Author's Note: Hey guys, I'm back with the next chapter! It seems to be a weekly occurrence now, as opposed to my first update which was done in two days lol. Sorry, college has got me busy busy busy! Anyways, enjoy! Leave a review if you feel inclined! Not much action again in this chapter, but it will pick up! Had to get some plot in!
For someone who spent a lot of time doing things unnaturally fast, Barry came to rather slowly. The first thing he was aware of was the sound of voices close by wherever he was. His ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton, but he managed to make out snippets of what was being said.
"...fever...down a little." Barry thought the voice most likely belonged to Cisco, though it was a little hard to tell.
"...good sign? Will...up soon?" The second voice was hopeful, and he knew immediately that this one at least belonged to Iris.
"...not sure. I'll go get Caitlin." As the speech became clearer suddenly, he could now hear footsteps fading away, presumably Cisco leaving the room. And then there was the sensation of fingers brushing softly through his hair. Just as he was positive the second voice had belonged to Iris, Barry was certain that the light, gentle touch also belonged to her. He almost subconsciously tilted his head, pressing it closer into her hand as his eyes started to flutter in an attempt to open them.
The hand froze in its action, pulling away, and Iris's voice rang out again, clearer this time.
"Barry?"
The speedster let out a soft groan, and his eyes finally opened, blinking lazily up at Iris as they focused. She looked incredibly relieved, though there was another emotion mixed into her features that Barry couldn't quite identify at the moment, as groggy as he felt. To top that off, his head was pounding again, he was hot and felt vaguely disoriented.
"How do you feel? Are you okay?"
It took a moment to answer as the memories of what had happened came back to him, but he slowly nodded. "I'm fine," he said, offering her a light smile.
She didn't return it, however. Instead, she uttered out a quick "good" before raising the hand she had moments ago been running through his hair to smack his arm none-too-lightly.
"Then what the hell were you thinking, Barry?" she demanded sternly, and Barry now sheepishly acknowledged that the other emotion showing on Iris' face was anger. Anger at him.
"You could have gotten yourself seriously hurt, or -"
"Iris." Barry cut her off, running a hand over his face with a sigh. She looked at him expectantly, and he slowly sat up under her watchful eye. "I didn't. I'm fine."
"You're far from fine, Barry," Iris replied, crossing her arms over her chest. "You've been unconscious for the past half hour. It was stupid to go out there while you're like this."
"I can't stop being the Flash because of a little cold, Iris. People need me."
"But it's more than just a cold, Barry!" Iris said heatedly. "This is something entirely different that none of us have dealt with before!"
Barry frowned, and opened his mouth to try and defend himself further when a figure appeared in the doorway.
"Oh, dude, you're up!" Cisco said chipperly. He raised an eyebrow however when he saw the frustrated look on Iris's face. "...am I interrupting something?" he asked. Iris shook her head, giving Cisco a ghost of a smile.
"I think I've about made my point," she said with a pointed look at the speedster, who shifted uncomfortably. He probably had not heard the end of it from her, but at least she was done chewing him out for now. Just moments later, Caitlin came striding into the room, looking relieved as her eyes landed on her now-conscious friend. She immediately walked over, pulling a penlight out from the pocket of the lab coat she was now wearing.
"How do you feel?" she asked, wasting no time shining the light into his eyes to check his pupil reaction as she simultaneously grabbed the thermometer Cisco had previously been holding and shoved it into his mouth. Barry, overwhelmed by the sudden attention, swatted the hand with the penlight away, squinting and trying to blink the spots he was now seeing out of his vision.
"I'm fine," he managed to mouth around the thermometer, which he allowed her to keep in his mouth. She tugged it out a few seconds later, studying it with a nod.
"You're right, Cisco, it did go down." She then looked back over at Barry, and as he got a good look at her expression, he braced himself for what was coming next.
"What the hell were you thinking?" she asked sternly, just as Iris had only minutes ago. "Honestly, Barry, after I had just told you to relax and not use your powers, you just zoom out like that? Are you insane?"
Barry rubbed a hand tiredly over his face, wanting to squirm under the feeling of three concerned (and two angry) pairs of eyes watching him. He kept himself still and did his best to stay calm, however.
"Cait -" he started, but was effectively cut off by said doctor.
"Don't you 'Cait' me, Barry," she said. "It was stupid and rash. I'm sure the cops could have handled it without you putting your neck on the line while you're like this."
Barry let a tinge of the annoyance he was starting to feel creep onto his face. He understood that they didn't approve of what he had done, but he had only been doing what he had felt he needed to, consequences be damned.
"Really?" he asked, slightly snappish. "You think they would have been able to handle Shawna Baez on their own?" He decided not to bring up the fact that he hadn't exactly been able to handle her either. For a moment, there was a stunned silence. Cisco was the one to break it.
"Shawna Baez. As in like, Peekaboo Shawna Baez? The teleporting metahuman?"
"Do you know another Shawna Baez?" Barry asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I thought she had skipped town after Snart let her and the other go," Iris said. She of course hadn't been in on Barry's secret at the time this had all gone down, but she had been filled in since then.
"Yeah, so did I," Barry muttered.
"Well what happened?" Caitlin asked expectantly. Barry rubbed the back of his neck, not quite wanting to elaborate on the details, but also knowing he would have to.
"When I used my powers, the symptoms started to get worse," he let out reluctantly. "I…" He sighed before continuing. "I couldn't take her," he said finally, fiddling with the waistband of the sweatpants he had somehow ended up in; he didn't like admitting weakness, not even to the people he was so close to.
