Laura awoke from a peaceful, dreamless sleep to someone knocking rapidly on her door. She groaned as the sleep that she had been enjoying very thoroughly quickly slipped away, and as the knocking continued, she forced herself out of bed and into the hallway. As the sun rose, her apartment started to fill with light, once more feeling like the home it had become, and she shuffled towards the door, the noise starting give her a headache. When she finally managed to open the door, Laura found herself momentarily speechless to find Barry standing there, looking far too alert considering the sun was just starting to rise. She wondered whether it was because of his speed or whether he was just naturally hyperactive.

Probably the speed.

"Barry, I haven't even looked at my watch yet and I already know it's too early for house calls, so please, make it quick."

"Sorry, I didn't realize, but I was thinking about the fact that you no longer have a job, and I was wondering if you would consider something police related."

For a few moments, Laura was pretty sure her brain had stopped working. "Di - did you get me a job?"

"Close; I got you a job interview. Joe was talking about how the precinct was short of CSIs for the day shift, and I thought it might be something you'd be good at."

"But if I'm, you know, being a metahuman and all, won't they notice I'm gone all the time?"

"Not really. Joe knows about my powers, so we could always work something out. I guess I could also bring you with me, if you don't get nauseous easily."

Laura wasn't really sure how Barry had managed to get into her apartment, only that she had now backed up several paces and that he had followed her in, and that she was wearing pajamas while he was wearing an outfit that looked like something someone with a job would wear.

"Coffee?"

"Sure." He grinned, a bit oblivious about the absurdity of the whole situation, and sat himself down at the counter as she turned on the brewer and the kitchen light. "Nice place."

"Yeah, well, I had to work my way through university, and that meant sharing a thin-walled two-bedroom apartment with a classmate who had a very active sex life. So, I promised myself that when I had enough money, I would get my own apartment. And when I started working at S.T.A.R. Labs, I never had to share an apartment again." Barry chuckled into his hand as the brewer's green light came on and she poured them both two steaming mugs. The silence that filled the space as they drank their coffee was comfortable and not at all awkward, if Laura was being optimistic, but when she finally put down the coffee, she felt a lot better about facing the day.

"So, what time is this interview?"

"Um…oh, crap, in like, fifteen minutes."

"What? Why didn't you say something?" Laura nearly choked on her coffee in her shock "Jesus, Allen!"

"It's okay - just change quickly and I'll run you there."

Ten minutes later, Laura and Barry came to a stop outside of the Central City Police Department. Luckily, she was exceptionally skilled at making herself look good with little time to spare, and the dress suit she was wearing was only slightly wrinkled from the sudden burst in speed, though it did take a few moments to stop Barry's shoes from smoking. Once that was under control, Barry led her inside, and as they walked towards the stairs that led up to the bullpen, Laura caught sight of the large golden mural that loomed over the lobby, and for a moment, she felt as if she were twelve years old again.

"Is my dad in trouble?"

"Coming?" Laura was shaken out of memory lane as Barry called to her from the top of the stairs, and she did her best to rush in her short yet somehow increasingly uncomfortable high heels. As they approached Joe's office through the empty bull pen, Laura realized that she was shaking minutely, and cursed herself silently.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, just some pre-interview jitters. Should we catch up afterwards?"

"Sure, just text me when you're done."

"Wait, I don't," Laura was abruptly cut off as Barry disappeared in a flash of red and yellow, "have your number."

He was lucky that it was early. She didn't really have the energy to go after him. With an exasperated sigh, she turned back towards the door and knocked soundly on it. After a few moments of listening to Detective Joe West, according to his nameplate, shuffle around papers in his office, the door opened.

"Dr. Sanders, Detective West; Barry tells me that you're interested in a forensic position with the police. Please, come in."


"Thank you, Detective West. I really appreciate you taking the time to see me."

"No problem. Our CSI division is really lacking, and we could always use an extra pair of hands on deck. You'll receive a phone call in a week or two."

"Of course; thank you again, Detective."

"My pleasure."

As soon as Joe closed the door behind him, Laura very nearly collapsed to the floor; she settled instead for leaning against the nearest wall and closing her eyes. Never had she been so vigorously questioned about her personal life - she was just grateful that he hadn't asked about her childhood or her family, or there would have been a lot more difficult questions to answer. With a deep breath, she steadied herself and made her way through the bull pen, which was now starting to fill up with officers who ignored her as she passed them. She remembered Barry telling her to meet him at his lab, but she wasn't quite sure where that was. Or how to get there.

Pretty much the same problem, she told herself.

"Hi, sorry to bother you, but do you think you could help me?" She asked an officer who was sitting at his desk. He looked up, and Laura could immediately tell that he needed much more than coffee.

"With what?" Okay, so, he was a bit rude. She couldn't blame him.

