drawer. He dropped onto the couch with a groan. "She's giving me grey hair," he moaned, putting his hand over his eyes.

Caitlin rolled her chair over next to the couch and ran her fingers through his hair. It still fell in lush waves to his shoulders, but now the waves were streaked liberally with silver. "It makes you look distinguished," she said affectionately.

He caught her hand pulled it over his shoulder, and kissed it. "This kid of ours," he said. "What the hell are we going to do with her?"

She rested her chin on the high arm of the couch. "Maybe next year we really should - "

"Nuh-uh."

"You didn't even hear me out!"

"I know what you were going to say, and she's way too young."

"I'm not proposing that we send her into the Corners on her own, I'm just saying maybe we should consider some training."

"She's sixteen!"

"And she's had her powers for three years. It did me far more harm than good to not use my powers."

"She's not you. She has wings, not frost. And when that happened, you were an adult."

"I know all that, but she's getting frustrated, honey. For her entire life, we've been helping people, and we've taught her to do the same. She wants to help people."

"And wear a badass suit and see her hero name in the papers." He scowled. "Angel," he muttered.

"You're just annoyed you didn't think of it," Caitlin said.

He huffed and looked away, unable to deny it.

Caitlin had just opened her mouth to argue some more when the doorbell rang. They looked at each other.

"You expecting anyone?" Cisco asked.

"No," Caitlin said. "Maybe it's one of Rebecca's friends?"

"House, screen," he said, touching the wall above the couch. "Front door." A screen popped up on the wall, showing a twirling hourglass for a split second as the house system searched for the front-door cameras. "Her friends would just ping her, they - Caitlin."

At the sound of his voice, she looked up and the figure she saw on the wall made her suck in her breath. "It can't be."

"Looks like it can," Cisco said.

"After all this time," Caitlin said. "What is she doing here?"

He swung his legs to the floor and hopped up. "We'd better find out."

They were halfway up the basement stairs when the bell rang again. The sound of the third chime was just dying away as Caitlin pulled their front door open.

"Hi, guys," said Iris West-Allen.

There was a lump in her throat. "Iris," she managed.

Cisco didn't say anything.

She had changed her hair, was the first thing Caitlin noticed. It was a short bob, cut just below her ears. There was a frosting of gray at her temples, and lines around her eyes, but otherwise she looked like the woman who'd been one of their closest friends for eight years.

And a virtual stranger ever since.

She cleared her throat. "So," she said. "Ah. Can I come in?"

Caitlin snapped awake. "Of course! Please."

Cisco grumbled in his throat, and she elbowed him. "I didn't realize you had our new address," she said.

"I have two Pulitzers and access to the Internet," Iris said. "It really wasn't that hard."

"So why did it take twenty-four years?" Cisco snapped.

Iris looked away and didn't answer.

Caitlin led them into the living room, grabbing a handheld game and one of Rebecca's shoes, and sweeping the coffee table clear of her medical journals and a PalmerTech drive that Cisco had brought home from work. She dumped it all onto an out-of-the-way chair. "Would you like a seat?"

"I'm all right." She drifted around the room, aimless as a dandelion on a windy day.

Behind her back, Cisco gave Caitlin a goggle-eyed look. She could only return it with the same amount of bafflement.

What was Iris doing here?

She paused in front of the photo collage projected onto the wall. "So this is Rebecca?" she asked, watching as a family selfie at Pride a few years ago faded into their daughter's most current school picture.

"That's her. Yes."

"I got the birth announcement," Iris said, her face still turned away. "I'm sorry I didn't - " Her fingers moved restlessly on her arms. "That I didn't send anything."

Caitlin  couldn't bring herself to say anything like that's okay or we understood. Because honestly, they hadn't. The radio silence from Iris had hurt immeasurably.

“So you adopted after all?” she asked.

“We were thinking about it,” Caitlin said. “But then I was throwing up and just feeling very run down, and Cisco took me to the ER.”

“Dragged her,” he said. “And they were like, congratulations, have a cigar, papa.”

She looked around, wide-eyed. "But the doctors said it was impossible."

She should know. She'd held Caitlin's hand through all the crying jags, all the cursing at God and her own body, all the long slow path to acceptance.

"They did," Caitlin said. "And yet here we are." She managed a smile. "Barry always did say we'd become the impossible."

At the name, a heavy silence fell.

It wasn't that she and Cisco never said his name. They talked about him sometimes, between themselves. They couldn't help it. Pretending he'd never existed would be like amputating ten years.

