Chapter 31: The Sky Above and the Silence Within
The Cortex buzzed with low chatter and hurried footsteps. Every screen glowed with images of Central City—alleyways, rooftops, roads, even underground tunnels—but there was nothing. No sign. No whisper. Harrison Wells had vanished like smoke.
Cisco sat hunched over a console with Joe beside him, cycling through satellite data and surveillance archives, their eyes tired, voices quiet. Caitlin and Ronnie poured over files, still cross-referencing DNA and time anomalies, even as Caitlin's belief in Wells' innocence frayed by the hour.
Barry—he ran. And ran. A hundred times a day, from city to skyline, block to boulevard. But Wells wasn't there.
No one said it aloud, but they all knew.
He wasn't anywhere.
And outside the Cortex, beneath the bruised, purple-streaked sky, Dante stood in the cold wind. Silent.
A cigarette hung between his fingers, the ember faint in the dusk. His black jacket fluttered lightly as the breeze passed over him. His eyes didn't blink. They just stared upward—into the stillness of night, into something none of them could see.
A voice broke the silence beside him. Soft. Familiar.
"You don't look for him."
Dante didn't need to turn. He knew it was Caitlin.
She stood beside him, arms crossed, looking at the same sky he was. For a long moment, neither of them said a word. Just silence. Just stars.
"I'm sorry," she said at last.
He didn't answer at first.
"I know," she added, "about your feelings. You never said it, not really. But I saw it."
Dante took a long drag from his cigarette, then let the smoke spill out into the wind.
"And for a time," she continued, "I… I felt it too."
Her voice trembled slightly. Not regret—something deeper. Something heavier.
"But then I saw Ronnie again, and I—I couldn't forget what we had."
"He's your fiancé," Dante said quietly. "The first man you ever loved."
Caitlin turned to him, searching for something in his face.
"I didn't want to hurt you," she whispered.
"You didn't," he replied, still not looking at her. "You chose love. That's never wrong."
His voice was calm, almost too calm. But there was something in it—a weariness, a fracture behind the words.
Caitlin turned her eyes forward again, toward the stars.
After a moment, she asked, "Why do you smoke?"
Dante looked at the cigarette between his fingers, its tip glowing faintly in the dark.
"It's just something I do," he said. "After my brother died."
Her breath caught slightly.
"I'm sorry. You've lost so much… Your father, your mother, your brother…"
Dante didn't speak. He just stared at the smoke curling into the sky, like memory slipping into the wind.
Caitlin's voice softened again. "Why do you fight, Dante? Really. I mean, Barry fights for the people he loves. Joe fights to protect. Cisco fights for justice. What about you?"
Dante didn't answer right away. His gaze drifted from the stars to the city lights far below. He inhaled slowly, then exhaled a cloud of smoke that vanished like a ghost.
Then he looked at her.
And Caitlin saw it.
A single tear. From his left eye only. Small. Silent. As if the rest of him refused to cry.
"I lost everything," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "And I have nothing left."
Caitlin's heart clenched.
"I fought," Dante went on, "and I survived for a long time now. Not because I had something to fight for… but because fighting was the only thing that kept me breathing."
His jaw tightened. "Wells… is just another bastard Fate put in front of me. And I'm going to win. I don't care if I have to bleed for it."
The wind picked up for a moment, as if echoing the weight of his words.
Caitlin's chest tightened. The air between them was heavy now, thick with unsaid feelings, broken pieces of what could have been. She saw the pain in his eyes—not the kind that came from loss, but the kind that lingered after too many days surviving when you'd rather have been gone.
She stepped closer. Not to touch him. Just to be near.
"And if you don't?" she asked quietly.
Dante finally turned to her. And smiled.
A soft, sad smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"If I lose," he said, "if I die…"
He let the cigarette drop to the ground, crushed it beneath his boot.
"…then what more could I lose?"
Caitlin didn't answer.
She just stood there beside him, silent beneath the stars, as a man with nothing left watched a world that kept moving without him.
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