"I got dizzy again, and nauseous," he muttered. "And she...realized I wasn't up to par. She noticed when I had a coughing fit and took advantage of the fact that I wasn't on my game." He didn't meet any of his friend's eyes, still picking at the band on his pants.
"What happened when you coughed?" Caitlin asked, raising an eyebrow. With his current track record of inadvertently running any time he sneezed, it would make sense if there were to be another malfunction associated with his coughing.
"Lightning," Barry admitted. "Lots of lightning."
Caitlin sighed at this. "We're going to need to keep a close eye on this. We can't have you going around coughing lightning and sneezing yourself into walls and God-knows-what-else. You'll expose yourself for sure, and that wouldn't be good for anybody."
Barry didn't argue; he knew that she was right. There was silence for a moment, but it was broken by a sudden realization from Barry.
"Wait a minute, where's Joe?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed as he seemed to notice for the first time that his foster father wasn't in the room.
"He felt insistent that he needed to do something productive," Iris told him. "Caitlin sent him to see if he could get some petri dishes from the precinct."
At Barry's questioning look, Caitlin hurried to explain. "We're running low, and I need more if I want to be able to keep examining your blood," she said. "Speaking of which, I took a sample while you were out, and looking at it confirms that the foreign DNA is attacking your blood cells," she added seriously. "And while I don't have a sample prior to your fight with Shawna to compare this one with, it's looking like it becomes more vigorous when you use your powers, Barry."
"What does that mean?" Cisco asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It means," Caitlin continued, "That the use of his powers worsens the illness. It looks like you got lucky this time; there are no dangerous lasting effects, but there's no telling how bad things will get the more you use them. Which just confirms the fact that you need to take it easy until you start to get better."
Barry did not look pleased by this news, but with the stern looks he was receiving from both girls in the room, and in light of what had just happened, he didn't feel he was in the best position to protest at the moment. Not to mention, even if he wouldn't admit it quite yet, he knew that Caitlin had a point. He wasn't of much use to anyone if he was too weak to take properly deal with metas.
Seeming satisfied that Barry wasn't arguing with her, Caitlin turned to leave the room. "I need to go store your bloodwork," she said on her way out of the door. "Cisco, come help?" At her request, Cisco gave a quick nod to Barry and Iris before following his friend out of the med bay.
Iris looked over to Barry once more; said speedster seemed to be sulking, and she couldn't help feeling a bit amused. Barry was could sometimes be rather childlike when things didn't go his way.
"Barry, come one, taking a small break isn't that bad," she said as she watched him momentarily shake from a sudden chill; his fever at work, she guessed. "Really, you -" She cut herself off, something else having caught her attention. "Uhm, Bar?"
She sounded slightly concerned, pointing down at one of Barry's hands. He followed her gaze, and nearly cursed when he saw that it was vibrating. He hadn't even felt it start up. Great, he thought. Yet another ability gone haywire; now a simple chill was apparently enough to set his powers off. Barry shook the appendage, trying to make it stop, but found it was to no avail. The opposite happened in fact, and within seconds is second hand was vibrating as well. Barry shook both hands fervently now as he willed them to stop. Soon, however, the speedster found his entire body unwillingly vibrating quickly, his figure blurred as Iris watched, unsure of whether she should run to get Caitlin or try to handle this herself. She didn't quite want to leave him alone.
"Goddammit!" Barry yelled out, actually cursing this time, his voice distorted as it sometimes was as the Flash.
"Bar, just try -" Iris started, but Barry didn't get to hear the rest of his words as he found himself phasing through the bed and then down through the floor below with an annoyed, surprised yelp of "Oh come on!" before disappearing from sight.
When Joe walked in seconds later carrying the bag of petri dishes he had obtained, it was to find his daughter staring at an empty bed with a shocked look on her face, frozen.
"Uh...where's Barry?"
"How the hell did you find me?" The voice of Roy Bivolo surprisingly wasn't angry, but rather surprised and tinged with annoyance.
"I have my ways," Shawna replied mysteriously, the corners of her mouth tugging up to form a slight smirk.
The pair was standing in the living area of Roy's small apartment, which Shawna had popped into quite unexpectedly, catching the former villain of Central City off guard.
"What do you want?" the man asked now, arms crossing over his chest as he began to lose the little patience he had with the girl; it wasn't good when he lost his patience. "I didn't move away from Central City to be plagued by annoyances from my past."
"The real question is, what do you want?" Shawna countered, crossing her arms as well as she looked at the man standing in front of her.
"For you to get out of my apartment?" he suggested.
Shawna gave a sliver of an amused smile. "Try revenge on the Flash."
At those words, Bivolo seemed to ease slightly, appearing more interested. "I'm listening."
"You had a good thing going for you in Central City, until the Flash ruined it," she said. "I'm offering you the chance of a lifetime to get back at him, and to take back Central City."
"And how, dear girl, are you planning on doing that?"
"With the help of others like us," she replied. "And pure luck, as fate would have it. As it would happen, the Flash is a little under the weather at the moment."
Bivolo raised an eyebrow. "You're saying he's sick?"
Shawna nodded, her smirk once again returning. "Yes, quite. He couldn't even stop me from robbing a bank."
At hearing this, the corners of Bivolo's mouth began to turn up in a wicked smile as well.
"Tell me more."
Author's Note: Hey guys, hope you enjoyed this chapter! And thanks to the guest Emberlynne for suggesting the power fluke with Barry's phasing, that was amusing for me to write! Until next time!