"I'm looking for Barry Allen."

"Ah, Allen. Down the stairs, take the elevators at the front desk. His lab's on the top floor." He grunted.

"Thank you."

A few minutes later, Laura stepped out of said elevator into a relatively large red brick room with a sun roof. The entire floor was a maze of tables stacked with towers of papers and boxes as high as her head. It was ultimately very chaotic, but as she made her way through the labyrinth, she was surprised to see a modicum of organization in the mess. It just made it clear that the Central City Police Department wasn't putting as much focus on their forensic department as they should be, especially if Barry was one of the only CSIs on the day shift.

"Barry?"

"Back here!"

As she rounded the corner of a table, Laura caught sight of Barry holding up a test tube. The goggles that he had strapped on looked ridiculous, and she bit back a smirk as she approached him. "What're you working on?"

"Just trying to isolate a compound from a cocktail this one guy was given the night of his death; it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Oh, wait, how did the interview go?"

"Great, but I felt like we were playing 20 Questions. I've never had to think so hard about what day my birthday is." Laura leant against one of the brick columns in the lab as Barry added a few chemicals before he put the tube into a centrifuge and pressed the button. As he took the goggles off and peeled off his gloves, Laura caught sight of what looked like a police board in the back of the lab, complete with newspaper clippings. As she approached it, however, Laura's eyes caught sight of the headlines of said clippings. They were all of the same thing, set in the same year.

Nora Allen's murder by her husband Henry.

"Barry, your mother...what happened?"

He didn't respond, and Laura turned around after a few long moments to see him staring at the board from his workspace, staring right through her. There was an air around him, as if he'd carried around a burden for so long that simply talking about it made it that much heavier. With a dull ache just barely registering in her chest, she sat down on the chair next to him. "You don't have to say."

When Barry finally spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"I was eleven."

"The...the clippings say your dad did it."

"That's not true, Laura. He didn't. I - I saw who killed him that night."

"What?"

"The man in yellow. Another speedster; someone like me."

"Jesus."

"Tell me about it. When I got my powers, I realized that I wasn't crazy. That the man who killed my other and put father in prison is real." And still out there, went unsaid, as Barry trailed, and Laura reached out to put her hand over his, brining them closer together despite their knees being in the way.

"She must have been a wonderful woman." She whispered.

"She was."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay." He finally spoke after a few moments of silence, and Laura smiled at him as he stood up, wiping none too subtly at his eyes with the back of his hands. "Thanks for listening. Not everyone stays around long enough to hear the whole story."

"Hey, what are friends for?"


A few hours later, Laura and Barry walked into S.T.A.R. Labs side-by-side.

"We were wondering when you'd get here." Caitlin muttered without even trying to hide the annoyance in her voice. Before either of them could try to defend themselves, Cisco interrupted the impending argument.

"Hey, Laura? Do you think we could talk for a moment?"

"Sure." Laura shrugged and left Barry's side as Cisco leapt up from his desk and dashed away into some unseen nook, popping his head out the door of one of the side rooms and gesturing for her to join him. Knowing Cisco, it was probably mostly harmless, but she approached slowly just to be sure. The last time they'd done this before the explosion most of the crew had talked like the cookie monster for hours. However, what she saw was completely different than what she had expected.

"What do you think?" Cisco asked eagerly as he swirled around the reclined medical table, revealing a mannequin that held what seemed to be her newest outfit. "I remembered that you liked blue a lot, and plain black does sort of scream 'villain', so I did some tweaking and voila!"

Before Laura stood a completely new and improved suit that made her heart race a bit faster the longer she stared. The jacket was the same, but now the sleeves were lined with a vivid shade of cobalt blue, resembling something a wealthy motorcyclist might wear. The pants had been swapped out, however, for a black tactical version, not too loose or too tight; in a word, perfect for combat. There was also a hood on the jacket that was made out of the same fabric with the same shade of blue as the sleeves. The goggles also looked a bit sturdier, the lenses just a tad darker, almost matching the blue on the rest of the outfit. There was also a pair of black, fingerless leather gloves that somehow completed the outfit. The boots were still the same, though, for which Laura was extremely grateful.

"Cisco…you're amazing."

"I thought Frostbite could use a little more colour. No biggie. The jacket and pants have been reinforced with a layer of Kevlar and tri-polymer, so you won't have to patch it up too often. Heating coils in the fabric will probably keep it from freezing but I'll keep working on that. So? What do you think?" Laura just grinned at him and wrapped her arms around Cisco, hugging him for a bit longer than necessary before she pulled away, breathless and all too ready to try it all on. However, just as she was about to thank Cisco again, the room was filled a loud beeping. Cisco suddenly rushed out of the room and nearly tripped over his feet trying to get to the computer consoles. From what she could see, it looked like they were patching through information from police scanners.