But Iris had fallen to pieces on the day he'd disappeared into the speedforce. April 25, 2024, the day that was foretold since the beginning. Despair had visibly eaten away at her for months, until the day that she'd stood in front of them at Star Labs and said, "I got a job at the Daily Planet. I'm taking the baby and moving to Metropolis. I can't stay. I just can't."

Once she'd left, contact grew ever more sporadic until by the time she'd been gone a year, emails went unanswered, texts unread, voicemail messages never returned.

By then, Central City had become unbearable enough that when Cisco said, "I got a job in Coast City," Caitlin had simply said, "When do we leave?"

Maybe it was their own fault for letting Barry become the center of their lives, to the point that when they lost him, those lives collapsed. Looking at Iris now, Caitlin awoke to a fresh sense of her own good fortune, that she'd had Cisco with her as they sought a new life together. Iris had been alone in Metropolis except for a little girl who only knew that her whole world had been upended.

Cisco broken the leaden silence. "What do you want, Iris? Why are you here, after all this time?"

She turned to face them, her face set. "I didn't know where else to go."

The hard expression on Cisco's face softened. "What happened?"

"Nora's gone."

She felt her throat go cold and her stomach twist. "Gone?"

"Not dead!" Iris said. "Not - I don't think - " She shut her eyes, pressing her lips together. "She lives in Central City now. She's a CSI with the CCPD."

"Just like Barry," Cisco breathed.

"I thought that would be enough for her. But when I talked to Ralph a couple of months ago, he told me she's been patrolling. She has a mask and a suit - she calls herself XS."

Cisco made a face. "Like, Extra Small?”

"Like Excess, honey," Caitlin said. "Right?"

"When she was little, I used to tell her she couldn't do everything to excess. Apparently she decided to prove me wrong."

"Where did she get the suit?" Cisco looked vaguely insulted that Nora hadn’t called on him, for suit or name.

"The Flash museum," Iris said. "The suit I wore for one day. You remember?”

“Oh right!” Caitlin said. “I do.”

“Yeah. Except the display case is empty, and when I asked them about it, they gave me a whole load of excuses about how it needed restoring."

"Excuse me," Cisco said. "It barely got a day of wear and every one of Barry's suits looks fresh as a goddamn daisy - "

"I know what bullshit smells like. Obviously, they gave it to her."

"So she has a name and a suit," Caitlin said. "Following in Barry's footsteps in every way."

"Seems like it," Iris said. "But now she's - I haven't heard from her in weeks."

"Weeks?"

Iris had gotten wildly overprotective after Barry's disappearance, as if the speed force might reach out and snatch Nora, too. She'd needed to know where her daughter was every minute. How had that relationship devolved to the point where it took weeks of no-contact for Iris to get worried?

"We don't talk much anymore," Iris said, her eyes sliding away again. "She blames me. For taking her away from Central City. From her father."

Caitlin shook her head disbelievingly. "You didn't take her away from her father. The speed force took him from all of us."

"But we never went back. I couldn't. Not even when she moved there. That whole town is a memorial to him. It's horrific."

"The Flash museum is quite something," Caitlin allowed.

"It's not just the museum," Iris said. "There are statues, did you know that? The park was renamed, I think there's a couple of streets - "

"Every time you turned around, he was there," Caitlin said.

Iris nodded mutely.

While Caitlin wouldn't have called it horrific, Central City had still been a tsunami of memories the few times they'd gone back. While it was hard, it was nice in a way, too. Caitlin couldn't fathom the depth of pain that must have kept Iris away from her childhood home and the family that still lived there.

Iris cleared her throat. "Anyway," she said. "When I realized how long it had been, I tried to get in touch, but I couldn't raise her. When I checked with him, Ralph said he hadn't seen her around lately. She took a sabbatical from work, her social media is dead silent, and her place looks - well, abandoned is the only word."

"You have a key?" Maybe Iris's relationship with her daughter wasn't as grim as all that.

Iris snorted, sounding for a moment like her old self. "The day I can't sweet-talk some underappreciated building super into letting me into an apartment is the day I hang up my press pass."

Caitlin found herself smiling.

"Anyway, he probably would have opened the door for anyone who promised to pay her back rent. She was two months late." She twisted her necklace in her fingers.

"Did you find anything in her apartment?"

