A/N #2, PLEASE READ: So some days past I received a review from a guest, leaving me unable to reply, so to them if they should read this, or anyone else for whom the other note below, which has appeared on every one of these prelude stories, has not settled, as the review demanded "What's with the weird arrowverse one-shots? Just write a full story." these stories, along with the ability to start putting awareness that the big story was coming, are set to allow me to share and for any of you so kind as to read to have an establishing of this alternate universe which will be the setting of the 100-day/chapter story Once More Unto the Breach which will serve as this year's countdown to the new seasons (for the third year running :)). The prelude stories give space to some needed exposition that would have otherwise clogged the main story and would have needed to be rushed.

We are now on to the final preludes, the last of which is to go up on June 30th. After this, the big story is set to premiere July 15th 2018, the final chapter to go up on the day the last of the four shows premieres, this year being Legends of Tomorrow, on October 22nd 2018.

A/N: I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes.

Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days.

The story this will all be leading to, Once More Unto the Breach, is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!

Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!

A CRACK IN THE FLAME
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(22 of 24)

Location:
MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH
(ARGUS designation)

Barry Allen had not known his life had changed on the day it happened. No, that wasn't it. What he hadn't known was that the day he'd thought to be the day his life had changed wasn't the right one, that his life had already been changed, many years before. There would be no telling when the true day of change had occurred for him… and for others. All he knew was that he had been a small child at the time, years before the assumed day of change… That one he could pinpoint precisely.

He didn't talk about his family very often, his childhood… He was fortunate enough that Allen was not an entirely uncommon name, though living in the city, with that building big and front and center as it was, with the NorCo logo at the top, sooner or later someone was gonna say it, someone was gonna ask. Allen, huh? Any relation to that Nora Allen? For a long while, he'd lie and say no. Even today he still did, sometimes, though not for the same reasons. If he ever confirmed that, yes, they were related, and that he was her son, that would be about as far as he went. It wasn't theirs to know.

When he'd been little, he hadn't understood anything about business, about her company or how what it had to do with his mother not being around a lot of the time. He remembered those days only vaguely really. He had a lot of memories of just him and his father, a lot more of those than he did of him and his mother, or him and both of his parents. He had some memories that were of him, seeing his mother's face on the cover of a magazine, or on a television screen. He would point at it with the pride of a small child, because there was his mama. Only as the years wore on, and it became that those magazines and the television were a more common sight of Nora Allen than what he saw on a face to face basis, he would only stare and ask himself why she was out there and not with him instead.

By then his parents had already divorced, and he and his father had moved to some other place on their own. His mother would visit, or she would have him over to the old house every so often, and much as a part of him could understand that she was glad to see him, that she loved him, he got to feel like a distance had grown between them. And he came to feel as though the entire time they'd be together she would be thinking about some thing or another she needed to do instead of minding that he was there with her. Sometimes she would leave him there in the house, saying she needed to go somewhere, just for twenty minutes, an hour at the most. But she'd be gone… two hours, three… six… Once, he'd woken up on the couch where he'd been sitting, watching television and stuffing his face with what junk food she had on hand, to find it was morning… and she'd still be at the office. After that time, he hadn't wanted to go again, and his father hadn't forced him.

There had been a stretch of time where he didn't want to see her at all, because when he did see her… all he could see was how little she was a part of his life anymore, and every time he would have to consider seeing her it would just mean another period of time where he felt anguish in his gut, at the loneliness he had felt, the anger, the frustration… He'd always do his best not to let it show, but even if he succeeded in hiding it, that didn't mean he didn't feel it. No, he felt it… he felt it so much. When she'd started coming around, later on, like she'd had some revelation and she wanted to try and rebuild things with him, he wouldn't meet her halfway, he couldn't. Did she not understand how her being absent had made him feel?

But she wasn't giving up. She was actually really trying. And in the end, maybe telling himself he'd give her just one more chance, that if she failed him again he'd shut the door on her forever, but really just finding he couldn't completely abandon hope that he might get her back, he had started giving her some space to try for real. And from there… their relationship had started to blossom once more. Whatever memories he had of his mother in the old days, before and after the divorce, where she'd make him feel forgotten, unimportant, she had really put it all behind. His father couldn't bring himself to try, but he could, and he did. The period apart was still a thing that had happened for them, but his mother was in his life again, for good.

