Harrison! I scream his name but no sound comes out. It's a wordless protest as grief and rage pours forth–

I bolt awake and reach groggily for the notebook I use as my dream journal only to realize it's not where I always keep it on my nightstand. Now my inexplicable unease from last night is seeming more reasonable. Eventually, after tearing my room apart, I find the journal on top of my dresser, underneath my discarded blouse. Maybe I'm just overreacting to a coincidence. By the time I find the journal, I can't even remember what the nightmare was about.

But the overall impression has left me wired, making me jump at every car horn and barking dog. I'm now certain my dreams mean something, but I can't figure out what, or when it will happen. Which makes me more on edge. Something is coming, something I can't prevent if I don't know what it is.

All day, I'm plagued by this sense of unease. Sometimes it is stronger than others, but other times it fades, like an irritating buzzing background noise. During those spikes of dread, I glance toward my phone, instinct telling me to call Harrison and warn him…but I don't know what about. My connection with my power seems to be losing granularity lately, as if it is atrophying from limited use.

But the sense of danger is still there, lingering, disrupting my focus and peace. I can't even distract myself from the feeling by trying to puzzle through my feelings for Wells. Things are so tenuous and fragile at this stage of a relationship, I shouldn't be annoyed at his discretion in front of the others. But his practicality flies in the face of his romantic words. Which activates my own insecurities and inspires all sorts of doubts in my mind.

Harrison is a smart man – fucking brilliant, more accurately. So he could probably play me and my emotions with only minor effort on his part. The logical part of me knows I should have my guard up. Even though I don't want to. And it makes me wary of trusting his passionate words when his actions are so comparatively cold. I didn't think I was such a cliche – to fall for the older man willing to take advantage of the lesser experienced woman. But I worry that's exactly what is happening.

I have no better clarity by the time I make it home after another long day. About either the fuzzy warning or how to approach my relationship with Harrison.

Speaking of…my phone flashes with another text from Harrison: Call me when you can.

Rolling my eyes at my own lack of self-control, I recline on my couch as I hit the "call" button on his contact.

"That was fast," he says in greeting.

"I didn't want to keep you waiting since we haven't spoken in so long," I say with only a hint of sarcasm.

"Mika," he starts.

"I get it, Harrison. Forget I said anything. What's up?"

"I think I know why you have been feeling ill at sorts lately."

"Uh-oh. That doesn't sound good."

"Hartley escaped the pipeline."

"What? How is that possible?"

"He manipulated someone to let him out: Cisco."

"That doesn't sound like Cisco. I thought he hated Hartley. He must have been the happiest of everyone to see him locked up."

"Perhaps. But his curiosity proved more powerful."

"Is everyone safe at least?"

"For now. I don't expect Hartley will try his luck against us anytime soon. But I wonder if this is what your dreams have been trying to warn you about. Cisco admitted he'd been speaking with Hartley for days, and he had nearly escaped before."

"Maybe…" My nightmares being about Hartley doesn't feel right, but perhaps that is the point. I wasn't consciously worried about Hartley, so I may have dismissed a warning about him. "I suppose my dreams tonight will tell. Anything else you need from me tonight? How's the meta-human manhunt going?"

"Barry had one run-in with the fugitive, but they managed to get away. And Barry managed to get shot."

"Really? I didn't know he could be."

"Thankfully it was just a graze. Which I don't think imparted the correct lesson to him."

"Meaning that instead of being more careful in the future, he'll assume he can continue dodging bullets?"

"Precisely," Harrison says with a chuckle. And for a moment, I allow myself to bask in this casual intimacy as the conversation flows between us, and I sink into the resonant tone of his voice. I can imagine him sitting on the couch beside me as we catch up about our days. It's easy, comfortable. Familiar, even, despite the new-ness of our relationship.

"Are you available tomorrow night to come by the lab? I think I've let you become delinquent in your training, and I don't want to be caught unaware by anything else my team might be up to."

