"Thirtieth Olympiad," the Doctor announced as he and Barry strolled together down a London street. "Thought it might cheer you up a bit. Only seems like yesterday a few naked Greek blokes were tossing a discus about, wrestling each other in the sand with crowds stood around baying. No, wait a minute, that was Club Med. Just in time for the opening doodah, ceremony, tonight. Last one they had in London was dynamite. Wembley, 1948. I loved it so much, I went back and watched it all over again. Fella carrying the torch. Lovely chap, what was his…"

"Mm," Barry muttered, not really looking.

"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked, finally noticing. "Not a fan of the Olympics?"

"It's not the Olympics, Doctor."

"What is it?"

Barry sighed, running his hand through his hair. "Doctor, I haven't had my speed for very long, but now that it's gone…it, it feels like part of me is gone too."

"It made you part of something greater," the Doctor nodded, his dark eyes intense. "You spent your life searching for the impossible, and then you became the impossible."

Barry nodded, drawing a hand over his face. "I love it, Doctor. I love everything about it. The feeling of running hundreds of miles per hour. Wind and power just rushing past my face. And now…I'm back to normal."

"No!" the Doctor exclaimed as they swung onto a suburban street. "You're not normal, Barry. You've never been normal. The boy who spent a decade searching for the impossible, then found it in a restaurant in London. You've travelled through time, fought monsters, saved the world with a pot of pasta…"

Barry grinned briefly in nostalgia, but then his smile faded as he looked around at a nearby telephone pole, covered in Missing posters.

"You should really look at this."

"What's taking them, do you think?" the Doctor asked. "Snatching children from a thoroughly ordinary street like this." He shivered and rubbed his arms. "Why's it so cold? Is someone reducing the temperature?" "

It says they all went missing this week," he noted. "Weird, huh?"

Both turned to see a woman hurrying out with her trash. She dumped the bin and all but all but ran back inside.

"Whatever it is, it's got the whole street scared to death," Barry noted. "Doctor, what…"

As the Time Lord ran over to examine someone's lawn, a Mini stalled on the road, and Barry and one of the men fixing the road came over to help push it, mentioning that it was the fifth that day. They pushed and strained and shoved…and then the engine suddenly fired, landing the worker on his rear end. Barry grabbed for him, but forgot that his reflexes were back down to normal.

"Does this happen all week?" he asked, holding out a hand instead.

"Yep," the man said with a nod, taking Barry's hand. "Since those children started going missing?"

"Yeah, I suppose so," the man shrugged, and Barry's eyes narrowed.

"It takes them when they're playing," an older lady said.

"What takes them?" Barry asked, perking up.

"Danny, Jane, Dale. Snatched in the blink of an eye."

Intrigued, Barry would've questioned her more, but was distracted by the Doctor backing onto the street, shouting that he was a police officer.

"See, look. I've got a colleague. Lewis."

Lewis? Barry thought, but nodded.

"What are you going to do?" a new lady asked. "The police have knocked on every door," the old lady continued. "No clues, no leads, nothing."

"Look, kids run off sometimes, all right?" a middle-aged man insisted. "That's what they do."

"Saw it with me own eyes," the old woman shook her head. "Dale Hicks in your garden, playing with your Tommy, and then pfft! Right in front of me, like he was never there. There's no need to look any further than this street. It's right here amongst us."

Suddenly, it seemed, everyone started talking at once, until the Doctor shouted, "FINGERS ON LIPS!"

Following action to words, he placed a finger to his own mouth, and, bemused, everyone else followed. He nodded to Barry, who sheepishly obeyed, and continued."In the last six days, three of your children have been stolen. Snatched out of thin air, right?"

"Er, can I?" the old lady asked, slowly raising her hand, before speaking. "Look around you. This was a safe street till it came. It's not a person. I'll say it if no one else will. Maybe you're coppers, maybe you're not. I don't care who you are. Can you please help us?"

"We can," Barry promised, his gaze drawn by a girl in an upstairs window. "And we will."