It was still in those early days, back when he'd started giving her some ground to stand on, that his life – he had assumed – had changed. And it all came out of a visit to his mother's office one day, where he'd met an old friend of hers called Eobard Thawne.

In the beginning, he'd had trouble even going into the NorCo building. For years, he'd gone around the city like that giant building did not exist, for all it represented, all it had taken from him back in the day. It was still the case on this particular day, where he'd gone to meet his mother for lunch and found her standing in her office, talking with a man sat on one of the couches, his back to the windows through which Barry saw the pair of them. When his mother had seen him approaching, she'd waved him in, smiling as she held out her arm to him, while her guest stood from his seat.

"Barry, I want you to meet Mr. Thawne here," she'd said. "We used to work together, back in the day." The man faced him with a jovial smile, which Barry met with a short nod. "Eobard, meet my son, Barry," she'd turned the introduction toward her guest, and the proud smile on her face, tinted with the emotional effect of being able to even make this kind of introduction, had made Barry loosen up a bit, managing a smile for the man standing there.

"I've heard so much about you already, I almost forgot we were in the middle of NorCo," Mr. Thawne had told him, making his mother laugh. "Well, I'm glad to finally put a face to the name. The infamous Barry," he intoned, stretching out his hand to him. Barry had reached back, by reflex more than anything, and he'd clasped the man's hand.

The contact had only lasted a second, maybe two, but for that moment time seemed to stall, a feeling rising in his chest sort of the way he might have felt, at the peak of a rollercoaster, the moment before the drop. Something in him roared to life, and it caught him so by surprise, so overwhelmingly and just a bit frighteningly… He'd let go, dropping his hand back to his side, dropping his gaze, too, though not before catching the smallest flicker in the man's face… like he'd felt something, too.

Neither of them had said a thing, and his mother hadn't noticed. Mr. Thawne had soon departed, leaving the two of them to go off on their lunch. Barry couldn't say what they had talked about at the time, his head was just off in some other place, reliving that second or two, over and over. His mother must have thought he was upset with her at the time, but there was nothing to be done for it. In the days that followed, he had tried to write the incident off as much less than what he'd made it out to be. He had probably been so hungry that he'd had some kind of low blood sugar kind of a thing. Yeah… It was nothing.

Just over a week after that day at NorCo, he'd been visited by Eobard Thawne.

The man had started off saying how he'd heard through his mother that he was between jobs at the moment, and that he might have had some openings at his office, if he was interested. But it was clear that wasn't the reason for his visit, and once the man had established that Barry could see right through his subterfuge, he'd cut to the chase. He wanted to know about that moment, in his mother's office, wanted to know what he'd felt, and if he'd ever felt anything like it before.

Barry had been hesitant to reply. Admitting that there had been something, actually saying it aloud, felt like taking a dive, into some place of no return. Once he acknowledged it, then there'd be no going back, it would become something that existed. But as Mr. Thawne had gone on, explaining what he'd felt when their hands had touched, it was hard to ignore the fact that it described almost exactly what he had felt, too, only with one additional thing. According to Thawne, he had felt for one small moment like he was losing substance… like he could see into Barry's mind. And the mad thing was, if he thought back to that moment, to the strangest part, it made him wonder… made him curious. The last thing he'd felt, before their hands had released, the last thing he'd seen, was the briefest flash of an image, of a young woman who looked vaguely like what his mother might have looked like, some years ago. Had that been Thawne's mind?

He'd had no choice, really. If he didn't see this through, now that he knew it was not in his head, it would stay in his head for who knew how long. And it wouldn't just be him. Thawne was just as curious about it, if not more. He'd sought him out… Maybe nothing would happen, maybe this had all been some one time thing, and they'd all been working themselves up for nothing.

He made a choice. With a deep breath and a tip of the head, he'd held out his hand toward the man. Thawne had given him a nod, and he'd reached out his hand, too. The two came clasped together between them, and to Barry's shock, the feeling started again. The urge was so strong there for him to let go, but he didn't. He held on. Whatever was going to happen, if anything was going to… to…

The rollercoaster had shot over the edge now, barrelling away with an intensity that felt like they were shooting into a furnace, and maybe for good reason, because in the next moment… Thawne was gone and… and… and…

And his hands were on fire.

"Wha…" he'd breathed heavily, panicking but also very aware of his surroundings, of trying not to burn the whole place down. "M… Mr. Thawne?" he'd looked around, and as he did, two things happened. The first was that he'd caught a glimpse of his reflection and been startled to see his hands were not the only thing on fire. The second was that he heard Mr. Thawne's voice.

