See first chapter for disclaimers.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This one is told from someone else's perspective. Thanks to Storyseeker for beta-reading this. As usual, if you have any comments or preferences, please don't be shy. RandR.

PREVIOUSLY: Fable: TLC

Lost

"I really hope I'm not home." Barry Allen took in his surroundings numbly. The empty streets. The ruined buildings. It was Central City, but it wasn't. It couldn't be, he realized with a sigh of relief. Whatever had happened there had happened long ago. There were no bodies, no trace of living people either. Central City had been abandoned.

He couldn't begin to guess why. So he headed to a place where he knew he would find those answers. Unfortunately, when he reached it, Star Labs was a hole in the ground. Frowning, he turned away and began crisscrossing the city, looking for anyone that might be able to provide answers.

I should have expected getting home wouldn't be that easy, he realized. Multiple realities mean I could have wound up anywhere, even floating in space in a universe where Earth didn't exist. Should've thought this through better before asking Supergirl to give me that boost.

He found no one within the city limits, but he found several newspapers. The most recent was dated five years ago. The headline involved the massive explosion at Star labs and rising radiation levels forcing the evacuation of the city. It seemed something had gone really wrong with Thawne's plan.

It took him only a few seconds to find a Geiger counter. The levels were only slightly above normal background radiation, but he decided to leave regardless. There was clearly nothing there for him and he needed some kind of plan before he tried jumping worlds again.

Not far outside the city limits, he found a military checkpoint. Each of the roads out of town was blocked in a similar fashion and there were patrols ranging across the countryside. Slipping through would be easy enough, but he wanted to find out why there was such a well-armed military presence there. It was more than was necessary to keep out looters, he realized. Something else was going on.

The first step, he decided, was to bypass the military lines and find out what the outside world was being told. It was likely that the public wasn't getting the whole story, but something this big had to have garnered a lot of press. Starling City was fairly close, and he might find allies there if it turned out he needed them.

The trip took less than a minute and he soon found a public library where he could access the internet and search for information. It took almost an hour to learn what he needed to; about Central City and about his friends in Starling.

If anyone knew precisely what had happened, they hadn't revealed it online. There were quite a few competing theories, though, most of which claimed to be the truth but were patently ridiculous when examined closely.

Something at Star Labs had exploded, destroying the building and creating a radioactive cloud of dust that spread across the city. Barry couldn't begin to guess what Thawn had been doing that could have caused that. The death toll had been horrific.

He'd have to gain access to classified material before he could figure out what really happened, assuming anyone knew. He had also learned that Oliver Queen, Felicity, Smoak, John Diggle, and Ray Palmer were missing and presumed dead. There was no news about any of them for the previous two years. That lined up with his trip to rescue them from the League of Assassins. Something must have gone really wrong. Oliver was too good a planner not to have found some way to cover himself in the event of capture.

This left him with only a few options. He knew where Argus HQ was, but no one there would know him and they'd probably try to shoot him for accessing their systems. It wasn't really his problem anyway, he thought morosely. Things had gone differently in his world and he had enough trouble there without trying to solve this world's problems as well.

He looked around the net for reference to anyone he knew. Most of the people he knew back home were dead in this world. He found a reference to a woman matching Vixen's description in Detroit, but she was being hunted by local law enforcement for a series of supposed crimes. He had no way of knowing what the Vixen in this world was like, so he decided to steer clear.

The world was distinctly lacking in heroes, but there were villains aplenty. The particle accelerator explosion had created meta-humans, and none of them it seemed had any interest in using their abilities for the common good. He recognized some of them by their abilities. He recognized Killer Shark's pattern even if no one had survived seeing him. That was going to be trouble. More than a dozen people had already died at his hands in Starling City, Barry determined, reading the articles.

I can at least do something useful while I'm stuck here, he decided. Moving along the docks without being seen wasn't difficult, especially at night. He wasn't sure why Killer Shark was hunting around the docks. There were no break-ins or other crimes that he could detect. Still, he kept coming back; risking discovery, so there had to be something in the area he wanted.

It had been three days since the last disappearance. Killer Shark wasn't known for his patience. He'd be back soon. He did as Oliver had taught him, carefully scouting the area before moving in. There was a carefully hidden police presence in the area. Obviously, they were aware that something was going on and were out in force. Barry decided to wait and see what happened. If the police could handle it, there would be no need for him to intervene.

It didn't take long. Killer Shark emerged from the water quietly and headed for one of the warehouses along the docks, confirming Barry's suspicion that he was looking for something particular. Barry waited and watched as Killer Shark forced a door on the warehouse as quietly as he was able and entered.

Barry knew the warehouse to contain a variety of medical equipment. He wasn't sure what the meta-human would want with the stuff, but decided it likely wouldn't matter. There were police waiting in and around the warehouse. Barry worried, but he was willing to stand back and let them do their job. Maybe he wouldn't have to do anything.

After Killer Shark entered the warehouse, there was a moment of silence. Then, all hell seemed to break loose. There were shouts followed by gunfire and more shouts that turned into screams.

