"Tonight's the night, Bare," she announces as she plops on a stool by the kitchen island as Barry prepares breakfast at an impossible speed, of course.
Her brother puts down a plate of waffles in front of her then a cup of coffee next to it. He stops behind the island in front of her. "And by tonight being the night, you mean...?" He trails off, looking at her to answer his unasked question.
"You know..." She starts, getting up to grab the coconut creamer she'd gotten yesterday to try this morning. "When I'm gonna ask Cait out."
His eyes widen in understanding, slow smile creeping on to his face. "Wait, that's tonight?" She nods happily, reveling his growing excitement. "Oh my god, finally! It's about time one of you asks!"
"Asks what?" Her other brother says tiredly as he makes his last steps from the stairs. She feigns guilt as she smiles at him, feeling a little bad knowing it's barely the crack of dawn, and her and Barry are already making noise. He doesn't even bother using his speed; he just defeatedly stumbles to his seat next to her.
"She's gonna ask Caitlin out on a date," Barry says proudly before disappearing into another tornado, no doubt preparing Wally's breakfast next. She adds a dash of creamer in her coffee before returning the carton to the fridge. When she finally takes a sip out of her cup, she grimaces and vows to just stick to her regular almost or oat milk duo. When in doubt, dairy is fine.
Almost three or four times the amount of waffles she has are laid in front of Wally just as he faces her and expresses a reaction that is almost identical to that of Barry's, except for the raised hand asking for a high five. She slaps his hand with much gusto.
"After months of watching you two pine over each other, it really is about time," he comments before shoving half a waffle in his mouth.
She wrinkles her nose in disgust and lightly slaps his shoulder. "We weren't pining after each other," she corrects.
"Mhm," Wally hums through his food. He looks at Barry and points at the fridge. "Can you pass the OJ?"
It's at that moment their dad walks in. "Morning." He glances at Wally and sighs. "You chew with your mouth closed, boy."
Practically inhaling the other half of the waffle, he smiles as an apology, cheeks bulging. Their dad shakes his head. Barry hands him a carton of the orange juice.
"Slow day today, huh?" Dad asks as he brews a new cup of coffee. He likes it stronger than the rest of them, save for Barry, who can live off on his drink at Jitters, which is pretty much just brewed coffee with espresso. "Wally, get a glass," he scolds as the son in question is about to chug the juice straight from the carton. Gross.
She and Barry look at each other briefly. "Nah," they both answer at the same time. She continues, "There was a break-in at the museum last night. Barry and I handled it."
Her dad nods. A typical night; crime never sleeps, after all. "And the girl?"
Right. The blonde teenager still in a coma in the med bay. It's been nearly two months since the party at Star City, where Team Flash had come back to Harry, busy trying to insert an IV into an unknown woman.
"Who the hell is this and why are we drugging her?" Cisco had asked incredulously as Caitlin had immediately sprung into action.
"Not sure," Harry had answered.
"What happened?" she had asked. The woman looks young, too young to be called a woman actually. She has to be fourteen years of age; she's so small, even tinier than her dad's soulmate, Cecile. She has long blonde hair and pale skin, but it's a pallor that is considered unhealthy. She had worn makeup, but it's all faded and scattered across her face. She's a superhero, or at least trying to be one, given her age. This is evident by the suit she has on that is clearly a supersuit: it's dark purple with a white cape that's all torn and ripped; she'd clearly been fighting before being brought here by Harry.
"I don't know. A breach opened right on your street, she popped out, asked if she saved everyone and passed out."
Even with Caitlin, who is definitely more adept with a needle, had broken every IV needle they had on hand. Caitlin had then decided to just give the girl an NG tube EEG electrodes to feed her and monitor her cardiac activity respectively. Upon hearing her respiration, she had decided against giving her oxygen.
"And you didn't SOS?"
"Well, you're all here now, aren't you?"
God, she's young. She would have wondered if she truly is a hero or someone in costume if it hadn't been for her indestructible skin and apparent wounds all over her limbs and torso, which would had gone unchecked if Caitlin hadn't removed the girl's jacket for the EEG leads.
"Oh my god," she couldn't help but exclaim. "Are those... glowing?"
"Oh boy..." Cisco had hastily made his exit as he says, "We gotta make sure those aren't exposed to radiation."
"It's not radiation," Barry had said. "They're time wounds."
"What?"
Barry had rubbed his face in concentration. "Think of it as... road rash or carpet burn, except with the time-stream across the Speed Force."
"You don't get those," she had said pointedly, trying to remember if he ever had such injuries.
"Right, because I know how to navigate my way through time." He had winced upon saying that, undoubtedly remembering Flashpoint. "I think... I think she's a speedster. Just not trained properly for time travel."
"Shouldn't she have speed healing then?"
"Not with this kind of damage. It's a lot. Judging by how deep the abrasions are and just how many she has, I'm guessing she's time traveled a lot to," he had glanced at Harry, "save whoever it was she's trying to save."
Caitlin hadn't looked hopeful. "I can't do much without a blood sample, but judging by her vitals and brainwave activity, her body's trying to heal itself so she just shut down. I'm afraid we won't know much until she wakes up."
"And how long will that take?"
"I don't know."
And they've been playing the waiting game since.
"No change," Barry answers solemnly. "Waffle?"