"I'm here, I… I'm somewhere, I…" Barry kept looking around, but he wasn't there. It was almost like… like… He's in my head.

"What's happening?" he asked, the panic threatening to win out.

"Calm down, Barry," Thawne insisted.

"Calm down? I'm on fire!" he'd protested.

"Yes, well, all in all, I seem to be merged with you, so neither of us is without reason to panic, but we've got to try and keep it together if we're going to understand what this is. Do you understand?"

"Yeah… yes… I think so."

To this day, he couldn't believe he'd managed to not only quell those flames but also separate from Thawne, but he'd done it, leaving the two of them stood facing one another, wide-eyed and relieved. Barry had been right… there was no coming back from this.

The weeks and months that followed had involved a lot of searching, of trials and errors for the two of them, as they both did what could be done in order to understand what had happened to them that day, how they had come by this ability all of a sudden. The more they did, the more they learned, though it was never the answers to their original questions exactly, only more questions presenting themselves. They had nicknamed this merged state of theirs Firestorm, and it was going to remain a secret between them, really it was. Except…

Except for however much this thing between them had remained a secret, they knew what they could do. And if they were faced with some situation, some incident, where they knew they could come to people's aid, how could they just stand back and do nothing? So… they'd done something. And Firestorm had been unveiled to the city, making a name for himself as something of a hero. Barry couldn't deny a part of him had been thrilled by this turn of events. It felt good, to know that this thing in him which had once terrified him now meant the difference between life and death for some people out there.

Before long, this was becoming a regular thing for them. Better still, they started to make some friends, allies… partners… Amaya Jiwe with her frosty counterpart, Ronnie Raymond and his stretching, morphing sort of ability, and his wife, Cait Snow, for a long while the only of them without any sign of a meta power, until she had been revealed for a speedster. Before that day had ever come, she had managed to put an answer to an old question of theirs, the old question, the most important one. How had they gotten this ability of theirs? How had they all become metahumans?

Through the other three they had discovered the existence of the other Earth, of breachers. They had become aware of ARGUS, of the Waverider. They had assisted them many a time. But what Cait had managed to understand was that this other Earth had not always existed, and when it had come into being, the event itself, it had been the thing to change them, to seed in them this potential, however long it took to show itself. Barry had been assuming he had been perfectly normal before that day where he'd met Thawne, but no… He had been this way for years and years, since he was a small child, in all likelihood, never knowing, which he guessed made sense… He was never going to come into this power of his, not until he'd come into contact with the one with that same potential in him, not until he met Thawne.

This wasn't going to change much in the long run, except maybe to make him feel that much more committed to what the two of them could do together, them and their partners. But then there were still questions hanging overhead, weren't there? There always were. And they were all of them affected by these questions, about the other Earth, about the meta wave, about the person or people who might have been responsible for it all, and the chance that they might still have been out there. That might have been his concern, too. It certainly was one for Ronnie and Cait, and then Amaya, who had such a past with the breachers. But Barry had other things to concern himself with that couldn't help but take precedent.

One part of it had to do with his mother, with keeping this part of his life secret from her. The more they had strengthened their remade bond over the years that followed the day he'd met Thawne, the more he felt the need to protect her, which included keeping her out of any crosshairs that might have locked on to her for being his mother, but also… Well, after he… they… After Firestorm had come into contact with her, he'd found himself confiding in her, things he'd never expected to share. And so long as she didn't know it was him, well… What harm could it do?

The biggest thing that kept him from committing to the question of the Breach Earth and its origins was Eobard Thawne, the other half of their Firestorm.

This whole connection between them, it was more than their merged state. Even apart, he was always sort of connected to him, through their minds. There had always been moments where the two of them would end up clashing, disagreeing on the way to handle some situation or another, but in the end they always managed to get on the same page. The longer they'd been doing this though, and they'd been at it for a few years now, Barry couldn't help but feel like their motivations weren't as balanced as they had once been. Thawne was always in his head once they were merged, more of a passenger while he was the driver. But Barry could feel how much he would have given to be able to step into control, that they might hit harder, might give the breachers more reason to stay where they had come from rather than to come here. He wasn't in control though, and as far as they'd ever been able to see, he never would be. But if the two of them couldn't find a way to agree with one another, if they couldn't work together, then… what would that mean for Firestorm?

THE END

Check out the next prelude, coming June 25th!