"Besides dust and a disgusting refrigerator? She had information on her dad everywhere. Timelines in chalk, articles all over the wall - it looked like Barry's murder board. You know, the one he had for his mom? She was obsessed."

"What do you think happened to her?"

She shook her head. "I don't know anything for sure. But she had a bunch of calculations on time travel."

"You think she went back," Cisco said, getting it before Caitlin did. "To see her dad."

"I hope she did," Iris said. "The other options are - they don't bear thinking about."

The same things Caitlin feared for Rebecca rose up again in her head, with the happy little girl they’d known long ago at the center of the nightmare scenarios.

Tangled with the wrong meta. Captured by traffickers. Kept prisoner somewhere.

And one more, specific to speedsters: Caught in the speedforce, next to Barry.

Cisco’s face had fallen into somber lines. "If she went back, maybe we saw her back then. Do you have a picture?"

Iris tapped her watch and held out her wrist. A holo sprang to life of a pretty young woman with a big smile. There was something in the curve of her cheek like Iris, something in the tilt of her head like Barry. "This is the most recent. From her FaceGram. Do either of you guys remember ever encountering her in the old days? Even once?"

Caitlin had to shake her head. "No."

"Maybe she watched us from afar," Cisco offered. "I mean, time travel does screw things up, and her research would have told her that. Maybe she was careful, trying to minimize her impact, and we didn't notice her."

"She might have tried. But I know my girl." Iris's chin trembled. "Eventually, she would have given in to temptation and wanted to meet Barry face-to-face. And he never would have kept that from me."

"You got anything of hers?" Cisco asked. "Let's rule out some possibilities first."

Iris reached in her purse and pulled out an earring, passing it over. He took it out of the ziploc baggie and sat on the arm of the couch, concentrating.

After three decades of practice, he was very good at it. His eyes popped open within a minute or so, and he looked at Iris. "She's not anywhere in this time or this universe," he said.

"Oh my god," Iris said.

"That's actually better news than it sounds like."

"How?"

"Well, first-off, it actually confirms she did go back in time." He got to his feet and tapped the wall. "House, screen."

A screen popped up on the wall, several dancing Pokemon frolicking around to a blast of peppy music. He blushed. "Ha-ha, Rebecca must have left her game running, the little stinker."

While his back was turned, Caitlin shook her head. Iris raised her brows and pointed surreptitiously at Cisco, and Caitlin laughed silently and nodded. Iris put her hand over her mouth to hide the smile.

For a moment it felt like no time had passed at all.

Cisco shut down the Pokemon game and brought up a whiteboard app that he wrote on with the tip  of his finger. "So, we know new universes are created when a timeline diverges." He drew a line, then made it fork, sending one upward and one downwards. "We're here." He indicated the top line, then ran his finger back to where it forked. "This is where Nora jumped back to."

"When is it?" Iris asked, leaning forward.

"No idea," Cisco said. "But her being there created this divergence."

Caitlin nodded, catching his drift. "No matter how careful she was, she would've changed things just by her presence. Maybe she got in line at Jitters and made someone behind her miss the train they would have caught. Maybe she crossed against the light and forced someone to brake, where if they hadn't slowed down, they would have had a fatal accident at the next intersection. There's so many little things that we do every day and we don't even know how they change the world."

"And by changing the world, she created a new one." He traced the lower fork to the end. "So that universe is here, running parallel to this one. That's why I can't find her."

Iris blinked. "Yeah," she said. "That makes . . . sense. Okay."

"I can jump to other universes easy peasy, but it's a lot harder to jump back and forth along the timeline," Cisco said. "I'll do my best, but I don't know if I can go back to retrieve her."

"It's not about retrieval," Iris said. "I just want to know that she's safe. And not caught somewhere in time, or in - " Her face twisted with anger. "In the speed force. If she's with Barry in the past, he'll take care of her, but she doesn't know what she's doing."

"Well, none of us ever did when it came to time travel," Cisco said, narrowing his eyes at the forking timelines.

"No, I mean as a speedster."

Caitlin whipped her head around so fast her neck popped. "What do you mean? Didn't her powers come in with puberty?" That was what they saw with most second and even now third-generation metas, who inherited a metagene rather than having it change them after they were grown.

"They did," Iris said. "Around thirteen or fourteen. But I would never let her use them."

Cisco gaped at her. "She's - what, twenty-five?"

"Twenty-six, honey," Caitlin said. "Her birthday is the month before Rebecca's."

"Right, right. That's like half her life.”

