My name is Ellie Allen, and I can safely say that I am normal – I always have been. It's just that lately, normal has become more of a relative term than the world would have you believe.

The world around us is changing, and whether or not you may be aware of the change, there is no stopping it. And as the proverb goes, "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

And that's exactly what has been happening, even where you can't see it. As the world changes, so do the people living in it. There's a new kind of human emerging – actually, not a human. A meta-human. Just like any other human being, only with something…extra. Some might call it a superpower.

I'm one of the meta-humans. I work with a team of people like me to stop other meta-humans from destroying the world.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to start at the beginning.

My story starts on my very last day as a 'normal' human being.

And that day started with the shrill ringing of my cell phone waking me from a peaceful sleep.

I roll over, blankets tangling around my legs as I groan into my pillow and blindly grope around for my phone, answering the call and balancing it against my ear. "'llo?"

"Allen!" the man on the other end of the line snaps. "Where are you?!"

"What?" I pick my head up off the pillow. "Joe, I'm not supposed to be at work for another…" I glance over at my bedside clock, then do a double take. The glowing numbers read 10:46 am.

"I – shit. Did my alarm not go off? My alarm didn't go off. Shit. Goddamn it. Joe-"

"Don't give me excuses, El," Detective Joe West says with no small amount of impatience. "Just get here, now. I've got cases waiting."

"Yeah," I mutter blearily, kicking the blankets off and stumbling out of bed. "Yeah, okay, I'll be there in a minute."

"Good." The line goes dead, and I set my phone down on top of my dresser. Quickly deciding that I didn't have time to shower, I grab my glasses and a change of clothes and quickly change, smoothing down my hair as I collected my bag and forensics kit on my way out the door.

I burst through the front doors of the Central City police station about fifteen minutes later and just barely miss running into one of the only people in this world who doesn't hate my guts.

"Barry!" I yelp, automatically grabbing his arm to steady us both before my brother drops one of the many boxes he's carrying. "Sorry, I didn't see you."

"I must've left my reflective vest at home." My twin brother, Barry Allen, offers me a small smile. "Wanna grab a box? I think they're putting you on the Delancey case – I bet Singh would love you if you finally closed it up."

"I highly doubt that," I reply but take one of the boxes out of his arms anyway, following him up the stairs. "Speaking of Singh, did he give you grief when I didn't show up on time? I can go talk to him."

"Nah, I'm good," Barry denies, shaking his head. "Singh's just crabby. He's always crabby. I've gotten used to it by now."

"Yeah, well, he doesn't hate you."

"He doesn't hate you either," my brother argues.

"Debatable." I smirk dryly as we enter the forensics lab, known around the precinct as the Allen Lab. I set the box of evidence down on my desk and reach around my computer to Barry's workstation and snatch the cup of coffee off his desk.

"Hey!" Barry yelps. "That's mine!"

I meet his eyes, take a large drink from the cup, and hold it out. "You want it back?"

"Ew, no." Barry makes a face as he signs for the evidence and begins to unpack the box. "You're gross, y'know that?"

"Ah, you know you love me," I tease as I boot up my computer.

Barry doesn't respond to that, and we soon fall into a familiar lull – keyboards clacking, machinery humming, and the occasional computer beep. I, for one, was alright with the silence, although to an outsider, it might have seemed a bit prickly.

See, Barry and I had a bit of an odd relationship – he was my brother, and I loved him, but in the search for our mother's killer, I had done some very, very stupid things; things which had caused a massive fight between Barry and I when we were eighteen. We eventually patched things up, of course, given that we now worked within the same room, but there was always going to be an unbridgeable gap between the two of us.

I'd long since accepted that as a fact. I was a scientist, that was what I did best. There wasn't much I could do about it now.

"Ellie? El!"

I rip myself from my internal pity-party and blink at Barry, who was watching my expectantly.

And standing right next to him is Captain David Singh himself.

"Captain!" I yelp, sitting bolt upright and slamming my knee into the underside of my desk. "Ow. Damn it, that hurt."

"Ellie?" Barry prompts gently.

"What? Oh. Yeah. Cap'n." I look up and disguise my grimace as a smile. "Hiya."

"Hello, Ms. Allen," Singh sighs derisively and side-eyes me like one would a piece of dog crap before looking at Barry. "Mr. Allen, I need you and your assistant to go over the evidence from the old Mardon brothers' cases."