Examining the spots the children had vanished, they found a metallic smell and an energy that made the hairs on the backs of the Doctor's hand stand on end.

"Can we tell how they were taken?" Barry, ever the prospective CSI, asked. "Like, a teleport, or disintegration, or…"

"Some kind of ionic energy," the Doctor mused, which didn't tell him much. "Whatever it was, it used an awful lot of power to do this."

"I don't wanna imagine what it's using them for," Barry frowned, and his mentor nodded grimly.

While snooping around, Barry heard a thumping, clattering noise coming from behind a garage door. He gently opened it…and then remembered he no longer had super speed. He ducked and rolled backwards over his shoulder as a ball of black energy spun out of the doorway and whirred towards him. A quick blast from the incoming Doctor's sonic immobilized it, and he explained that it had been animated by the same kind of energy that had been snatching people.

"That is so dinky!" Barry enthused. "Go anywhere creature. Fits in your pocket, makes friends, impresses the boss, breaks the ice at parties."

"I know!" the Doctor grinned at him. "Let's take this little beauty back to the TARDIS, see what we can get."

"Get out of here!" the Doctor exclaimed, peering intently at the scanner.

"What's it say?" Barry asked eagerly. The Doctor pulled a pencil out of one of his voluminous pockets and rubbed the eraser end over the ball, grinning as some of it disappeared.

"Is that graphite?" Barry gasped, and the Doctor beamed at him. "Full marks, Barry Allen! Gold star. Scribble creature, brought into being with ionic energy. Whatever we're dealing with, it can create things as well as take them. But why make a scribble creature?"

"Maybe it was a mistake," Barry shrugged. "I mean, you scribble over something when you want to get rid of it, like a, a drawing. You said it was in the street…" he trailed off, and told the Doctor about the creepy little girl he'd glimpsed through the window. "Even her own mom looked scared of her," he finished.

"You are going to make a great CSI one of these days!"

"Hello!" the Doctor said to the woman who opened the door. "I'm the Doctor and this is Barry. Can we see your daughter?"

"No, you can't," she snapped.

"Okay. Bye," the Doctor said cheerfully, and they turned away. Barely had they gone half a dozen steps when she called after them.

"Why? Why do you want to see Chloe?"

"Well," the Doctor shrugged. "There's some interesting stuff going on in this street, and I just thought…Well, we thought, that she might like to give us a hand."

"Sorry to bother you," Barry added.

"Yeah, sorry," the Doctor grinned. "We'll let you get on with things. On your own. Bye again."

"Wait!" the woman called again. "Can you help her?"

The Doctor turned back, met her eyes, and smiled. "Yes, I can."

"She stays in her room most of the time," the girl's mother, who introduced herself as Trish, said with a quiver in her voice. "I try talking to her, but it's like trying to speak to a brick wall. She gives me nothing, just asks to be left alone."

She went on to say that the father had died a year ago, and that he was definitely not someone to miss. Barry's quick glance around the house confirmed it—there were childish drawings and a few photos of the girl, Chloe, and her mom, but the dad was conspicuous by his absence.

"Why are you afraid of her, Trish?" the Doctor asked gently.

"I want you to know before you see her that's she's really a great kid," the woman told him quietly.

"I'm sure she is," the Doctor agreed.

"She's never been in trouble at school; you should see her report from last year. A's and B's."

"Can I use your bathroom?" Barry broke in, and she nodded. Slipping into Chloe's bedroom as the girl came downstairs, he looked around, and was struck by the amount of drawings covering the walls, all done with impressive skill for someone so young. It reminded him of the bedroom of Kyle, a high school friend of his, a dreamy boy whom Barry had befriended when he'd stood up for him against Tony Woodward. They'd been close before they fell out of contact after graduating high school.

He was startled from his thoughts by a noise from the wardrobe, and stumbled back, knocking over a jar of colored pencils. He lunged, intending to catch them all in mid-air, but he barely grabbed one. He muttered under his breath, glad Joe and Henry weren't around to hear him, and looked up again as the wardrobe doors rattled again. Bracing himself, Barry cautiously moved forwards and opened them, revealing…a bunch of clothes. A hot, nasty wind blew against his face, and as he moved them aside, a drawing of a bearded, yellow-eyed man on the back wall glared out at him.

