To be perfectly honest, Barry had gotten used to waking up uncomfortably. Before he moved back in with Joe, the bed in his apartment had been hard as a brick, resulting in Barry preferring to sleep in his puffy chair in the lab. Additionally, ever since he became the Flash, there had been a few times too many where he woke up in a hospital bed, usually regretting his life choices as his body throbbed in pain.
So before he got his bearing, Barry spent a few wonderful moments enjoying the feeling of waking up in a bed that felt like a giant marshmallow. Then he remembered where he was.
Barry practically flew out of bed, the covers falling off of him as he frantically tumbled forward, trying to untangle his mess of limbs in a pathetic attempt to escape from the bed. Violently rubbing his eyes to try to wake up faster, the reality of the situation was starting to sink in all over again. Not only was he stuck in the past, he was stuck in his parents house, a prime position to wreck the timestream and the future.
As he made his way toward the door, something in the edge of his vision caught his eye. Folded on the chair near his bed were two neat little piles of clothes. One was his STAR Labs sweatshirt, sweatpants, and shoes from yesterday - or years in the future, depending on how you viewed it. The second was a clean, light blue linen shirt with tan pants and brown shoes. His dad's favored work outfit.
Looking down at the outfit he had purchased last night and slept in, he realized just how wrinkled it was, and that it was nice to have something else to wear. With a shrug, he pulled off the sweater over his head, put his arms into the blue shirt and started to work on the buttons. As he started to fasten the belt, it struck him that he was wearing his father's clothes. Not that he hadn't already abstractly realized this, but it occurred to him that his parents were just as thrown off by this whole situation as he was. They didn't have the curse of knowing what was coming, but at least he was sort of accustomed to having weird things happen to him on a pretty much daily basis. They didn't. In a sort of gesture of acceptance of the entire situation, his mom gave him his father's clothes to wear, acknowledgement that he was all grown up now.
He was a different person than they knew, yet still very much the same.
On a hunch, he checked the pockets of the pants and pulled out a faded receipt from the comic book store. The date on it was the year his father graduated. Apparently, his parents had to do some digging into some old boxes from the attic to find clothes that would fit his slim frame.
Trying not to feel like he was a little kid playing dress up, he tried the doorknob a few times before he was able to open it. For some reason, he was more nervous today than he was yesterday.
Picking his way around the furniture to the staircase that led downstairs, he heard a muffled giggle followed by a hissed shushing noise. Turning, he walked to his younger self's room and opened the door slowly, only to find his younger self and Iris hiding under a blanket fort, pretending to be asleep. He bent over until his mouth was right next to little Barry's ear. "What are you doing?" he whispered.
His younger self kept his eyes squeezed shut. "Nothing."
"Nothing" was clearly a lie. Underneath the fort, there were candy wrappers, soda cans, binoculars, and a notebook with a pencil held fast in the spiral.
"Were you on a stakeout spying on yourself?"
Iris broke first. "Well, when you put it that way…"
Barry fought to keep a grin from spreading across his face. "Did you even do the homework that was today for class?"
Iris actually looked a little angry. "Who are you, Dad?"
Little Barry, predictably, looked guilty. "No. We didn't even start."
Iris looked at his younger self smugly. "I put my name at the top of it."
Mini Barry shot her a dirty look, while older Barry rubbed his eyes. He didn't want anything else from this timeline to change, and he distinctly remembered earning a massive bag of jellybeans for turning all of his homework in on time at the end of the year. He also didn't think that the excuse of "My future self with superpowers came back in time and caused me to stay up all night" was a valid one.
"How about I help you with it, just this once," he offered.
After a whirlwind of activity involving the fetching of backpacks and pencils, little Iris and Barry were seated in front of him criss cross applesauce while he lowered himself onto his old bed.
Apparently, all they had to do was science vocab. Nice. Barry was picturing having to speed-write a small essay. He picked up their science textbook with a picture of a stick figure scientist holding up a beaker with a bright blue liquid on it, and smiled at the large text and all of the pictures. Ah, memories.
In the time it took to finish the worksheet, everyone else had gathered in the kitchen below. Dr. Wells and Tess Morgan had gone back home to sleep and grab anything they needed, his parents had brewed coffee in order to maintain some resemblance of normality, and anyone who needed to call into work to tell their employers exactly how sick they were had done so.
