I'm so happy with how this story is going! I'd like to thank akagami hime chan, ocfairygodmother, Notary Sojac, and highlander348 for last chapter's reviews, they really motivated me to get this chapter out fast.

ocfairygodmother: Thank you so much for taking the time to review, I know how busy you are! I'm grateful to hear you got sucked in from the beginning, that was my intention. I've got this goal about learning alongside Karen what she's feeling and accepting it as it is.

akagami hime chan: Yes, Wells thinks he's got everything under control. Let's see how hard Karen pulls the rug under him XD .

Notary Sojac: Hello, welcome to this story! Thank you for liking Karen, if I'm honest, I'm kind of writing her to be dislikeable at first, the way Barry would see her. And yes, Doctor Who means a lot to her personally, so don't be surprised if you keep seeing her make comparisons between it and her life. The comment about Mattie was kind of a hint of what was, what is, and what's to come; they've got such a tight friendship but their emotional issues will make them go through hard times. And Wells—oh, I love him as a villain. Most of the time, he's writing himself ahead of this story—very in character for him—so I'm glad to hear he's being just as cryptic as ever.

I hope all of you are okay and enjoy this chapter. Comments are always welcome!

04 - Awfully Mundane

Seven Months After the Particle Accelerator Explosion

Karen Starr was... awfully mundane.

Or she was an incredible actress, but Harrison's pride refused to believe that. No one was better than him. Certainly not in smarts, not when all the knowledge of the past, present, and future lay in his hands.

But Ms. Starr was proving to be more of an inconvenience as of lately.

It started, of all things, with her return to the C.C.P.D. There were tears, of course, as Captain David Singh's protégé had wormed herself into the senior officers' hearts—all except Joe West's, curiously enough. The detective ignored her and she did him the same courtesy, smiling politely when they had to interact, mainly when she handed him files or passed tips from the telephone lines.

It was painful to watch, even at a distance and through the lens of an advanced surveillance camera. But it helped piece the puzzle that Barry Allen's and Karen Starr's relationship made. It showcased that, whatever problem those two had, it had swayed people in their vicinity.

(And really, it was becoming infuriating that this, of all the wonders of the past, was the only thing that got him entertained in fifteen years. )

Other than that, Karen—and he was starting to think of her like that, found it easier to investigate the more he thought of her on a first-name basis—did not do anything out of the ordinary. She was the face of the station, a warm but detached smile greeting its visitors. She answered phones with the deftness of an operator, one hand gripping the corded phone, the other writing in shorthand over a small notepad. She even fetched coffee from Jitters without complaint, running back and forth in heels almost effortlessly.

All part of the disguise, Wells knew. Still, he was impressed. Grudgingly so.

(And it would take him a while to notice, but the distraction would cost him. Not greatly, but enough.

Enough to know Karen Starr was not to be treated lightly.)

000•000

Coming back was like being thrown into a lowly lit cave. There was enough positiveness at the station (the Central City way of moving forward, Karen guessed) to keep everyone working. But there were too many missing faces, too many criminals taking advantage of the disaster that had claimed the city to take a moment of rest.

It should be impossible, but the crime rate had skyrocketed so high the news had made it their goal to point out they were now like Starling City. Which was horrifying to think of, considering their neighbor had recently dealt with an army of drugged super-soldiers. That sort of rep didn't bode well for Central.

But Karen realized the more she worked and helped around, the easier it was to ignore the situation. Which she wasn't. Honestly.

Oh, fine. She was avoiding it. The whole thing made the hairs on her arms curl up in unease, a forewarning itself. Karen was very good at avoiding trouble and she wasn't about to stop, not even if the goddamned city sank due to organized crime or because the World Health Organization kept mixing them up with S.T.A.R. Labs and threatened to cordon off the whole state.

C.C.P.D. had their hands full with that. On one hand, general opinion swayed in the WHO's favor. On the other hand, not many people were happy with the idea of moving out of their idyllic lives. Few had different reasons, such as Joe West and his daughter. And who could blame them for being conflicted when Harrison Wells, the pariah of the city, had been the only one to keep Barry's heart beating? Or that his superb equipment, given free of charge, had managed to save at least a thousand lives in many hospitals? Even David couldn't complain due to Karen being part of that percentage.

Karen could though. Couldn't their aid have been a miracle worker? Because every day that passed, she lost a little of her sanity. After all, hearing "things" wasn't good, was it? Precedent showed nothing good came out of the uncanny. If anything, they became excuses for humanity to head into war head-first, no questions asked. Such was the nature of humans.