"I'm coming," it growled.

"Doctor…" Barry called over his shoulder, not looking away from the picture. Moments later, the Time Lord was there, slamming the door shut. To Barry's complete un-surprise, Chloe revealed that she'd drawn her father.

"We need to stay together," Chloe said, but shook her head when her mom agreed.

"Not you, us. We need to stay together, and then it'll be all right."

"Have you seen her drawings?" Barry asked. "What they can do?"

Over Trish's protests, he spoke quietly but firmly, telling her mother that Chloe had used the drawings to take the missing boys. "Her and whoever-or whatever-possessed her. Making living people into pictures…" he threw a glance over his shoulder at the thankfully quiet wardrobe. "And pictures come alive."

"Get out," Trish demanded.

"Have you seen those drawings move?" Barry asked.

"I haven't seen anything," she shook her head, but it was the Doctor's turn to step forward, voice quiet but impossible to argue with.

"Yes, you have, out of the corner of your eye. And you dismissed it, because what choice do you have when you see something you can't possibly explain? You dismiss it, right? And if anyone mentions it, you get angry, so it's never spoken of, ever again. You're terrified of her. But there's nowhere to turn to, because who's going to believe the things you see out of the corner of your eye? No one. Except me."

"Except us," Barry corrected, and the Doctor threw him a quick, approving grin.

"Who are you?" Trish whispered.

"We're help."

Downstairs, the Doctor unscrewed a marmalade jar and stuck his fingers in. Barry reached out, took the jar, and set it gently back on the countertop, along with a firm look. Sometimes, despite the 900 year age gap, it felt as if he were the parent.

"So those pictures, they're alive," Barry mused.

"Ionic energy," the Doctor explained. "Chloe's harnessing it to steal those kids and place them in some kid of holding pen made up of ionic power."

"Won't hurt them, will it?"

"Nah," the Doctor shook his head. "Tickle a little, at most. Still won't be fun, mind you, but…" he sniffed.

"OK, and the dad from hell in her wardrobe? Can she animate drawings with this ionic energy?"

"Mmm, shouldn't be a problem."

"Like the scribble creature!"

"Exactly!" the Doctor nodded.

"How many times do I have to tell you he's dead," Trish protested, but Barry shot her a dry look.

"He's got a very loud voice for a dead guy, Trish."

"Chloe's real dad is dead, but not the one who visits her in her nightmares," the Doctor mused. "That dad seems very real. That's the dad she's drawn and he's a heartbeat away from crashing into this world."

"She always got the worst of it when he was alive," Trish offered, and Barry winced. Growing up as the adopted son of a cop and a prospective CSI, he'd heard a lot of nasty stories, but when he heard about parents hurting their children…His mind flashed back to Eddie Connolly, sixty years before, but he pushed those thoughts aside.

"So, she's got to be possessed or something, right?"

"By what?" Trish demanded.

"Let's find out," the Doctor said, and launched himself back upstairs.

Back in her bedroom, Barry watched Chloe give the Doctor a Vulcan salute.

"Nice one," the Doctor smiled, then moved forward to place his fingers on her temples.

"There we go," he murmured as she slumped.

"Ssh, it's okay," Barry said to Trish as she started to protest. "Trust him."

"Now we can talk," the Doctor said to the girl, who responded in a voice not her own.

"I want Chloe. Wake her up. I want Chloe."

"Who are you?" the Doctor demanded, but the being just kept repeating that it wanted Chloe. Barry watched his friend's body language carefully. He knew what it looked like when he was facing down genuine monsters—the Doctor drew himself up to his full height, grew cold and distant, and glared down at the threat of the day with the full wrath of a Time Lord. This, though…it was far gentler.

"You're lonely, I know. Identify yourself," the Doctor ordered.