“I know that,” Iris said defensively. “But there's plenty of heroes now. You two, and Ralph, and others. It's not like when the accelerator first exploded. Nora didn't need to put on a suit and risk her skin every day. She could have had a normal life."

"Is that what she wanted?"

"She was a kid. She didn't know what it could be like. The secrets and the lies and the danger -  Anyway, there was plenty of time. There was always plenty of time. I kept telling her, next year. Next year."

It sounded a little too familiar for Caitlin’s comfort. "You must've given in at some point," she said. "You said she was patrolling now."

"No,” Iris said. “I didn’t. I think she's trying to figure it out on her own. From displays at the Flash museum and home experimentation."

Cisco opened his mouth, then rethought whatever he'd been about to say.

Iris knew that was dangerous. She knew how hard it had been for Barry to master his powers even with their support and the technology at Star Labs. A rogue speedster trying to teach herself - what kind of catastrophes could she embroil herself in?

And how had Iris let it get to that point?

Their old friend touched her watch again, looking sadly at the beaming girl. "I couldn't lose her," she said in a cracking voice. "I'd already lost Barry. If Nora never developed her powers, then the speed force couldn't get her. I guess that's really what I thought."

Cisco met Caitlin's eyes again, then looked away.

"And then the day after she graduated high school, she packed everything she owned into her car and moved to CCU." She put her hand over her eyes. "You know what's funny? The speed force didn't do anything. It didn't have to. I lost her before she ever started running."

"Iris,"  Caitlin whispered. "Oh, Iris." She got to her feet and crossed the room to put her hand on Iris's shaking shoulder.

At her touch, Iris dropped her hand. Her eyes were red and wet. "If she's with her dad, she's finally getting all the support and training that I could never bring myself to give her. I don't want to drag her back. I just need to know she's okay."

"Of course," Caitlin said.

Two and a half decades ago, she would have reached out to hug the other woman. But that had been a long time ago. So she just rubbed Iris's shoulder a little bit and dropped her hand.

"We'll do everything we can," Cisco said. "But Iris, can I be honest with you?"

"Please," she said.

"This isn't a ten minute job. Basically what I have to do is sort through all the multiverses until I figure out which one she created, then vibe backwards along the timeline to figure out when she went back to." He frowned. "Or maybe the other way around?"

"I knew it was a big ask when I came. I'm just grateful that you're willing to try."

"What are friends for?"

Iris managed a smile and checked her watch. "I think I've missed the last train back to Metropolis," she said. "Do you know any good hotels around here that I can stay the night?"

"You can stay here," Caitlin said immediately.

"Oh, god, no, I couldn't do that. Just turn up on your doorstep and expect you to put me up?"

"You're not imposing, I promise. We want you here. It's been so long. We can catch up a little. You can meet our daughter."

"Honestly," Cisco said. "We'd love to have you. Please."

She looked between the two of them. "Well," she said. "In that case - I'd love to stay."

"Great," Caitlin said. "I'll show you the guest bedroom. Let you get settled in."

"And I'll get to work," Cisco said. "Have you got access to any of her research? Any of her cloud passwords?"

"Oh, this might help," Iris said, reaching in her purse and pulling out a box about the size of the old smartphones they all used to carry around. "Nora's home computer. The password is Bartholomew."

Cisco whistled, reaching out to take it. "Damn, girl, you earned those Pulitzers."

"You bet I did," Iris said.

"We were so proud," Caitlin said, leading the way up the stairs. "When we heard."

"I've been hearing about you," Iris said, following her. "Frost and Vibe, Coast City's very own superhero power couple."

Caitlin laughed a little. "We try." She suddenly realized something. "Do you have any bags or anything? I can't believe I forgot to ask."

"No, nothing," Iris said. "When I realized what she'd done, I went right to the train station."

"Well, I can loan you something." Although they'd never been the same size, or for that matter, the same style. "Or Amazon DroneDrop knows this house pretty well. You can use our account if you need."

"Oh, it's fine, I've got one. I think I'll do that."

"Okay," Caitlin said. "So, this is the guest room, that's the house wifi password on the chalkboard there, and we haven't eaten dinner yet, so that should be maybe an hour? Do you have any dietary restrictions? Cisco does most of the cooking, he can work around just about anything."

"No," Iris said, looking a little dazed at the sudden rush of hospitality. "No, I'll eat anything. It's fine. Thank you." She set her purse on the bed, looking around the neat, bright room.