(Listen to her thinking ahead of herself. Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. You're safe, you're safe, you're still safe.)

Then there was that accursed buzzing. Like an annoying bee, hovering over her head so fast and so faint she could never pinpoint its location. It did not go and come like the voices—no, it simply was there at the back of her head, her own 'elevator music', for lack of a better word. She almost forgot it was there each time a clear voice cut in, so loud as if its owner were speaking to Karen herself. (And they grow grow grow until she finally finds the owner, and only then do the voices quiet.) David had almost caught her answering back to a question that wasn't meant for her ears (and she got to hear quite a lot that had nothing to do with her, like that time David had to talk with the candidate for presidency Anthony Bellows or when Iris West and Eddie Thawne got themselves shut in a supply closet) and since then she'd doubled her efforts to ignore the world around her.

Her tiny world. Broken apart by a man's pride. A world she'd so carefully built to protect herself from the greed of man. All she'd wanted was to be left alone—and now her head wasn't a safe space anymore.

Or C.C.P.D. for that matter. Because the buzzing never followed Karen out of the building. It was simply there.

And after 17 days of roaming up and down, hands busy with coffee and files, she finally—finally!—located the source.

Sources. Several. So tiny, so barely there that, when she found the first one, she accidentally broke.

The second one wasn't so far away, fortunately.

In all her years of studies, of visiting so many advanced laboratories, she'd never seen anything like this. After a thorough analysis, she surmised it was... a camera.

Yes, a bloody camera. One so advanced no detector or computer base could identify it, let alone detect its presence. Technology like this—and it was probably a prototype—cost a fortune. So who, in their right mind, decided to leave it all over a simple police station, one so quaint the highlight of the day happened to be the fight for the not-watered coffee?

Or better yet, what kind of person had deliberately made said choice... and what, exactly, was he watching?

000•000

Gideon did not warn him. He hadn't felt the need to ask and so, per her modifications, she didn't bother him when Karen Starr found the first of his personalized cameras in the C.C.P.D. elevator.

Indeed, she did not tell him about the cameras that followed, or the fact that Starr had, in her free time, realized all of them created a path that led to the crime laboratory—or as everyone labeled it, "Allen's lab."

No, it was not within Gideon's protocols to interrupt long-term projects, more so now that Dr. Wells was making the preparations for Barry Allen's return. She wasn't even authorized to infringe and/or access Dr. Wells' plans without his explicit command.

But there was something Gideon could do. It was the barebones of her system, woven in her codes year after year, decade after decade, and nothing—not even the genius of Eobard Thawne—could erase her true purpose:

To ensure the protection of the Allen family, one way or another. No matter what. And though in every timeline it started with Barry Allen, this time, it was Karen Starr's turn.

Regardless of her name, of her nature, of her ethics—it was Gideon's duty to ensure her safety.

000•000

Nine Months After the Particle Accelerator Explosion

Karen's week started, of all things, with robbery. But to be fair, her mornings usually began with her ear being talked off with absurd tales. The robbery was a nice change of pace on such a dreary morning.

It went downhill two days later when the sketch artist produced a portrait of Clyde Mardon. Or at least, that's what it seemed like.

"Can't be," said Joe West when David handed over the picture. "The Mardons are dead. I saw it. And nobody can survive an exploding plane, let alone the fall."

"We didn't find their bodies, " said Eddie Thawne tentatively.

"That's because they blew up."

"Still, it wouldn't be farfetched if one of them survived. I mean, it's been nine months—that's time enough to recover."

"This ain't Gotham, pal—no offense." Joe turned to David, and consequently Karen who was behind him.

Her surrogate father slammed a file on the desk. "Gotham or not, we can't ignore this. Once it's an accident. But twice?" He tapped the folder pointedly.

As Joe picked it up, Karen spoke. "About three weeks ago, there was a burglary in a small jewel shop—Sapphire Jewels. The owner was asleep and found the disaster the next day." Karen handed over a tablet to Detective Thawne. "Fortunately, she's a modern old woman. Had the brilliant idea of installing cameras all over the space."

"But she didn't think to buy an anti-theft system?"

Karen smiled. "Actually, it was scheduled to be installed three days after. The cameras, however, were ready to go. And..." she skipped the video to the important part. "There. It caught a perfect shot of the perpetrator."

It wasn't perfect, per se. The criminal had briefly turned to face the camera and then, suddenly, the image blurred. Mrs. Ferris had not only had to clean the broken glass, but she'd also had to air the shop because the morning mist had gotten in so potently nothing could be seen.