"I am one of many. I travel with my brothers and sisters. We take an endless journey. A thousand of your lifetimes. But now I am alone. I hate it. It's not fair, and I hate it!"

It's a kid, Barry realized in shock, as it named itself "Isolus." The Doctor explained that the Isolus Mother jettisoned millions of spores, children, who kept themselves connected through an empathic link. In the meantime, they used their ionic energy to keep themselves amused—literally create make-believe worlds. The Isolus explained that she had fallen to Earth, alone and afraid, unable to feed off her siblings' love.

"My pod was drawn to heat, and I was drawn to Chloe Webber. She was like me, alone. She needed me, and I her."

"You empathised with her. You wanted to be with her because she was alone like you."

"Yeah, know the feeling," Barry muttered.

"I want my family. It's not fair!" the Isolus protested.

"I understand. You want to make a family. But you can't stay in this child. It's wrong. You can't steal any more friends for yourself."

"I am alone," it repeated, and Barry's heart went out to it. For once, it wasn't an evil alien menace, just a kid, afraid and alone. Before they could question her any more, however, there was a crash from the wardrobe.

"I'm coming to hurt you," the picture growled.

"Trish, how do you calm her?" Barry asked quickly. "When she has nightmares, what do you do?"

"I sing to her," she said, looking back and forth.

"Then start singing," the Doctor snapped. A few rounds of "Kukabarra" later, Chloe was asleep in her mom's arms and the wardrobe was silent once more.

"He came to her because she was lonely," Trish wept, cuddling her daughter. "Chloe, I'm sorry."

As Chloe slept upstairs, the other three cleaned up all of her crayons and pencils.

"Chloe usually got the brunt of his temper when he'd had a drink," Trish admitted. "The day he crashed the car, I thought we were free. I thought it was over."

"Did you talk to her about it?" Barry asked.

"I didn't want to," she confessed.

He sighed, flopping down on the couch. "Listen, Trish. When I was a kid…my mom got killed. And my adopted dad, he was always there for me. He didn't always believe me, but…when I just wanted to talk, he was never too busy for me. Never. Maybe that's why Chloe feels so alone. Because she has all these terrible dreams about her dad, but she can't talk to you about them. Turns out no one can outrun pain. Life is tragedy, but it's also precious and sweet and extraordinary. And the only way I know to honor my mom's life is to keep running."

Trish frowned, then nodded slowly.

"And it won't stop, will it, Doctor? It'll just keep pulling kids in."

"It's desperate to be loved. It's used to a pretty big family. Say, around four billion?"

Barry hissed through his teeth.

"When I was a kid, I didn't have a whole lot of friends," Barry confessed as he leaned against the TARDIS console, watching the Doctor build a gizmo. "Not a lot of people want to hang out with the son of a convicted murderer. S'why I came to England in the first place. Get away, you know? Fresh start."

"Mmm," the Doctor nodded. "Know the feeling. Give me the styner-magnetic…the thing in your left hand."

Barry obliged. "But, Doctor, what if it throws a temper tantrum? The amount of power we're talking about…"

"It's a scared kid!" the Time Lord protested, sticking a couple of bits together with duct tape. "Binary dot. She's just scared and upset, that's all."

"You sound like a dad," Barry smirked.

"I was, once," the Doctor told him quietly, and the young man whipped his head around. "Wait, what?" he asked, but the Doctor just slammed closed the lid on his gizmo and jumped up to the console.

"I think we're there. Fear, loneliness. They're the big ones, Barry. Some of the most terrible acts ever committed have been inspired by them. We're not dealing with something that wants to conquer or destroy. There's a lot of things you need to get across this universe. Warp drive, wormhole refractors. You know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold."

He's the last of his kind, Barry thought, Like Kara and Clark, and his heart clenched in pain for his friend. He pointed at the scanner screen, and the Doctor, misunderstanding his gesture, took his hand. Barry snorted quietly and squeezed it for a second before nodding down.

"No, look, I'm pointing."

"Aha!" the Doctor exclaimed, looking at the energy source on the screen. "It's the pod! It is in the street. Everything's coming up Doctor."