That's my cue. Barry thought as he ran inside. Whatever ordinance they were using was hurting the enormous meta-human, but that only served to make him more vicious. Barry entered just in time to catch two officers that had been sent flying by a sweep of Killer Sharks arm and snatch another officer out of the way of his teeth.

Turning back to the enraged meta-human, he held his arms out before him and began to rotated them rapidly, creating cones of compressed air strong enough to stagger the brute. The officers were quick enough to catch on to what he was doing and concentrate their fire while he was off balance.

Barry noticed two officers off to the side frantically working on a piece of equipment that had apparently been damaged. He didn't have time to check on it before Killer Shark grabbed a crate and threw it at him. Realizing he couldn't deflect it with compressed air without endangering the officers, he dodged instead, repositioning himself to renew his attack.

It was at that point that the police finished whatever bit of machinery they were working with. There was a flash of light and pain as some sort of energy field activated, encompassing himself and Killer Shark.

OOOOOOOOOO

Barry woke up in a cell. He was still in costume, but his mask had been removed. He got to his feet, still a bit sore from whatever they had used, and looked about the room beyond the bars. There were two officers visible in the corridor. One was the one he had kept from becoming Killer Shark's lunch. "You're welcome."

That officer didn't look at him, but the other turned toward him. "Stow it, freak."

"Now that's just rude," Barry replied.

Neither responded. He tried several more times to start a conversation, but they ignored him. While they were ignoring him, he covertly tested his powers. There were no after effects of whatever knocked him out. He could leave whenever he wanted. At the moment, though, he didn't want to leave. He wanted to know what was going on.

Eventually, he became annoying enough that someone familiar came in to check on him. At first, Barry had hope that he was seeing a friendly face, but the bitter angry expression Captain Lance wore put an end to those thoughts.

"Who the hell are you?" Lance demanded. "I've run your prints and your picture through the system and all I've found is a dead man. All I really know about you at this point is that you are really annoying."

Barry had already known his counterpart was dead, and somehow, he doubted that Lance would believe the truth. "I'm exactly who I appear to be. I don't expect you to believe me, but I would like to know why you would lock up someone who helped you."

"Helped?" He snorted. "I've run into too many of you masked freaks to think you'd help anyone. I don't know what beef you had with Killer Shark, but it doesn't really matter. You're like all the rest, which means, I look around, I'll find crimes you've committed."

"So I'm guilty till proved innocent?"

"You wear a mask in my town. Believe it."

"This town does have something of a history with people is masks," Barry commented. "I know you're familiar with him."

Lance eyes narrowed dangerously. "You mean the lunatic that cost me both my daughters?"

Barry shut up. He hadn't realized Lance would blame Oliver for what happened. Whether it was fair to do so or not wasn't even an issue, and he knew it. "His goal was to save this city, to protect the good people who lived here."

"And he did that by killing a lot of them," Lance shot back.

"He didn't cause the quake."

"It doesn't matter what his intentions were. And it doesn't matter what yours are. There's a city ordinance against masked vigilantes. You're staying in there till I find something else to charge you with."

"And when you don't?"

Lance didn't bother to answer. He just turned and walked away. Barry didn't bother to call after him. Instead, he settled on the bench in his cell and thought hard about his situation. It seemed there was little he could do to improve things on this Earth, at least nothing that would be appreciated.

"Looks like we're not the only ones locked up for no good reason," a voice from the next cell commented.

Barry looked over and saw a man and woman in their early 20s. Both had the air of experienced fighters about them and neither seemed at all concerned about their current situation. The man turned his head at the woman's comment and Barry saw the eyepatch and momentarily stiffened thinking about Slade. Then he relaxed. Whoever the young man was, it wasn't Slade Wilson.

"What are you in for?" He asked curiously. They didn't look like super-villains.

"We came through an interdimensional portal," the man explained. "Unfortunately, we appeared right in front of the station."

"They arrested us for something," the woman continued. "They're just not sure what."

"You came through a portal?" Barry picked up on the most important part of the story. He couldn't think of a reason someone would make that up, and it was a bit too specific to be a delusion. "That's how I got here."

"Figures," the woman snorted. At Barry's questioning look, she elaborated. "We've been using these portals awhile now, tryin' to get home. So far, we haven't gotten there yet. At each stop, we're expected to do something before we can move on."

"That sounds like something out of a comic book or a bad TV show."

The woman shrugged. "No arguments here. That's just the sitch."

"So how do you open the portals?"

"We don't. Whenever we've done what we're there to do, a portal opens."

Barry thought about that for a moment. To have no control, to always moving around at someone else's whim. "That sucks."

She nodded. "If I ever find who's doing it, I'll hurt 'em bad."

"We have to wait," the man interjected. "It'll come eventually."

"Do you think you're here to get me home?"

"Makes sense," the man shrugged. "I can't think of anything else we could do while in here."

"Which means…" the woman looked around expectantly.

"Right on schedule." The man pointed at the hole that opened in the air near the far wall in their cell. He got to his feet, as did the woman. "Hopefully, the next stop will be your universe."

"Right," Barry said, vibrating at the right frequency to pass through the bars between the cells. "Let's go."