But anyone with a decent amount of knowledge in surveillance could pick out at least a dozen pictures of that short moment. She, soon to be a Computer Science major, did that and cleared out the imperfections for the prints.

Karen was brilliant. But even her, socially inept as she was, knew to hesitate at the sight of a supposedly dead man.

Detective West compared the pictures with the sketch, brow furrowed.

"The system matched him with Mardon."

"But there was no DNA evidence left?"

Karen sighed. "None."

"Then it's a coincidence," West said. "Mistakes can happen, after all." And though subtle, she still caught the look he threw her.

"Do we want to make it a pattern though?" said Thawne. "And if Clyde's alive, what's to say his brother isn't too? I don't think the city can take them and Leonard Snart at the same time."

Everyone held back a grimace. Leonard Snart, the professional criminal (that's what Karen called him in her head. considering how elaborate and meticulous the man was), had upped up his game shortly after the Particle Accelerator Explosion. A strategist, Snart knew when and where to hit, his heists becoming even more absurd than the usual standard. C.C.P.D, short-staffed as it was, only had put up a calendar with the possible dates of his next strike.

"Not to mention the other weirdos that have been roaming," Karen muttered.

The men turned to her, brows raised. She smiled awkwardly and shrugged.

West sighed. "Fine. We keep tabs on this... wannabe."

Eddie Thawne stifled a chuckle. So did Karen, for that matter. But her smile soon fell as the noise outside the captain's office suddenly rose, hitting her like a mallet to the head.

"Hey, isn't that Baby Face?"

"Welcome back, Allen!"

"I thought he was dead?"

"Baby Face!"

"—ren! Karen, what's wrong?"

"He's back," she said.

David frowned, his hand still steadying her. "What?"

"Barry." She turned her head, focusing past the blinds of the office, past the throng of people that had converged around one person, one so tall she could see his eyes just above their heads.

(At that moment, it felt like he was looking back at her.)

Joe West pushed past her, eyes wide and teary, his foster son's name on his lips.

(Foolish girl. He never looks at you.)

"That's Barry," said Eddie, his open mouth turning into a smile. The happiness of the station seemed to power it up—not that Detective Pretty Boy needed it. "That's really him, isn't it?"

"That's him, all right," said David, briefly glancing at his co-workers before settling back to Karen. "You okay?"

The ringing was still there but she tried to push it outside her head.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. It's just—I'm surprised to see him, that's all."

A hand patted Karen's other shoulder. Eddie smiled at her sympathetically. "Well, the last time you saw him, he was almost dead." His smile twisted into a frown, realizing his wording and already regretting it.

Regret or not, Karen found it in herself to shoot him an incredulous glare.

Detective West's voice carried to the office. "Let's go, partner!"

"And that's my cue," said Eddie, practically running out. Then he ran back for his jacket and left once more.

Karen followed his trail. She almost pitied the way he stopped before his girlfriend to look at her with puppy eyes... and was distracted by Barry. Again.

Barry. Barry Allen. Bartholomew Henry Allen, alive and awake. He looked so ridiculously well Karen was now angry she'd worried about him at all. Where was the dehydration? The pallor of his skin? Instead of looking like he'd woken up from a coma, Allen appeared to have come back from a sabbatical.

(Don't lie, you're glad to see him okay, he's okay, you can breathe now, he's alive, everything's back to normal)

"Are you sure you are fine?" David asked again.

She glanced at him. He looked worried.

David Singh was, in all the sense of the word, her father. He had not fathered her or even raised her, but he'd been there when it mattered the most, just like Mattie. But unlike Mattie, he'd been there at her worse too, when she'd been far too gone to know right from wrong. Through understanding and patience, he'd set a moral code to follow, one that did not allow lies or omitted truths in their relationship; he knew everything there was to know about Karen, including the number of times she dreamt about the green glow of home or her insecurities about her emotional progress.

And then there was Barry.

"I'm glad to see him," she admitted.

He nodded slowly. Karen never dared to tell David what had happened between them, but she knew he was aware it had something to do with her—their—secret.

He just didn't know how much Barry's betrayal had hurt her. Sometimes, Karen wondered if she truly knew the extent of this feeling at all.

NOTE:

Let me be clear from the get-go—Karen is an unreliable narrator. Her perspective of the world is led by cold facts, so emotion is a hard thing for her to grasp. So, whatever she thinks or says about 'The Incident' with Barry, take it with a grain of salt.

Or is she right? 😉

Finally getting into the first season! I'm so excited to see what's to come. Even I don't know what's gonna happen, not with Eobard writing himself in this story.