"We've got a fire at an apartment building at Fifth and Keele."

A second later, Barry, already in his red suit, appeared before Laura.

"What do you say we take Frostbite out for a test run?"

Not even five minutes later, Laura and Barry arrived at said fire, the world coming back into focus almost too quick for her taste. The apartment complex before them was raging with fire, and while they could hear sirens approaching in the distance, Laura could already tell they were too far away. A crowd of people, all covered in soot and shivering, were standing on the other side of the street, watching the fire with horrified expressions on their faces.

"It's the Flash!" Someone yelled over the roar of the flames, but Laura and Barry both ignored it, the fire at the forefront of their minds. Suddenly, the earpieces in Barry's suit and the one in Laura's ear blared to life with Caitlin's voice.

"Alright, Barry, you need to search the building for any more people. Laura, follow my lead. You' re going to tackle the worst parts of the fire so Barry reach any stragglers. Okay?"

"On it." They uttered together and Barry was gone in a second, Laura rushing into the building after him. The building was roasting inside, fire causing parts of the ceiling and the walls to fail and come crashing down, but she charged on, spreading as much cold as she could. The flames froze like grotesque statues, the heat around it dissipating almost immediately, but the parts of the fire that she wasn't able to reach melted them all too quickly, and Laura continued following Caitlin's orders even as Barry continued to remove people from the building. Most of the building had collapsed since the fire started, trapping a great deal of them inside. Pretty soon, however, they had moved on to the top floor.

"Okay, Laura, Barry's done, but you need to get out as soon as possible."

"Give me a minute." Laura replied, and she was making her way towards the stairs when a sharp, pained cry broke through the roar of the inferno. Someone was still in the building, definitely on the same floor as her. The only question was where.

"Caitlin, I think someone's been left behind. Can you figure out where they are?."

"Hang on...there should be a room to your right and down the hall. Be careful, Laura. It looks like you may have missed some of the fire."

Laura didn't respond as she followed Caitlin's directions, and even before she turned the corner she could hear the roar of the flames. The door at the end of the hallway was practically smoking, the light flickering underneath the door evidence of the flames inside. When she reached for the doorknob, however, her hand came away scalding, and Laura decided that she would have to settle for brute force. With as much strength as she could manage, Laura reeled back and slammed her foot into the lock. It fell away far too easily, and Laura had to back up a bit as a wave of flames burst forth from the room, a sudden wave of dizziness accompanying it seconds later. The inside of the room was nearly engulfed by the fire, and it took Laura a few seconds before she saw the source of the cry.

A young woman, probably only a few years younger than her, was trapped underneath some fallen ceiling beams, lying unconscious in the middle of the room. Laura quickly froze the growing flames and knelt to check the woman's pulse, thanking some higher power for her luck as a heartbeat fluttered weakly underneath her fingers, before working to get the beams off of her. However, just as the last beam fell to the side, there was a large crack from above, and Laura watched in horror as most of the roof crashed down just a few feet from them both, blocking her way out of the room and sending hot embers flying everywhere.

"Guys, I can't get out!"

"Okay, okay…Barry, Laura's trapped on the top floor, can you get to her?"

"Sure thing - I've got her."

Laura shielded the unconscious woman as the room started to get warmer and fill with black smoke. A distant shout from outside the apartment window caught her attention, and she dragged the woman over to it before cracking open the window. Several stories below, she could see Barry, a small speck of red on the green lawn of the complex, looking up at her.

"Laura, can you kick out the window?"

"I think so, why?"

"I'm going to run up the side of the building."

Well, okay; it wasn't ideal, but it was the best idea she'd heard so far. Besides, what did she have to lose?

Laura looked at the window, taking in the measurements quickly as smoke started to cloud her vision - it shattered easily enough as she kicked at it.

"Got it!" She yelled down at Barry after making sure the glass was clear, keeping a careful grip on the ledge as she watched him back up a few steps. The next thing she knew, he was a blur of red and gold and was standing beside her in the room. Without hesitation, she helped him get the woman up into a fireman's carry, and Laura watched as he ran back down the side of the building, rushing over to the ambulance and firetrucks waiting below. Despite feeling relief at having gotten the woman out, Laura immediately doubled over in a coughing fit as the smoke from the fire that had consumed the room started to fill her lungs. Barry still wasn't back, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

So, seeing no other way out as a wave of panic swept through her, Laura made the executive decision to jump out of the window. She simply stepped up on to the window ledge, the desperation to get away from the heat as it grew closer overriding her caution completely, and in one smooth motion, Laura flung herself out into the blissfully cool air, before she started to plummet towards the ground.

"No!" She heard someone shout, and the last thing she was aware of as the world slowed to a stop was a pair of arms wrapping around her before everything went dark.

I apologize for the cliffhanger, guys! Hope you like the new chapter!