Cold to the Touch

Chapter Twenty-Seven

(Barry's POV)

"You didn't think to call us?" I snapped, pacing back and forth in front of the main desk in the cortex. Behind it sat Dawn and Nora, Caitlin was sitting right beside them, looking a cross between concerned and annoyed.

"We wanted to give you the night off." Dawn sighed out. The bruise on her jaw was almost completely gone. The sight of it this morning when they had told Caitlin and I what happened had settled something heavy in my chest. How dare he hurt one of my daughters.

"Cicada broke into Joe's house!" I snapped. "I don't care what you wanted to do for us, as nice as the gesture was, you two are not capable of taking him on alone!"

"We did a pretty good job last night." Nora snapped back, she stood from her chair and crossed her arms. "I get that you are worried, but you know that my ice powers work just fine against him!"

"What about your sister?" I asked, gesturing over at Dawn. Dawn scoffed.

"I've been punched before." She said, rolling her eyes.

"Neither of you can see how serious this was." I let out a humorless laugh. "You two are out of the field until-"

"You haven't even let us into the field! You can't kick us out if we never got to help!" Nora said, slamming her hands down on the desk. Dawn and Caitlin both flinched as the sudden loud noise. "I have been pouring over the same damn files for the last month and we have come no closer to fixing the fucking issue!"

"Nora!" Caitlin gasped. Nora held her hand up, effectively silencing her.

"No." She shook her head. "We are no closer to helping you defeat Cicada than we were before we even got the files! The stress of not being able to protect my family feels like it's driving me insane!"

I stopped, she sounded so much like me. All she wanted to do was stop her family from getting hurt but she came up on a wall just like the rest of us. This is exactly how I would react. Shouldering all of the responsibility onto myself instead of sharing it with my team.

"Nora," I sighed. "It is not your responsibility to protect everyone on this team."

"If Dawn and I could have found something in those files, we could have helped, instead people are still getting hurt." She looked over at Dawn, frowning.

"I think I have a solution." Cisco said softly, making his way into the cortex. Everyone turned to look at him, the tension starting to dissipate from the room.

"What?" Dawn asked, giving Cisco an odd look. "You think you have a solution to what?"

"Our Cicada problem." Cisco said, holding up a little vial of metal shavings.

"Those are the shards I pulled from your hands." Caitlin said, looking confused. "What do they have to do with Cicada? Or stopping him for that matter?"