Author's Note: Hey guys! Here's chapter 2! I was miraculously able to get this up in two days! Unfortunately, however, I'm camping all weekend, so the next one won't be completed quite as soon! But, I will get it done and up as soon as I can! Anyways, enjoy and leave a quick review! Let me know what you think! Also, just and FYI, not much action in this chapter but it's necessary for the plot. Things will heat up next time!
Getting Barry to STAR had proven a more difficult task than Joe had initially thought it would be. First, he had had to inform the captain that Barry was sick and he needed to take him to see a doctor. Thankfully, in the state Barry was in, it wasn't that hard to convince the man that he really was ill. It hadn't been until he had walked all the way out to the parking lot supporting his still somewhat dazed son, however, that Joe had remembered he hadn't taken the car that morning; Barry had super-sped him there. Unfortunately, Barry super-speeding him out now was not currently an option. So, despite his reservations, he was forced to call Iris and ask her to come pick the both of them up. He knew that she too was on her lunch break, and the Central City Picture News building was closer to the precinct than STAR Labs was; she would be there quicker than either Caitlin or Cisco could be.
Not even ten minutes later, a familiar car came speeding into the parking lot, and Iris materialized out of it as soon as she had put it into park, walking over to her father.
"Is Barry okay?" she demanded. "Where is he?"
"Barry's fine, baby," Joe assured her, and motioned behind him to where Barry was leaning against the wall of the building, his head in his hands. Whether it was because of his headache, embarrassment over what had happened or both, however, Joe couldn't be sure. He didn't appear to notice that Iris had arrived, or surely he would have made some attempt to quench her worries as well.
"Barry," Joe called out to his son, and the scientist looked up, spotting Iris for the first time. He moved from the wall, slowly but more steady on his feet than he had been just a few minutes ago. It looked as if he had recovered from crashing into the wall of his lab, though Joe could tell he was definitely still sluggish. "Ready to go?"
Barry nodded resignedly; he didn't want to go to STAR, to have Caitlin fuss over him, but it was a little late for that. After sending himself speeding into a wall like an idiot after just one sneeze, he knew Joe would never let him weasel his way out of it. Though, admittedly, he supposed it couldn't hurt. He hadn't liked the feeling of losing control over his powers, even just momentarily.
"Yeah, I'm ready," he said, flashing Iris a brief, tight smile before getting into the back seat of the car and closing the door after him. As he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest, he could hear Joe and Iris talking in hushed tones as they too got into the car, as if they didn't want to disturb him. He could hear the worry in both of their voices, and fought back annoyance.
"Guys, I'm not dying," he said, peeling his eyes open to look at them. "It's probably just a stupid head cold. My powers should knock it right out."
Joe turned around in the passenger seat to look at him. "If we're going down that road, your powers should have prevented this," he countered. "If you're inadvertently running into walls just from sneezing, clearly there's some sort of problem."
As those words left Joe's mouth, Barry could feel Iris' eyes settling momentarily on him from the rearview mirror.
"Wait, you ran yourself into a wall? Like, with your superspeed?" she asked, concern dripping into her voice.
"Only once," Barry muttered, lowering his eyes to the floor of the car. He didn't particularly want to keep discussing the moment; it wasn't exactly one of the high points of his life.
"And once is one time too many," Joe said. "If anyone else in the precinct had seen it happen, it would have been a problem."
Barry didn't say anything in response to that; he didn't have to. He knew that Joe was right, and that he was lucky that only the detective had witnesses his sudden power outburst.
The car was silent the rest of the way to STAR Labs. Once they got there, both Joe and Iris offered to help support Barry, but he insisted that he was recovered from his earlier wall incident and could walk perfectly fine on his own. Despite his assurances, the father and daughter duo still kept a close eye on Barry as they walked through the doors of the vast building and headed to the elevator that would take them up to the Cortex. Once they made it to the proper floor, all three of them exited and were confronted with a somewhat startled Cisco, who clearly hadn't been expecting anyone. He raised an eyebrow at the group.
"Aren't you all supposed to be working?" he asked, and then turned his focus to Barry. "There hasn't been any metahuman activity; I'm supposed to contact you if you need to do your superhero thing," he added pointedly.
"Cisco, we're here because Barry is sick. Where's Caitlin?" Joe asked.
"Oh," Cisco replied, seeming a bit surprised. He eyed Barry again, as if searching for visible signs of illness. "She's in the med bay, still working on cleaning up from yesterday's incident."
