CHAPTER SIX: HOLDING IT TOGETHER
Ella was going to have to work on how fast it took her to change, she thought to herself with an annoyed sigh. Before Barry had even finished his sentence, he was in his suit. While it didn't take long for her to get her suit, putting the dang thing on was a different story. Maybe it was because her fingers shook with nerves and she kept fumbling with her clothing, or maybe her suit was just a bit too tight and that's why it fell from her hands as she tried to pull it on.
A bit of both, Ella grumbled in her mind. She sighed in relief when she finally zipped it up and she teleported back too the main room.
Barry had been anxiously pacing back and forth before she reappeared, probably regretting his decision to take her a long. He walked over to where she stood and asked, "You good for this, El? Now's the time to not get involved." Ella nodded, so he continued on, "You know Forest Run, the apartment complex by the movie theater?"
"Yeah," she replied, remembering the street its on and forming the building of the apartment in her mind. "I've never been in, but I can meet you out front."
"Okay, see you there." And with that, Barry disappeared in a flash.
Ella took a deep breath and with the building in her mind eye's, she willed herself to be there. Her body began to tingle as her skin morphed into silver and she elongated into lightning.
As she bolted away, she tried to keep her eyes open, but so many colors flashed around her, that it was a bit too dizzying. Her eyes shut and in an instant, she was in front of the apartment building. Barry was standing a little ways off and she walked up to him and they both continued inside.
Barry chewed his lip as they ran towards the stairs and Ella knew she had to send him ahead. After getting the room and floor number, he left her climbing up the stairs. It wasn't long after that she heard Barry's voice through her ear piece, "Going in."
"Careful, Barry," Caitlin replied, worriedly.
Another flight or so later, Cisco asked, "What's going on, Barry?"
There was a long silence and the voice of Barry did not fill it.
"El, where's your location?" Cisco asked worriedly, after another long beat.
"Stairwell. I- hold on," she paused, looking up the stairwell. Only a handful of flights left, but if hey, if this works for the future. "I've got an idea."
Ella could see the railings all the way up to the floor she needed to be. It's been, give or take, twenty years since she did gymnastics, but she thought she could teleport to where she could see now. She just had to make sure to grab railings before she fell her to her death. Easy, right?
Caitlin sighed through Ella's earpiece. "We have another person to remind to be careful now. Seriously, Ella, be safe."
"Wish me luck," she replied before imagining herself up those couple flights
A startled scream escaped her when Ella's hand gripped the railing, but she caught herself. Her feet dangled above quite a few flights of stairs, but thanks to Cisco's genius, her hands didn't sleep.
"Ella!" Cisco cried, and Ella grunted in response. Well, partially for response.
Other part went to the fact she was pulling herself over the rail. Ella kicked her leg over the rail and she flipped off, intending to land gracefully on her feet, but ended up landing hard on her side.
"Oompf," she muttered on impact, though she managed a more graceful attempt to her feet, and they echoed the stairwell as she ran up the last few steps.
"All right, girl, I need some words to accompany those grunts," Cisco said after a pause
"Hallway," Ella bit out before shhhing him. She could hear voices from an open door down the hall.
"I always knew you were in the CCPD's pocket, Flash," a male voice spat out. "I thought you wanted to save people. That's not their mission."
She crept slowly against the wall, the closer she got. Barry began, "That's not-"
"THEY LET MY FAMILY DIE AND YOU ARE DEFENDING THEM," the first voice suddenly bellowed, causing Ella to flinch, though she wasn't even in the room.
She dared to peek her head into the room and her stomach immediately hit the floor. They were too late. Three bodies laid on the floor, blood painted the wall and settled into the carpet. Barry stood in such a rigid posture by the bodies that it looked like his body might just snap in half.
"He's talking to Barry," Ella barely breathed to Cisco and Caitlin, then directed her words to Barry. "I'm here, Bear." She double clicked her speaker off then, not wanting the guys at the lab to hear what was about to go down.
She saw Barry's head tilt in her direction and she flung her head back, not daring to poke her head in anymore.