The kids thundered down the stairs and raided the fridge for orange juice and yogurt while trying to put on their backpacks. In an effort not to make anything more chaotic than it already was, Barry faded into the back trying to go unnoticed. It was already awkward enough that he and his father were pretty much dressed the same. Heh.
The school wasn't too far from the Allen house, and Barry had always, for as long as he could remember, walked to school, sometimes with Iris and sometimes not. This morning would be no different, but Barry was struck with sudden worry.
"In the future, Joe arrests Clyde Mardon. You know, the guy you were originally assigned to take down yesterday."
Everyone in the kitchen stopped talking and looked at him. Barry stepped further out of the shadows to voice his concern. Before Joe could ask, Barry nodded to Iris. "She told me yesterday who you were originally were assigned to. I just think might be the Clyde Mardon from my time, not yours. If it is, then who do you think Mardon is going to come after first?"
Joe didn't even need the helpful gesture toward Iris, nor did he need to know that Clyde would probably be peeved at him not for trying to arrest him, but for shooting to kill at him. He immediately reached for the phone. "Iris and Barry should just stay home today."
Barry shook his head. "We need to keep the timestream as similar as the original one was. Mardon has no idea where they, I mean, I, well, whatever, go to school. He will only be a problem if he catches them on the way to school while he come here."
Joe hardened his gaze, and looked at the scientists.
Both Dr. Wells and Tess nodded. "Best to keep the timestream as similar as possible," they said in unison, then smiled dopily at each other.
Henry stepped in with a compromise. "Why don't you go with them, Joe? In fact, I'd feel better if both of us went with them to school."
Barry butted in. "Maybe me and Joe could go. If it's the Mardon from the future, then he's a metahuman. It would be better to have me there. Just in case."
Despite not knowing what he really meant, his Dad nodded slowly. From the little he was aware of, it made sense.
"Besides," said Barry with a little mischievous smile, "If anyone asks why I'm dropping off my younger self at school, I can just say we are related. After all, we do look alike."
After the little group had left, Harrison, Tess, Henry and Nora sat around the kitchen table.
"Joe said you two had a theory about Barry," prompted Henry.
Tess pushed a lock of hair from her face flippantly in a vain attempt to hide her thoughts about the entire situation. "The way he got into the past may have to do with his strange body makeup, but that's hardly important right now if he can't get back. I think that since he clearly doesn't remember anything that is currently happening, we are in a parallel universe that parted from the original when Barry traveled back in time, or we are still in the original timeline and something happens so that Barry and everyone here forgets everything we saw and learned."
Dr. Wells leaned forward. "The lightning storms? They are probably just trying to repair time, or they are there to help rip this parallel universe fully away from the other."
"Which course of action would, in your opinion, be the best to take?" asked Nora.
"Until we know for sure, it's probably best to preserve the timeline as it is," answered Dr. Wells. "And everything and everyone in it," he continued under his breath, looking at Tess.
Nobody but Nora noticed.
After the realization that there was nothing any of them could do, Henry stood up from the table and said something about looking at that DNA sample and seeing if he could pry any clues from it. Tess, being more medically minded than Harrison, quickly volunteered to help him.
Before Harrison could leave to find the extra sample secured in his lab, Nora pulled him aside.
"You're going to propose, aren't you?"
As his eyes widened in panic, Nora made a calming motion with her hand. "I used to be a counselor before I quit to raise Barry. I just know these things."
Tomato-red face coloring was beginning to set in.
Nora smiled softly. "Have a plan?"
Harrison looked down at his converse. "She loves the beach. I'll ask her to go on a road trip with me, and drive down there. When we get there, I'm going to show her a basket of rocks I have, a stone taken outside of every place we had a date. Then I guess I'll ask." At this, he pulled a small band of gold from his pocket. It was delicate piece of craftsmanship, with a simple but dazzling diamond worked into the center. Without a doubt, Nora knew that this was a custom made ring that had clearly required a lot of time and thought into making it.
With a calm assurance that there was no way she would say no, Nora picked up the abandoned coffee cups on the table. "To the future? "
Smiling, Dr. Wells clinked the mugs before taking a small sip. "To the future, and all it brings."
...
The future
"There's an excellent chance that Barry finally figured out that he can't just go have a party in the past," said Caitlin as she put her armful of tribbles on one of the desks that was less ruined than the others. "That was a lot closer temporally than the others."
Dr. Wells nodded in agreement. "1970 is closer than the Ice Age."