Iris raised an eyebrow. "What happened yesterday?" she asked, echoing Joe's exact thoughts. Barry shot his friend a look, trying to silently communicate not to say anything, but he apparently didn't get the message.
"Oh, you didn't know? I thought Barry would have told you; he lost a lot of blood yesterday after a meta attack, and he kind of got it, like, everywhere."
"Cisco!" Barry groaned, throwing his hands up in the air.
"Barry!" Joe yelled at almost the same time. "What the hell? Why didn't you tell us?"
"Okay, can we not focus on this right now?" Barry asked exasperatedly. He was tired and still had a major headache; the last thing he wanted to do at the moment was discuss yesterday's events with Joe and Iris. He would rather willingly subject himself to an examination from Caitlin. Joe looked like he wanted to protest, but at that moment, said doctor came walking into the Cortex. She looked just as surprised to see the three of them as Cisco had minutes ago.
Her eyebrows furrowed. "Hey, guys, what's going on?" she asked. Joe let out a sigh, deciding to let the other issue go for now in favor of dealing with the one presently at hand.
"Barry's sick," he explained shortly.
At hearing this, Caitlin frowned and strode over to where they all were gathered. "Sick?" she asked. "He shouldn't be sick." She had long ago determined that with Barry's extraordinary abilities, it was virtually impossible for him to contract any illness.
"That's what I said," the speedster muttered as Caitlin moved closer to him, looking him over carefully with her eyes. She then quickly put a hand to Barry's forehead as Joe had done earlier, a frown still gracing her features.
"But it does feel like you have a fever," she said thoughtfully, and Joe gave his son an 'I-told-you-so' look, which Barry did his best to ignore.
Caitlin gestured down the hallway with a sweep of her arm. "Med bay," she said demandingly. "I need to run some tests." With a barely suppressed sigh, Barry shuffled down the hallway to the room he had become quite familiar with during his time as the Flash. Once inside, he sat down on the edge of the bed as Caitlin, Cisco, Joe and Iris filed in after him. Thankfully, as Barry did a quick survey of the room, he saw that Caitlin had done a good job ridding it of the blood he had lost yesterday; he didn't want to give Joe and Iris any more reasons to worry over him.
Caitlin began rummaging around in the drawers for supplies, and soon drew out a thermometer, blood pressure cuff, tongue depressor, flashlight, an otoscope* and an ophthalmoscope.* Barry wanted to groan again at the sight of all of the different instruments, but held it in, knowing any protests wouldn't get him anywhere at this point.
"What exactly is bothering you?" the doctor asked as she walked over to where Barry was sitting, setting her supplies down on a medical cart beside the bed. "I need to know everything."
This time, Barry did let out a sigh. "Headache," he started to list. "Uh, I was dizzy and nauseous earlier from using my powers," he admitted reluctantly.
"You also sneezed and ran yourself into a wall," Iris supplied as Barry failed to mention it; the speedster shot her a look, but she wasn't fazed by it. Caitlin needed to know the information in order to be thorough.
Cisco snorted amusedly, which earned him an elbow to the ribs from Iris; Caitlin, on the other hand, frowned.
"Wait, you mean you lost control of your powers?" she asked. "You didn't mean you use your speed?"
"Do you really think I would intentionally run myself into a wall at 100 miles per hour?" he asked sarcastically, unable to help himself. Cisco once again seemed very amused at this, trying to hold back a laugh as Iris shot him a glare; Caitlin crossed her arms.
"Barry, this is serious," she said. "Did anything else like that happen? Any other instances of losing control?"
Barry shook his head. "No," he said. "It was probably just a fluke," he added with a shrug; he didn't like the way everyone, minus Cisco apparently, seemed concerned over the development. He wanted to play it cool. Unfortunately, at that very moment, he felt a tickle in his nose, and he let loose another sneeze - and suddenly found himself careening off the bed right into a very surprised Cisco, sending the both of them toppling to the floor in a heap. For a moment, no one moved, looking on in surprise. When the two boys on the floor groaned, they all snapped into action. Caitlin moved to help Cisco up while Iris and Joe grabbed Barry, pulling him to his feet.
"Dude, not cool," Cisco muttered, his amusement vanishing.
"And not a fluke," Caitlin noted as Iris and Joe guided the sick hero back to the bed, easing him into a sitting position; he didn't look happy.