"And so you're doing the same thing to their family- and not even the officers on the case? How does that make you any better?" Barry yelled back, his whole body shaking with fury.
"My family is what made me better, and without my family… nothing matters. Nothing matters but seeing them suffer like I did. And I'm not the only one who feels that way," the man's sneer was evident in his tone. "You're on their side, Flash, and so you will suffer like them."
Arms suddenly grabbed Ella from behind and she yelped in surprise. She was pushed into the room in an instant. She was pinned against her captor. Ella tried to jerk away, but a hand was brought to her eye level. A hand holding a blade rather tightly.
Her breath hitched and she went limp against the one holding her.
Images ran through her mind.
Ella was tied to a wooden chair
he sliced the tip of the blade over her face and arms
He took the long side of his blade and sliced her stomach-
"Word around the block is that she means a thing or two to you." A man with overgrown, graying hair sat nonchalantly on a ripped up couch. "Knew I could get you to stay around if I started talking."
Barry said something in reply, but all Ella could hear was her gasping breath.
"What's wrong with you?" a low voice whispered in her ear and a feeling she know recognized began to burn its way out of her pounding chest. In her panicked state, her vision came in blinks. Blink: she was looking at Barry, blink: she was looking at the man on the couch, blink: she wasn't in her captors arms anymore, blink: she was looking at him from across the room.
Blink: lightning lit up the room.
Blink: she was standing in the middle of a street.
Ella fell to her knees and ragged breaths scraped against her throat.
"I don't understand it," Barry spat from above her. She looked up and saw him, his position the same rigid one she saw in the apartment room. "There is no way in hell we'll ever end up together. There is no way I can help you."
And with that, he was gone.
Barry went back to his office at the station and basically just angrily swapped papers around. He forcefully tried to hold onto this anger, though it quickly ebbed away, and facing himself was something he didn't want to do.
Picking up a paper weight, he chucked it at the wall, letting out a shout.
"You done?" a familiar voice began from the shadows. Oliver appeared into view in his Arrow suit.
"Uhh- I- yeah," Barry answered, head low in defeat. He let out a long sigh, running his hands through his hair.
"I heard something about a murder," Oliver put in, his voice low. He stood to the side, his arms behind his back.
Barry held his sigh in this time, air filling his cheeks before he released it. "Yeah."
"I need a more informative answer than 'yeah', Barry," Oliver replied, sharply. He placed his bag of arrows on Barry's desk.
Barry rubbed his forehead, trying to rub away the irritation he felt. What was wrong with him?
"There's this guy murdering employees of the station. First, the receptionist and his family. Second, the janitor and two women who were… unidentifiable at my moment of inspection. I think he's trying to work his way up to the officers. Tried to get me and Ella while we were there," Barry said in a dead tone.
Oliver nodded slowly. "Where's Ella now?"
"I'm not her keeper!" Barry snapped in response, before pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
"Yeah, you kind of are, Barry." His voice stayed relatively even, in a state of matter of fact.
"I didn't ask for this." Barry cringed inwardly, hating the sound of him adult-whining.
"Yeah, you kind of did," Oliver replied, a bit harshly with his honesty.
"But I-"
"All right, listen. Barry. I..." Oliver slightly chuckled to himself. "I'm normally one to place the blame on myself, even when it might have technically not have even been my fault. You, on the other head, seem to be blaming everyone but yourself, when you need to take responsibility for this." His laugh didn't last long and Barry could tell he was dead serious.
And it majorly pissed him off, though before he could respond, his phone went off.
Ella's face popped up on the screen. His finger slid across it to answer and he snapped, "What?"
"Barry, don't hate me," Ella's voice begged over the phone, "but I messed up. In a completely different way than… normal. Like I didn't kill anyone or anything. But I saved someone."
Hearing her frightened tone made Barry wonder something then, something that caused all his anger and bitterness to dissipate and cause shame to replace it… was she as scared of him as he is scared of her?
"With my mask off."
Dammit.
On her knees in the middle of an empty street, Ella stood and pulled her mask off, and flung it in frustration. Tears steamed down her face, though she swore to herself she was done crying.