"The Mardon brothers?" Barry asks skeptically. "Didn't they disappear or something? We never caught them. I – I mean, that's not to say that you can't do your job, Captain Singh, but that the police force-"

I clear my throat before Barry can climb any further into the hole he's dug for himself. "The Mardon cases are old. Is the evidence needed for court or something? Please, please say it isn't for court. I hate court. It isn't for court, right?"

"It's not for court," Singh assures us with a slightly disturbed look. "We may have reason to believe the brothers have resurfaced. I need you to look through all the files and establish a pattern so we know what to look for this time."

"Aye, aye cap'n," I chirp, turning back to my computer and placing my hands on the keyboard before glancing over my shoulder. "Was that it?"

Singh just glares at me once more for good measure before nodding to Barry and sweeping out of the room.

"You know, I could talk to him if you want," Barry offers a few moments later, breaking the relative silence that had settled around us. "I mean, you don't deserve to be my assistant. You're just as smart as I am, you've worked twice as hard-"

"Only because I was fixing my own mistakes," I correct. "Barry, stop. I've told you before – nobody here is going to like me. You're the prodigal son of the department, not me, and I'm okay with playing second fiddle."

"Not you're not."

I look up from the box of evidence I'd been inspecting and find Barry's eyes boring into mine. I hold his gaze for a long, tense moment before he looks down, staring intently at the tabletop.

"Thank you," I whisper, returning to box. I slip on a pair of gloves and start pulling the evidence bags out and sorting them into piles: one for blood samples, one for other biological samples, one for fingerprints one for weapons, and one for everything else. "Come on, we've got some brothers to catch."

Barry wheels his chair over, pulls a pile of evidence a little closer, and the tension in the room beats a hasty retreat.

.

Evidence processing is always a slow, boring process, no matter how smart we were; it was known to take an hour or two on single cases, let alone years' worth of cases. The Mardon brothers – Mark and Clyde – had quite the rap sheet: bank robberies, grand theft auto, breaking and entering, and seven different kinds of assault. Their spree went back about five years, to just before Barry and I were hired; since then, we'd found a sort of pattern: the two would pop up with a handful of crimes every few months, and the crimes would escalate to a certain point before they suddenly stopped.

"My guess is they get scared," I speculate, leaning back in my chair. "I mean, look at it. They haven't gotten caught at all, but the reports say that they're getting closer and closer and then…they just disappear."

"They don't seem like the type," Barry disagrees. "I mean, look at all the blood." He motions at the disturbingly large amount of bloodstained knives, fabric, guns, and other miscellaneous items. "Do they seem squeamish to you?"

"Point," I grumble, rolling my eyes. I grab the slightly smaller pile of fingerprinted evidence and bringing it over to the scanner. "You wanna cross-reference my fingerprints with your blood? See if we can…"

"...match any cases, yeah," Barry agrees.

"Are you two finishing each other's sentences again?" a voice asks behind us, and I spin around to see Detective Joe West, who had been my saving grace for as long as I could remember, standing in the center of the lab.

"Because I thought you quit that years ago," he continues. "It's freaky."

"Old habits," I supply simply with a half-shrug. "Hey, at least we aren't talking in sync. That was even creepier."

"I liked it!" Barry protests. "It was cool!"

"Yeah," I huff. "Come play with us, Danny. Forever…and ever…and ever…"

"Okay, okay, I get it!" He holds up his hands in surrender and turns to Joe. "Did you come to rag on us or did you actually have something?"

"I do." Joe hands us each a file. "There was a robbery at a bank on 4th. Two people are dead and Singh wants you to take a look."

"Crime scene?" I ask hopefully. Call me perverse, but I liked getting my hands dirty – a day without blood or guts or a dead body of some sort was a slow day.

"Crime scene," Joe confirms, long-used to my antics. "Be in the car in five or you're walking."

I nod as he leaves the room, and Barry and I quickly set a few tests to run in our absence and gather our kits.

"Come on," I tell my brother as we leave the lab and hit the lights. "Time to go save the day, right?"

Hey guys! So this is my first foray into fanfic for the Arrowverse - tell me what you think. This story is also posted on Ao3 under the same name, and honestly like that site better, but I posted it here to try and get more exposure. All new content will be posted to Ao3 first, so check there if you want the newest stuff.