"Okay," the Time Lord announced. "It's about two inches across. Dull grey, like a gull's egg. Very light."

"So, we just dig it up, and then what?"

He never did get an answer—just the sound of the gizmo shattering. When Barry whipped around to see it lying on the ground, with no sign of the Doctor or the TARDIS. One second later, he'd processed what had happened. Two seconds later, he had launched himself towards Chloe's room. Three seconds later, he was really missing his super-speed.

Bursting back into Chloe's room, he looked around at the girl, eyes falling on a piece of paper bearing the images of the Doctor and the TARDIS.

"You gotta give him back," Barry ordered.

"No," she snapped.

"Don't you realise what you've done? He was the only one who could help you. Now bring him back!"

"Leave me alone!" the Isolus protested. "I love Chloe Webber!"

"Don't you want to get back to your family?"

"The pod is out of power!"

"What kind of power? Do we need to plug it up to the National Grid or something?"

"No!" the Isolus snapped. "Leave me alone! Or I'll draw you too!"

"Fine," Barry muttered. He picked up the picture, and feeling a bit silly, spoke to it. "Doctor, if you can hear me, I'm going to get you out of there. I'll find the pod. I'll get this fixed. Trish, don't leave her alone, no matter what, okay?"

"O-okay," she stammered.

With a brisk nod, he carefully folded the picture into his pocket and strode off.

Outside, Barry headed towards the road worker, Kel, who'd been helping him earlier.

"Do me a favor, okay? Think back six days."

"Six days," Kel said. "When I was laying this the first time round."

Barry's body might have been slower now, but there was nothing wrong with his mind.

"You mean there was a pothole here six days ago?"

"Yep! Filled it in the first time."

"Huh…" Barry frowned, and ran to the van. He grabbed a pickaxe and vaulted back out, ignoring the other man's protests. With a hefty swing, he brought it down once, twice, three times. Dropping to his knees, he scrabbled in the rubble until he found…

"It went for the hottest thing in the street," Barry breathed. "Your tar."

"What is it?"

"It's a spaceship."

"I don't care if you've got Snow White and the Seven Dwarves buried under there, you don't go digging up…"

Barry tuned the man out and unfolded the picture of the Doctor. "Doctor? What do I…"

He stopped as he realized that the picture had changed. Now, the Doctor's arm had lifted…and he was pointing at the Olympic torch. In the distance, sirens wailed. Barry smiled.

Pushing himself through the crowd, Barry was stopped at the barricade by a policeman.

"Sorry, you'll have to watch from here."

"Fine," Barry muttered. "I'll do this the hard way."

As the torch approached, the pod in his hand chittered.

"You felt it, didn't you?" Barry whispered, and tossed it into the air with all of his might. "Feel the love."

He watched as the tiny spaceship flew into the flames. The torchbearer staggered, then carried on.

"Yes!" Barry whispered, clenching his fists.

"You did it!" Kel exclaimed. "What was it you did?"

"That spaceship's powered by emotion as much as heat," Barry explained. "So I gave it a combination of both. Love, and hope, and heat."

"I don't know who you are, or what you did, but thank you, darling!" the old lady he'd spoken to earlier exclaimed. "And thank that man for me too."

"I will," Barry nodded. "No prob. He'll be back by the TARDIS. All the drawings have come to life…" He trailed off as he spotted a red glow from Chloe's bedroom window. "That means all of them. Oh, no."

Sprinting back to Chloe and Trish's house, he was just in time to see the door slam shut in his face. He rattled the doorknob, but it didn't budge an inch.

"Trish, get out!" he yelled.

"I can't!" she called through the wood. "The door's stuck!"

Barry cast a hopeless glance over his shoulder, but the Doctor didn't appear, probably still back with the TARDIS. And the sonic didn't work on wood, anyway…he clenched his fists, really wishing he still had the pickaxe. For a moment, he thought of breaking in through the window, or trying to find a side door, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't do much good. Whatever needed to happen, Chloe had to do it, or no one could. He heard Chloe whimper, and the deep, rumbling voice of the picture.