"Right…and if I come by, we'll be training?"

"Did you have something else in mind?" he asks, his voice slipping into a lower register.

"Training sounds good. Just training."

"I'm looking forward to it all the same. Have a good night, Mika."

"You too."

I awake in the morning with another foggy memory of a nightmare, but even that doesn't stop me from getting up with a smile. I'm trying not to get too excited at the prospect of seeing Harrison tonight, but I get butterflies in my stomach when I think about seeing him. Despite my better judgment reminding me not to fall too hard, too fast. And I remind myself that nothing romantic will be happening. I'm going to STAR labs with the purpose of training, which I desperately need.

But when I walk into the lab, dimly lit with an after-hours occupant of one, my heart beats faster. As I round the corner to the cortex, illuminated in the blue light from computer monitors, I feel a stomach-churning deja vu. I pause for a moment, trying to narrow in on the feeling, but my focus is lost the instant I lock eyes with Wells.

"Welcome, Mika. It's good to see you."

"Likewise," I smile at him.

"Shall we?" he gives me that charismatic smile and gestures for me to join him at a computer station.

"What do you have planned?"

"I was thinking we'd pick back up with the random number generation. We need to rebaseline before delving into more complex exercises."

"Sounds good." I sit across from him, clasping my hands on the edge of the desk so they don't try to reach out to him. I have to consciously hold myself back from embracing him on instinct. He's sunk deep inside my mind and my heart. I didn't realize how much until I was trying to resist him in person.

We run through a couple sets, and he frowns as the computer spits back my accuracy and other stats.

"What's wrong?"

"Is something distracting you, Mika?"

"Is it that bad?" I ask with a grimace.

"You're down thirty percent on accuracy, response time is down a full fifty percent. With such a dramatic change, I have to think there's something breaking your concentration."

I start shaking my head, and then I pause. I can't really deny being distracted. Harrison is less than two feet from me. How am I supposed to concentrate, when I keep thinking about all the more pleasurable things we could be doing together? And all the reasons why doing that would just get me in deeper.

Sighing, he takes off his glasses and runs a hand through his hair. "I suppose we've avoided talking about this for too long. It's not fair to you to expect you to pretend everything between us is the same as it was before. It's not. We both know that, and I'm overdue in acknowledging it. That is what's bothering you, isn't it?"

"Yes, well. I mean. I understand there are a lot of reasons why you may not want to tell the team. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to, anyways. But I need to hear from you what this means to you. Because if this is nothing more than a fling, there's no need to advertise that. And I can be okay with that, I just need to know if that's the case."

"No," he says, standing now to run his hands down my arms. "You shouldn't be okay with that. And you don't have to be. I have no intention of letting you go anytime soon."

I can't hide my smile at those words. "I'm glad to hear you say that. I know it's early in, whatever this is between us, but I feel so strongly for you already. If you didn't feel the same, I don't know if I could continue. Because I would just be setting myself up to feel hurt. When you hadn't really acknowledged me in front of the others, that's what I thought might be happening. And, even though it wasn't rational, I admit I felt a little used."

"No, I promise you. It's not like that. You are important to me – enough so that I don't want the others to think of you differently. If they know we're spending time together more intimately," I can't help but smile at his euphemism. He's so well-mannered, "it could color your relationships with them. And I am quite private about my personal life. If word about the two of us reached the press, your life would change significantly. And considering my reputation in this city as a failed mad scientist, I don't think it would be for the better."

"I understand all that, logically. But emotionally, it stung."

"What can I do to make it up to you, to show you that this – that you – are more to me than someone to hook up with in secret?"

"You don't have to do anything, Harrison, I believe you. You've done so much for me already. I trust you when you tell me–"

I rip an arm out of his grasp to clutch the side of my head.

"Mika, what's wrong?" Wells moves closer to me.

I double over in pain, forcing out the words. "There's…at the prison. Barry needs to…his father." Then the room sways around me.