"Okay, well, how do we fix it?" he asked, clearly agitated. Caitlin didn't blame him; it couldn't be fun to be vaulted into various objects every time he had to sneeze.
"...I don't know yet," Caitlin said. "But I'll find out," she added determinedly, picking up the thermometer from where she had placed it on the medical cart. "Mouth open."
By the end of Caitlin's examination a half hour later, the only thing that had been determined for sure was that Barry did, in fact, have a fever. Nothing had seemed odd to her throughout the entire thing, which was truly the weird part. It just seemed as if Barry had a normal, run-of-the-mill illness. One, however, that she knew he shouldn't have gotten.
"I don't get it," she muttered frustratedly to Cisco. She was standing with him in the Cortex, looking over her notes and results from the tests she had conducted. Joe and Iris were still with Barry in the med bay, keeping an eye on him as she went over everything. "I can't find any logical reason why he is sick, or why it would cause his powers to go haywire."
Cisco shrugged. "I mean, does there really have to be a reason? He's already not normal," he said. "Won't this just run its course?"
Caitlin sighed frustratedly. "I don't know, Cisco, because I don't know what's causing it," she said. "I don't get it."
Cisco gave his friend a light, comforting pat on the shoulder a she continued to look over the sheets in her hands, looking for anything she might have missed; he knew she hated it when she came across something she couldn't understand, especially when it came to a patient. And double especially if that patient was Barry.
"I mean, he's been working hard lately," he offered. "Maybe he's just overexerting himself, you know? And yesterday probably didn't help matters."
At hearing that, Caitlin's expression became thoughtful, and then suddenly lit up as an idea came to her.
"Cisco, that's it!" she cried.
"Uhm, what -?" he started to ask, not quite sure what she meant, but she had already started quickly down the hallway towards the med bay, leaving Cisco to follow confusedly after her. As she burst back into the room, the three occupants looked up at her hopefully.
"Barry, with the meta yesterday - you said she wound up fairly injured too, right? Before she got away?" Barry looked sheepish at the question; it was bad enough Joe and Iris had found out that he had been injured; now they also knew he had let the meta girl get away.
"Well, yeah -" Caitlin cut him off before he could add to his words.
"By any chance did you get any of her blood on you?"
Barry's eyebrows furrowed as he thought. "...I'm not sure. I guess it's possible. But what does that have to do with anything?" By the looks on everyone else's faces, it was clear that they all had the same question, and looked to Caitlin for an answer.
"I think that might be why you're sick." There was silence for a moment as the information was processed; Iris was the first to speak up.
"Wait, why would this meta girl's blood make him sick?" she asked.
Caitlin took a deep breath before offering an explanation. "I think it might have to do with her DNA mixing with Barry's. Metahumans - each and every one of their DNA was altered by the Dark Matter after the particle accelerator exploded. So what if her blood is acting as some sort of foreign substance, or virus, that his body his trying to rid itself of? It would make him sick in the process, and because it's more of a metahuman based illness, that's why it's messing with his powers."
There was silence for another moment before it was once again broken, this time by Barry.
"Okay...I guess that makes sense. So how do I stop it from progressing?"
At this, Caitlin gave him an apologetic look. "If I had an isolated sample of her blood, I might be able to develop some sort of cure or vaccine. But since we don't have her in custody...Well, I think you just have to wait it out. Let it run it's course."
Barry looked less than happy at this news. "How long is that going to take? I can't afford to have my powers acting up," he said seriously. "Not with the influx of metas."
Caitlin shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry, Barry, there's no real way to tell. But in the meantime, you need to be taking it easy. You should rest, and use your speed as little as possible."
Barry looked like he was about to protest, but Caitlin spoke again before he could, effectively cutting him off. "Don't even try to argue," she said firmly. "If you want to protect the city, you need to be at full strength. Otherwise, it could spell disaster."
"The police force is capable, Bar," Joe inputted helpfully. "And we do still have the boots."
"Yeah, but you're not fully equipped to handle metas, Joe," Barry protested. "I always help. I -"
This time, the speedster was cut off by a blaring alarm going off in the Cortex, one that they all knew the meaning of: crime alert. Caitlin immediately opened her mouth.
"Barry, don't you dare -" she started, but it was too late. Faster than they could blink, the hero had already raced out of the room to get the location. In milliseconds, he had changed into his suit and was speeding away from STAR Labs, leaving his concerned friends and family behind.