Cisco was just upset he missed the incident. He had stepped outside for a few minutes for a slushie refill only to find that a few refugees from a Star Trek convention had made it through the time storm. After about thirty seconds of hurried explanations about time collapsing and pleasepleaseplease go right back to where they came from, they left after giving a sizable donation of fluffy tribbles to Caitlin, who, as they put it, "didn't need Harry Mudd's Venus drug," to aid her beauty."
Nerds.
Wells joined Cisco in mild pouting after the time hole opened to take Claudius back. He had found him fascinating and a very loyal character, and seemed a bit sad to see him go.
As the time hole closed around the Roman, Caitlyn asked how the timestream seemed to be doing.
Dr. Wells peeked at the stats on his tablet. "Time is still unraveling, but thanks to Barry seemingly making an effort to limit the changes he makes, the progression of damage has slowed down considerably. If he can return Mardon to us, it would be even better."
Cisco took a quick sip of slushie. "What if we could communicate with him?"
Dr. Wells tilted his head, a sign of deep thought for him. "I suppose we could tell him how to fix the minor stuff on his end. It might stop the time holes from eating away at the timeline."
Cisco picked up his favorite screwdriver and a piece of titanium. "Better get to work then. I prefer my timeline looking a little less like swiss cheese."
As she spun her chair up to the monitors looking for additional time-storms, Caitlyn paused. "Where would you send it? The communicator, I mean."
Cisco shrugged. "With the amount of damage Barry was causing there in the beginning, I'm guessing he was mucking around his personal timeline. I was just going to send it to his old house."
…..
The Past
It was almost funny how much his younger self had gotten used to the novelty of having his older self around. He and Iris had linked arms and happily skipped ahead under the watchful eye of himself and Joe. The cop's eyes flickered between the kids a few feet ahead and the young man next to him, who was studiously avoiding his gaze.
Finally, after they had covered half of the distance to the school, their uncomfortable silence made less so by birdsong, Joe asked Barry about Mardon.
"So, he's a metahuman?"
Barry nodded. "Yep. Controls the weather. Last time I saw Clyde, he was whipping up a tornado in a barn outside the city."
Ignoring the whole tornado bit, Joe raised his eyebrows. "A barn, you say?"
Barry made a hesitant little face. "I doubt he'll be there again. You got him there twice - when he became a metahuman and again when he was creating a tornado, which is when I'm assuming he was grabbed from by the time...thing."
Joe's face was tired. "I'm not sure I want to know, but how does one even become a metahuman?"
The question got a tired chuckle out of Barry. "Just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time." He paused, then looked at Joe. When he realized that Joe was silently asking for more information, he continued. "I got hit by lightning made up of dark matter in my lab. I Woke up from the coma it put me in only to find out that there were a lot of other people in my situation. Not my exact one - as a general rule, nobody seems to have the same abilities unless they are related."
"How are the police handling it?" Typical Joe.
"They aren't. It took about two and a half months from the accident that created the dark matter storm that turned people into metahumans for the police to even acknowledge something was going on. Even when it's blatantly obvious something weird is going on, there is nothing the police can do about it. Hard to be proactive about catching someone when the suspect can just teleport away from a crime scene."
Joe felt a headache coming on from stresses that were to come. "So what is being done about the metahuman criminals?"
Silence.
"Barry…"
His face was redder than a tomato. "It's...being handled."
"Barry…" It's didn't matter how old the boy was. He spilled whatever you wanted to figure out if you just repeated his name enough times.
"I'm sort of the one dealing with it."
"Mind telling me how?" Joe was already shifting into the tone of voice he used on Iris when she was in trouble. A tone Barry was all too familiar with.
"Uh. Heh."
Joe rubbed his face with his hands and let a low groan out. "I am not going to like this, am I?"
Staring at his shoes was a tactic that Barry employed when he didn't want to look someone in the eye while delivering bad news. Unfortunately, he was currently wearing his father's shoes, which just made it worse. Finally, he settled on staring straight ahead. "You know that archer I mentioned?"
"Yes," Joe ground out. It was clear that he was already going to disapprove of his actions.
"What I didn't mention was that he's actually a vigilante who runs around Starling City's rooftops shooting arrows into criminals and acts as sort of a freelance agent to deal with international issues and assassins. He's no casual fighter who was just disgruntled with the city, he's the real deal. I've seen him..." Barry trailed off, seeing as Joe was about to explode. The idea of a vigilante was not on Joe's "Okay" list.