"Chloe, I'm coming to hurt you."

"Please, dad. No more."

"Chloe, listen to me!" Barry ordered. "It isn't real like the others. It's just energy left over by the Isolus, but you can get rid of it."

"I can't!" she insisted.

"You've got to!" he called, pounding on the door. "You have to stop running away from your fears! You have to face him head-on! Trust me, I know all about running from the bad stuff, but if you get started, you won't ever stop! The two of you, together, you can stop it! You still have your mom! You're not alone! You can do this!"

"Chloe…" the voice rumbled.

"I'm with you, Chloe," Trish promised. "You're not alone. You'll never be alone again."

"Sing again!" Barry shouted, ignoring the twist in his heart at the mother's promise. "Chloe, sing!"

"Merry merry king of the bush is he. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, gay your life must be. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, gay your life must be."

The voice roared once more, and fell mercifully silent. The crimson glow faded, and Barry slumped against the door, adding his voice to the last couple of lines. "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree. Merry merry king of the bush is he. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, gay your life must be…"

Slumping down on the couch, Barry answered Kel, Trish, and Chloe's inquisitive looks with a shrug. The TARDIS was back where it had been, and the pieces of scanner lay where they'd fallen, but the Doctor himself was conspicuous by his absence. He'd searched the crowds as best he could, but there was no sign of the spiky brown hair.

"He'll be back sooner or later," Barry smiled wanly. "I know him; he won't abandon me. Probably just got distracted by something or other…"

He looked back at the TV as the commentator let out an exclamation.

"But hang on, the torch bearer seems to be in a bit of trouble. We did see a flash of light earlier that seemed to strike him. Maybe he's injured. He's definitely in trouble."

The man slowed, stumbled, and fell, the torch dropping from a limp hand.

"Does this mean the Olympic dream is dead?"

The answer, apparently, was no, because a familiar brown-suited figure bent down, picked up the torch, and started running with it. Barry gasped out a laugh, watching as the Doctor jogged along an aisle and up a set of stairs, stopping at a large cauldron.

"It's more than a flame now, Bob," the commentator spoke, echoing all of their feelings. "It's more than heat and light. It's hope, and it's courage, and it's love."

With a whoop, the Doctor lowered the torch and lit the gas. Those few crammed onto a sofa in a certain sitting room watched a speck of reflected light soar up into the night sky.

Later, the two of them wandered through the street, the Doctor munching on a cupcake. "Mmm. I can't stress this enough. Ball bearings you can eat, masterpiece!"

"So, what now?" Barry asked, grinning.

"I want to go to the Games!" the Doctor grinned back. "It's what we came for."

"Go on, give me a clue. Which events do we do well in?" he asked, throwing a wave to the old lady who'd helped them out.

"Well, I will tell you this," the Doctor mused, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Papua New Guinea surprises everyone in the shot put."

At Barry's expression of disbelief, the Doctor just smiled. "Wait and see."

Above them, fireworks crackled to life across the night sky. "And you, Barry," the Doctor said more quietly. "Will you be okay?"

Barry blew out a breath. "Yeah, you know what? I will. 'Cause you know what? I helped save the day. Me. By myself. No sonic, no superpowers, just me and my wits. I had…I mean, I had the speed for a while. And maybe one day I'll get it back. But even if I never do, you know what I learned today? What I've learned ever since I first met you? It's that anyone can be a hero. Any ordinary person, if they strive for others more than just themselves. I don't need powers to be the best I can be. So every day, I'm going to run as fast as I can, I'm gonna fight my hardest, dream my biggest, save as many people as I can, and I am gonna be a hero and make you proud."

For just a second, in the light of the fireworks, he could've sworn the Doctor's eyes looked wet.

"You already have, Bare," he murmured. "You already have."

See that review button down there? Hint, hint. Also, if you're unsure as to who "Kyle" is, think who in DC is a quiet, artistic young man (who, coincidentally, is nicknamed "Torchbearer") and best friends with the Flash.