Through blurred vision, she looked around, finding herself in a neighborhood. Even Ella wasn't stupid enough to know she needed to get away from the public eye, but… where? Barry's made it clear he doesn't want anything to do with her and where are her two safe places? The lab and Barry's freaking house.
And then Ella heard a shout. They found her is the only thing that panicked through her mind, but there was another yell, and the hearing flooded back in her ears. Her eyes darted down the street in just enough time to see two men tumble the stairs.
"David!" Another man bursted through the opened door. Ella could see his chest rise up and down as he tried to catch his breath.
"Rob, I told you," one of the other men began through clenched teeth. They rolled around on the ground and it wasn't long before Ella saw the glint of a knife. "To stay inside!"
"No!" Rob shouted, before trying to pull the one with the knife off, that ended in result of the armed man turning to him. "Oh. Oops."
Now that the man with the knife wasn't connected to either of the other seemingly innocent ones, Ella decided to make a move. She bolted behind the man and put a hand on his back, before taking a deep breath, preparing herself for the energy surge she was about to conduct. She couldn't lose control. Ella could not lose control.
She imagined the lightning was a water faucet and her breath was the handle. Slowly exhaling, the bolts slowly flowed from her fingertips to his back. Ella was being careful, but apparently not careful enough, as the man shook slightly with lightning, and she sucked in all her breath, pulling her hand away.
He fell to the ground, twitching slightly.
"No. No, I didn't k-… no," Ella gasped to herself, and bent town, placing fingers on his neck. She fell back on her knees when she felt beats beneath her fingers. "He's still alive!" The relief was evident in her voice and she looked up to face the other men.
It was then that Ella truly took in the men before her. One dressed in simple clothing, jeans and a sweater, and the other… dressed in blue. The name tag called him Captain Singh.
Singh stood there, slightly gaping at Ella, in her partial Bolt costume. What has she done?
"Don't… don't tell anyone, please," Ella begged, before swallowing herself in a lightning bolt and zapping away, though not before making a pit shop at the place she dropped her mask to begin with and tied it back on.
The next place she landed was the second place she felt safe- Barry's home. It was empty, with Joe being at work, and she truthfully had no idea where Barry was anymore.
But Ella knew he had to be her first call. She had to ask him about Singh and she had to tell him she made a mistake… again.
She pulled out her phone from a small compartment in her suit and with trembling hands, brought up Barry's contact. Ella pressed call.
"What?" he immediately snapped, causing Ella to flinch through the phone.
"Barry, don't hate me," Ella begged, terrified this might be the time she lost him for good, "but I messed up. In a completely different way than… normal. Like I didn't kill anyone or anything. But I saved someone."
There was complete silence on the other end and Ella finished breathlessly, "With my mask off."
"I guess… I guess we need to talk," Barry replied weakly. "Arrow and I will meet you at the lab. Ella, we're work this out."
Ella swallowed hard. Of course she heard of the Arrow, and she found out recently it was Oliver Queen. Though thanks to her wallflower ability and not because anyone particularly trusted her with that secret… however it was a secret she'd take to the grave. But also a secret Oliver didn't know Ella had, she assumed.
And then another thing registered with her… Barry was back to being nice with her? His moodswings were wearing her out.
"You're not mad?" Ella practically squeaked out, and Barry let out a long sigh.
"Come to the lab. We'll talk," He replied, sounding defeated.
"But it was-"
"I'll literally see you in a second, El. It can wait," Barry cut her off, trying to make his voice light. But it sounded strained even in Ella's ears, but at least he was trying?
The phone disconnected then and though in more than just one second, but not much more, Ella was back in the lab, surrounded by eyes full of questions and bodies bracing for the answers.
I thought there would be more Flarrow this chapter, but as you can see… I guess it'll be in the next one. ;) also a little more of Faye, maybe a bit more backstory. And don't worry, Barry will stop acting like a two year soon enough lol and Joe and Singh talk about some elephants in the room. Just some things to hopefully catch your interest for the next chapter haha
as always, please let me know what you're thinking! xx Anna
