...
Joe West might have been a good man at heart, but, from the perspective of a social worker, a newly divorced-from-a-vanished-drug-addict man with a history of child neglect was not the best candidate for a foster parent. Add in that Mr. West was the officer who arrested said foster child's father, only tilts the case further away from his favor.
He tried to get custody, however a major child abuse case a few years back orchestrated by a CCPD officer made the city wary about allowing cops leniency with the rules of social service. In another time and place, he could have pleaded his cause with the case worker and won; however here, his attempts at asking the woman out for coffee made her hackles raise faster than you could say flash. Her friend had been in charge of the Snart case, and had a long walk off a short pier in shame when she found out what those kids had been put through. She would not repeat that mistake.
Thus, a young Barry Allen found himself in foster care.
In later years, Barry would say that the group home was not a bad place. He had done the math, and the couple who ran the place weren't corrupt or embezzling, which was a rarity at the time. However, two people, with one working a full time job, couldn't easily watch all the goings on of ten teenagers.
Inevitably, Barry, the strange boy with strange ideas and a frighteningly acute interest in chemistry, was bullied. He never told anyone in authority, preferring to charge in headfirst to solving his problems, however bruises were telling.
Around the third time a leg casually kicked out to topple the poor boy down the stairs and scatter his books, something changed.
"What do you think you are doing?" one of the older girls in the house snarled, gracefully stepping around the crumpled puddle of Barry, who had nearly fallen on top of her.
"Nothing!" the ring leader drawled, even as his eyes darted around for escape. "Allen just tripped, he real clumsy like that."
The girl rolled her eyes. "Well, next time, make sure he doesn't 'trip' anywhere near me. Got it?"
The boys nodded vigorously, shot one last scathing look at Barry, who had managed to clamber to his knees to nurse his bruised elbows, and darted outside the front door.
"Idiots," the girl huffed. She looked down. "Can you move, I do actually need to get upstairs."
"S-sorry," Barry said, and cleared his throat. He hadn't spoken much since arriving here with his belongings in a trash bag. Whatever little money came from selling his old home was unreachable until he turned eighteen.
The girl tapped her foot impatiently as he tried to collect his scattered notebooks. Barry had managed to maintain his position as an honors student in his new school, and was suffering through both the workload and teasing that came with it.
Once the stairway was clear, the girl tossed her hair, sent him a glimmering smile, and waltzed away.
...
Barry was not an unobservant kid. Most of the time, anyway. But even he tended to notice that Butch and his gang of tormentors tended to flee when the girl, Lisa, was home.
The young scientist took note, and made a point to curl up in the corner with a book in whatever common room she happened to be. Not that she was there often, something about her older brother being around, but unable to get custody, yet still keeping an eye on his sister.
Lisa, as Barry would soon discover, was also not unobservant. So when she finally spoke to him, Barry was rather taken aback.
"You can sit closer you know. I don't bite."
The young boy blinked, and shuffled closer to her end of the couch.
Thus a strange tolerance was born.
...
"I fell while ice skating," she said non-chalantly, holding the swollen wrist close to her chest.
Barry wanted to question how hard the ice had hit back, but his words were lost in shivers. It was winter, and Butch thought it was hilarious to steal Barry's keys. He had been huddled around his backpack on the stoop for the better part of an hour waiting for the couple who ran the house to return.
Lisa took in the scene within half a second, and rolled her eyes. She didn't have a key either, though that was more because she only came to the home a few days out of the week than negligence. She plucked a pin from her hair. "Here, take this and that paperclip from your homework. I'll talk you through getting the door open."
Barry fumbled to put his backpack down, and snatched the large paperclip holding his book report together.
As the older girl talked him through picking the back door lock, he wondered whether he should be wary of someone who knew this specific skill. Then he reasoned that knowing how to pick a lock did not make someone a bad person, just handy.
The door soon swung open, and the duo scuttled inside. Barry wrapped Lisa's wrist for her, and she patted him on the head.
...
"There's this autobiography on Harrison Wells that just came out, and I really wanted to read it."
Barry huffed, arms thrown around his knees, which were drawn up close to her chest. Beside him, Lisa flicked through the channels on the staticy TV.
Her eyes ticked sideways. "Don't you usually get those books of yours from the library?"
"Butch stole my library card."
Lisa considered him, one brow raised. "You could just stuff it in you bag and leave."
Barry's eyes widened. "I can't steal from a library!"
"It's not stealing if you're planning on giving it back later."
The kid's lips pressed together. "But it's still wrong."
"So's Butch stealing your library card."
"But two wrongs don't make it right."
Lisa laughed. "You're adorable you know that?"
Later, Barry found the book under his pillow, the stamp of the CC public library on the spine. His hand hovered over the cover, mind whirling with how he was benefitting from a felany, and his moral compass didn't appear to have any qualms.
When Lisa asked him if he liked his present, he flushed, and said he would be returning it the next day. You know, after he had read the first chapter.
...