"Okay," Caitlin said. "Well. I - " She twisted her wedding ring. "I'll leave you to get settled. The bathroom is right down the hall."

Iris said softly, "Thank you so much, Caitlin. For everything."

She wasn't sure how to answer that, so she went with the truth. "It really is so good to see you again."

"You too."

She started to leave, then paused and came back in. "If you hear thumping on the roof," she said, "it's - " She paused, trying to think how to explain. "It's okay, it's fine."

Iris, already pulling up Amazon on her wrist screen, looked up, brows lifted. "Rebecca?" she said.

"Yeah."

She nodded once, the nod of a woman who'd seen a lot of metahumans in her lifetime and wasn't particularly surprised at anything anymore.

Caitlin went downstairs again and found Cisco swiping through screens. He'd clearly gotten into Nora's computer and hooked it up to the house wifi. "Damn, she's got a lot of stuff in here," he said by way of greeting. "But I think I might have found something with this 2017 folder."

She glanced at the documents spread out on the wall. "It does look promising," she said. "But we can get back to it. We need to talk about our daughter right now."

He paused, then minimized the screen with a swipe of his finger and turned in his chair. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, we do."

The proximity alarm on the roof went off half an hour later.  Cisco and Caitlin glanced at each other, then both got up and headed up the stairs. This called for a family meeting.

Rebecca didn't notice them until she'd climbed back in her open window and folded her wings. They went translucent and sank into her skin until they looked like a large, elaborate linework tattoo spread across her shoulder blades.

She hadn't been allowed to wear tank tops since they had appeared, but she'd bought some on the sly and hid them under her mattress, which had successfully fooled Caitlin for all of ten minutes. She wore one now, a white racerback tank with ample room for her wings to flex. Between that, the wing marks, and the thick dark hair that she wore buzzed close to her scalp, she looked tough and punky, powerful and indomitable.

Caitlin could remember all the times she'd come sobbing to her with some small injury. Mama fix it, fix it Mama.

She looked up and jumped. "God! You guys! I told you not to come in my room when I'm not here."

"First off," Cisco said, leaning ostentatiously on the wall just outside her door, "we're not in your room. And second of all, you're not exactly in a position to be making demands, traviesa."

"Since you are here," Caitlin said, "we're coming in."

Rebecca started to protest, but Caitlin just leveled her most no-nonsense look, and her daughter folded, grumbling. She climbed onto the end of her bed and sat scowling.

Cisco leaned back against the window, looking thunderous. When she caught his expression, Rebecca narrowed her eyes and folded her arms.

Caitlin bit back a sigh.

It was hard to see them like this. Rebecca had always been a daddy's girl, giggling and conspiring with Cisco. But the first day she'd leapt into the air and done a loop-de-loop over their heads, then landed to see the look of horror on his face, their relationship had started to crumble.

But they had to get through this first. Then maybe they could start patching things up. So she said, "Would you like to explain what happened, young lady?"

"Nothing happened," she muttered.

"Right, because I got there," Cisco said.

"I thought we were clear the last time," Caitlin said. "You are not to go out looking for trouble."

"I was taking a shortcut!"

"Oh, and your shortcut just happened to include the park with the highest crime rate in the city? Try again," Cisco invited.

"You never said I couldn't go there."

"We never said you couldn't put on a raw-meat bikini and go swimming with sharks, either, because we didn't think we had to!"

Caitlin felt they were in danger of spiraling into another father-daughter shouting match. "Enough," she said. "You went out today hoping to use your powers, which you know we don't want you to do. And we know you're frustrated and you want to flex your wings and you want to help. But that's not the way."

"But - " Rebecca started.

"Because we also know who else is out there," Cisco said. "And what they're capable of. And believe me, sweetheart, there's not a single one of them who would take it easy on you because you're still in high school."

Rebecca's chin jutted. "I don't want them to take it easy on me. I'm not a baby."

Caitlin went and sat next to her, pulling her close. Rebecca's body was rigid and unyielding in the circle of her arm. "No," she said. "You're not. But, mijita, you're not an adult, either. You're still young, you're still coming into your powers, and you're more vulnerable than you think."

Rebecca gave her a little sideways look. Caitlin wondered if she'd had the time to get scared in that park before Cisco had swooped in and given her someone to shout at.

Cisco went down on his knees in front of her, looking up into her face. "And if anything happened to you, your mom and I couldn't bear it. We've lost a lot of people in our lives, but you - that would be worse than all of the others combined."