And just as Dad is about to respond, all their phones go off, a tone they all know is STAR Labs-related. Barry is the first one to be able to check the alert and he's already out the door by the time she fishes her phone out of her pocket.
911 GIRL GONE
*—*—*—*—*
"Check every possible camera!" she commands as Barry settles her down in the Cortex. Wally arrives a second later with their dad.
"We're trying! We have Felicity's program set up but even it's having a hard time finding her!" Cisco yells back in a panic, furiously typing away at his tablet.
"Maybe we'll have better luck if we bring Smoak," HR suggests.
"Ow," Cisco grumbles. "That hurts."
HR tilts his head and scrunches his face, looking apologetic. "Sorry."
"We have to find her," she interrupts. "She's a possible speedster and we don't even know if she's really good."
"I doubt that," Caitlin says as she pulls up a video on the screen.
It's footage from the camera in the med bay. It shows the young girl lying still, as she has stayed for the past few weeks. Not a moment later, she wakes up, startled and alone. She slowly pulls out the tube that's in her stomach out her nose, crying as she does so. She looks around once more, as if to check if anyone at all is there with her. The soft whimpers breaks her heart at the mere thought of just how scared the girl looks.
"Papa?" She cries out. "Mom? Anyone?" She cries more. "Daddy... Someone...?"
She pulls out every electrode stuck on her, immediately making the monitor make a steady noise. The noise seems to alarm her, making her flash out of STAR Labs with her suit in hand, purple lightning in her trail.
"She must have been so scared to wake up all alone in a place she's never been in..." She looks at Cisco, feeling fierce determination to find her and help her get back to her family. "Satellite images?"
Cisco shakes his head. "Nope. We have an algorithm out for her lightning and facial recognition, but nothing's coming up. We'll know if she tries to time travel or Earth hopping, too. Any breaches opened will immediately alert us."
Barry puts a hand on her shoulder to catch her attention. "Wally and I will go look around. Maybe she's somehow passing through blindspots." Barry exchanges glances with Wally, and they both nod before disappearing into a storm to their mannequins for their suits then right out the building.
"I'll go to the precinct. Maybe there's been sighting of a new speedster or... purple lightning." And with that, her dad makes his exit.
"Please, please, please... we just want to help," she says under her breath, hoping a miracle will happen in the next few minutes. "Barry? Wally? Anything?"
"Nope," Wally answers. "She's nowhere this side of the city. I even checked Keystone, just in case." She can definitely hear her brother chew—she's betting it's pizza from Keystone—but decides to not comment on it.
"Barry?" A beat. She gets more worried by the second.
"Barry?" Caitlin repeats. "Did you—"
"I found her." He sounds somber.
She glances at Caitlin, who looks back just as concerned. "Where are you?"
He sighs softly. "My parents' old house."
*—*—*—*—*
They had all collectively made the decision for Cisco to come get them through a breach. Barry gathers her in his arms as they walk into the portal straight to the STAR Labs medical bay. Poor girl is hysterical and begs not to be brought back to STAR Labs, that she just wants to go home.
Barry offers to let her down on one of the chairs in the Cortex, figuring forcing her to go back on the bed would be traumatizing, since she did wake up on her own this morning. She nods a little, and Barry lets her down on one of the office chairs. He tries to give her some space, but she doesn't let go of his shirt, fingers clinging on. He glances at everyone and simply stays put.
She can tell it takes everything in Caitlin's self-control to not make the girl go to the med bay so she can check her over, but the frightened look on her face is enough to keep her from asking.
"Can you tell us your name?" She asks gently, sitting on her heels so she's level with the girl.
The girl smiles a little, despite the tears. "Dawn." She looks around at everyone, wiping away her tears and seemingly composing herself. "So, you don't know my name. You're all so, so young... I guess I messed up big time with the Speed Force."
"So you from the future?" Cisco asks. "Another Earth? Both?"
She starts to answer but then stops, thinking about it for a second. "Uh, I'll go with the future."
"You know us," Barry comments. "You said we look young, and that we don't know your name, meaning we should."
She looks down, hands wringing together despite her still-healing time wounds. "Am I allowed to answer that? I don't... I don't really know the rules."
Wally guffaws. "Sounds like whoever is training you sucks."
She lightly hits his abdomen. "Wally," she says scoldingly.
Dawn bites her lip, deep in thought, before looking up at Barry, as if to ask if it's okay. Barry nods encouragingly.
"Okay... I should probably just say my full name then." She smiles up at them crookedly, trying to look as earnest as she can. "Hi. My name is Thea Dawn Allen." She looks directly at Wally. "Barry Allen is my dad and, yeah, I guess he does kinda suck as a mentor."
AN: *will edit later
my own goddamn oc is ooc because yeah she would definitely fly off to oliver first because it's with him shes at her safest. but this dawn has gone through a lot of mental and physical trauma. she'll latch on to the parent she sees.
(Shameless self-promotion: I have a tumblr and my username is temmie-loony. I post way too many Karivarry stuff on there that I can't necessarily put into fics
Also, if you follow my Tumblr, you'd know that I actually gave Kara, Oliver and Barry kids.
Oh and I also have a YouTube channel called Temmie Loony. I've already made a couple Karivarry videos of both the angsty and fluffy kind!
Lastly, I have a Ko-fi account, that can be accessed on my profile here or on my Tumblr.
Thank you so much for reading!