Barry picked up again nervously. "Not the point. Anyway, through actions that were not my own, I ended up sort of helping him, aaaaand then I went into a coma. When I woke up and found I was a metahuman, I sort followed his lead for Central, except without the whole 'critically injuring suspects' thing."
At this point, Joe looked like he was about to strangle Barry. "So let me get this straight…"
Barry winced.
"You, as a cop working for the precinct, decided that the police were not doing enough, and without telling anyone, decided to go around breaking the law and taking the law into your own hands."
Barry saw the opening and jumped in. "Well, the fight between metahumans and the police is pretty one-sided. One guy who could turn himself into poison gas just sort of drifted away from the crime scene, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Anyway, it's not like I don't have help."
Joe started to put things together. "Earlier, you said you worked a little bit with Dr. Wells. Is this what you meant?"
Barry nodded for the third time, glad that the worst part of the conversation was over. "Yup. After I woke up and dealt with my first meta, Clyde Mardon, he sort of agreed to help. I got a suit that resists friction so it doesn't burn around me and started using my abilities to help people and find the man who murdered mom. Cisco, the engineer, builds the gadgets to help me out. Caitlyn, the MD, patches me up when I get myself hurt."
Joe turned his eyes toward the sun. "Exactly how do I fit into all of this?"
Barry shrugged. "You Help me out with the investigation stuff, or go with Cisco and Caitlyn when they, very rarely, go out into the field." He narrowed his eyes. "You and Cisco work really well together, oddly enough. It's like watching a buddy cop comedy."
"What about Caitlyn and Dr. Wells?" asked Joe, who finally hit upon what Barry was dancing around.
"You and Caitlyn are usually on the same page when it comes to which risks are acceptable are which are not. On the other hand, It's no secret you and Dr. Wells don't get along, which is sort of why I don't even ask questions when both of you agree that a certain course of action is the right one."
Out of all the things that Barry had admitted to, that was the chunk of information that rang false in Joe's mind. "Barry, I rarely change my opinion of people, and I got a good reading off of the Dr. Wells that's hanging out in your old house."
Barry finally gave the nagging in the back of his head a voice. "Yeah, I swear, it almost seems as if-" Suddenly, he stopped and held up a single finger. "Barry, Iris," he yelled, "Come here."
Both kids turned and joined Joe in looking at Barry with confusion. Barry was less concentrated on the looks focused on him than the storm gathering in the sky above him. Joe looked up too, and immediately caught on. Without bothering to explain, he grabbed little Barry and Iris by their backpacks and shoved them into the shrubbery on the side of the road, ignoring their protests.
The birds had gone silent.
Clyde Mardon strode out from behind the car. "You again."
Barry glared at him, making sure not to show an ounce of weakness. "I could say the same to you."
Deciding to forego the typical monologue, Clyde jerked a hand forward, summoning a huge gust of wind that sent Barry spiraling through the air.
With the exception of the little party tricks Barry used during the Bivolo incident, this was the first time that Joe had really seen a metahuman attack. The fear puddling in the pit of his stomach was no longer fear of the unknown; it was fear of the idea that he could get shredded to pieces by Mardon, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Barry, for his part, didn't crash into the ground. Since his team had realized how many times an enemy metahuman had thrown Barry through the air, it had become a part of Barry's training to know what to do in case he couldn't touch the ground.
As soon as he was at the peak of his flight, he twisted his body around so that both arms were facing the ground. Knowing he looked ridiculous but not really caring, he started waving his arms around frantically, creating little whooshes of air under him that softened his landing to a gentle thud.
He sprung to his feet, catlike and started running at Mardon before he was completely aware of his increasingly rainy surroundings. The weather metahuman was forming a ball of ice in his hand and was clearly going to assault Joe with his hailstone that looked like the size of a cantaloupe. With an almost animalistic cry, Barry leapt at the hailstone as it left Mardon's hand, caught it, then used his speed-enhanced legs to punt it out of the neighborhood.
Someone somewhere in Central City was going to have hail damage.
He grabbed Joe, then sped him to where his younger self and Iris already were in the bushes. Now he no longer had anybody to worry about; it was just him and Mardon.
Mardon didn't hesitate. The wind immediately picked up around both of them, burning Barry's eyes with its intensity. The telltale sparks of lightning started to crackle around Barry, and he knew that if a major storm got off the ground, the game would be over. Barry noticed the ice crystals forming in the clouds and a vague idea started forming.