She kept her face turned away from her dad, her hand lifting to fiddle with Caitlin's necklace the way she'd done since she was a baby. "You always tell me to be proud of who I am, but you won't let me be who I am."

The words hit Caitlin in the chest like a punch. For a moment she couldn't breathe, much less reply. Cisco looked just as devastated as she felt.

"We're trying," he said finally. "We know you want to use your powers, but we want you to learn how safely and gradually."

Not like either of us, Caitlin added ruefully, in her head.

"When am I going to get to do that, though?" she asked.

She clearly hadn't expected an answer, but Caitlin said, "Your dad and I did some talking, and we've come up with a plan that might work for all of us."

Rebecca lifted her head, looking cautious. "Wait, really?"

"First of all," she said, holding up her finger, "for today's little stunt, you're grounded. For a month."

"How does that work for me?"

"It works because it's not two months," Caitlin said.

Rebecca started to say something, saw the look in her eyes, and clearly reconsidered. She shut her mouth, her lower lip sliding out just a touch.

"During your grounding, you're going to be training with your powers. And afterwards, you're going to start patrolling."

She sat up straight. "Training? Patrolling? You mean it?" She gave Cisco a quick look.

"This is against my better judgement," Cisco said, scowling. "But you need to learn sometime, and clearly if we don't teach you, you'll teach yourself."

Rebecca let out a squeak and rocked forward to hug him. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you, Daddy."

His arms came around her, holding tight, his face full of emotion.

She pulled away to hug Caitlin around the neck. "Thank you, Mama. This is so ultra-schway!"

Caitlin pressed her cheek to her daughter's duckling-fuzz head. They didn't get hugs like this very much anymore.

"Ground rules," she said, straightening up and looking into her daughter's face. "You're with one of us at all times until we decide you're ready to be on your own."

Her face fell a little bit, but she nodded.

"School comes first," Cisco said. "No patrolling on school nights, your grades stay at B or above, all your homework and studying gets finished before you go out."

"And no patrolling during finals," Caitlin added.

"But Mama, what if - "

"None," Caitlin said.

"Nada," Cisco reiterated. "And finally, you're going to take a martial arts class. Hand-to-hand of some kind, we'll figure one out."

"Wait," Rebecca said. "Like, a class with other kids?"

"Other kids, maybe adults. Which means no wings."

"What's the point of that?"

"You can't fly away from every attacker, angelita. There's always going to be one who brings you down, so you need to learn to fight on the ground too."

"Okay," she said reluctantly. "I guess. Can we start training tonight? I have suit ideas. I want to show you my suit ideas." She grabbed her computer off her desk and was pulling up a folder on the wall when Caitlin held up a hand.

"Tomorrow's soon enough. We've got a house guest."

She looked like they'd suddenly started speaking Greek. "A what?"

"Not a what, a who. An old friend who dropped in unexpectedly. So you've got your choice tonight. You can either help me clean up the living room and set the table, or you'll help Dad with dinner."

Rebecca chewed her lip. "I can help Dad with dinner," she said.

Cisco blinked, then rallied. "All right. It's chicken enchilada night, so get downstairs and pull four - " He paused, eying her. Whenever she flew, her appetite doubled. "Make that five chicken breasts out of the freezer to thaw."

Rebeca reached for the hoodie hanging from her bedpost, and Caitlin said, "You don't have to wear that tonight if you don't want to."

She paused, her eyes going big. "But - my - " She touched her shoulder where the tip of a black feather showed on her skin.

"Iris West-Allen is an old friend," Caitlin said. "She's known us a long time. All about us. We'd like her to get to know you, too."

"Oh," Rebecca said, eyes still wide. She considered her hoodie, then picked it up, tying it around her waist, where she could pull it on easily if she didn't feel like showing her shoulders and back.

She slid out of her room, pausing for the briefest second at the open door of the guest room to glance in. Then she was gone down the stairs.

Cisco let out his breath. "You sure about this?" he asked, sliding his arm around Caitlin's waist.

She rested her head against his. "Honestly? No. But she's got to start somewhere."

He nuzzled her hairline. "I still don't know what we're going to do with this kid of ours."

She kissed him. "Right now? You're going to go make chicken enchiladas together."

FINIS

#Caitlin Snow #Cisco Ramon #Iris West #killervibe #mosylufanfic lives up to her damn name #fanfiction #probably has about 24 hours to be jossed #shrug #the flash