Growing up in the Midwest, known to most Americans as Tornado Alley (Despite the lack of regular tornadoes), Barry knew quite a bit about tornadoes. He knew that if a tornado siren went off, there was no need to really get worried until the telephone poles started flying. He knew ditches were an ideal place to lay down in if you were caught outside during a twister. He knew that most native midwesterners had an inherent flippant attitude towards the windy little beasts that was displayed by either grabbing lawnchairs and snacks when one was announced or dressing up in a banana outfit for the stormchaser cameras. He also knew that Tornadoes were caused by warm air and cold air colliding in the atmosphere due to the region's bipolar weather pattern. They were unpredictable, uncontrollable, and if, as memory served, Mardon had issues controlling one, his power would spin out of control if several popped up.
And as Barry knew from his own fainting experiences, once a metahuman extended their abilities farther than they could handle, they were out for the count.
Running back and forth to create as much friction and warmth as possible, Barry waved his hands back and forth to encourage the warm air to mix with the cold air. It wasn't as easy as it sounded-the rain and wind were increasing, and the constant buffeting was sapping his strength.
Normally, it took a while for tornadoes to actually form, but Barry helped the mini storms along by running in circular motions to help the signature spiral of the storms. Eventually, his slightly overthought plan started to pay off. Miniature tornadoes started to form in Mardon's storm, spitting rain and hail everywhere, and sucking up Mardon's wind.
The wind was getting stronger, and the bolts Mardon had been throwing were becoming more erratic. Mardon was losing control. Time to go in for the kill.
Nearly encased in a tube of mist and wind, Mardon stood at the center of the maelstrom, screaming obscenities. Even with his superspeed to aid him, Barry had difficulty running through the massive gales of wind. Little by little, he worked his way toward him. Even as he got closer, though, he seemed to be flagging. The fight and constant use of his powers in an offensive manner and mental stress of not having his team to shout advice, information or encouragement was taking it's toll. With a fierce yell, Barry pulled from deep reserves of strength and unknowingly encased his body in flickers of lightning as he sprinted dead-on at Mardon.
They went down together in a mess of limbs and fists. Mardon backhanded Barry in the gut as Barry slammed his shoulder into Mardon's chest. Barry knew he had to end this before a chance lighting strike or massive hailstone finished the fight more him.
Almost unnoticeable in the chaos, like with Bivolo the previous day, a timestorm appeared, this time with the farmhouse in the background. With an almighty kick, Barry booted Mardon straight through with a yell of triumph before the weather metahuman even knew what was happening.
Just as quickly as it had started, the angry weather stopped. Blue skies once again reigned, and day was calm and peaceful once again.
Without missing a beat, Barry rushed forward, grabbed his younger self and Iris and ran them off to school. The whole point of him being there in the first place was to keep time as normal as possible, and Barry was scheduled to be at school, not hiding from the Midwest's first hurricane.
After dropping them off underneath the bleachers, he spun on his heel to get back to Joe, and then back to the house to see if there were any changes, like a lightning time storm thing waiting for him to jump into.
Barry was an optimist about these things.
A/N: HOLY LONG CHAPTERS BATMAN... Mappy Christmahannukwanzikah to your followers I guess! xD The colossal wait was not in vain... Now you just need to kick my arse into getting a move on with Power Playing and everything will be rainbows and armadillos. ;D
-Mumble
Yeah, it's been a while. I've sort of just been..busy. Why am I not being a troll about Power Playing? *Hits Face. For those of you wondering about the midwest stuff, I'll give a quick explanantion of the DC universe for the newbies:
Most big cities mentioned in the comics correspond to a similar major city in real life. For instance, Gotham is another name for New York City, as coined by the guy who wrote Sleepy Hollow. Metropolis is suspected to be Chicago, Star City is suspected to be Minneapolis. (Different authors cite different landmarks/references to surrounding areas. Central has always clearly been indicated to be in the midwest, and used to be a city where the cattle were moved up and down, (Flash 1x04 and History Lessons by Brian Buccellato), limiting the possible states to North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Judging by context clues about Central's relation to the ocean, it's not Texas. Central is supposed to be a huge midwestern town surrounded by the Gem cities, which means that Central has to be in the top 100 most populated cities in the US and surrounded by small towns and suburbs. The three cities that make the cut are Kansas City, Missouri combined with Kansas City, Kansas, Tulsa Oklahoma and Wichita, Kansas.
All three are in Tornado Alley. You are all welcome for my entirely too much planned out lesson on the possible location of Central City, since the official answers from the writers are all over the freaking board.