ϟ barry allen | the flash

[supertardiness]

	✔ Cʀᴏssᴏᴠᴇʀs/AU ✔ Aᴄᴛɪᴏɴsᴘᴀᴍ ✔ Pʀᴏsᴇ	✔ Pɪᴄᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴍᴘᴛs ✔ Oᴛʜᴇʀᴡᴏʀᴅʟʏ ✔ Sᴛᴀʀᴛᴇʀs	♥ F/M ⏰ Uᴘ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴀᴛᴇ

Comments

[kittened]

What is it with superheroes and voiceovers?

[ This is said with a tone that is nothing but fond as she turns on Skype ]

[supertardiness]

[He smirks a bit before responding.]

You don't think it adds to the whole heroic illusion?

knights in the hizzouse

[fistpump]

[The slight breeze that rushes past her isn't so odd - except that she's inside the castle at the moment and no where near any windows. Frowning, she stops in the middle of her tracks and waits for the breeze to return or stop and when it does she has one of those moments. Those moments of 'It couldn't be... could it?']

Barry?

[supertardiness]

Felicity?

[Felicity doesn't hear that. Barry is too far away at that point and moving too fast for the word to really be more than a fast twitter of noise as he runs. What she does hear, however is the crash! that comes with Barry colliding with one of the walls of the castle.

You can't get distracted when you're moving at super speed. It doesn't end well.

Seconds later, however, he zips back, standing in front of her with a wide smile. There are bruises, but they'll be gone in a few minutes.]

You're here!

(you can make this KOL specific if you wish)

[divaricate]

o7 he doesn't have a sheet yet but i shall wing it

[supertardiness]

[IT'S A BIRD. IT'S A PLANE. IT'S .... a falling speedster who's caught the bad end of a deflection spell. He can hear the glass shattering around him and his reflexes are fast enough that he will probably be fine if he can get some traction to run on, but for right now all he's doing is falling, arms and legs flailing some as he plummets towards the ground.

Wanda, as she's running into the room (much more slowly than Barry) probably hears the following as he falls, voice fading as he gets closer to the ground.]

Wanda look ooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuu ....

kol specific because suuure

[daredtobelieve]

[Well... Helen was going to organize these papers when she got back to her office but a rush of wind as something moves past her VERY quickly sends them flying out of her arms and onto the floor of the hallway.]

Bloody fantastic. [She says with a huff as she puts her hands on her hips and surveys the mess. She looks around for a culprit as well.]

[supertardiness]

[And seconds later, that culprit is standing right in front of her, having gathered the papers he scattered at that same super speed, and a very apologetic smile on his face.]

Sorry about that. I don't always watch where I'm speeding.

[journalize]

[supertardiness]

For as long as Barry can remember, he's always been hyper-aware of Iris West. It's hard not to be, when you've spent almost every day together since you were eleven. Iris is a constant fixture in his life, a bright spot in a childhood that brought so much pain, and he notices every detail, every line, every smile, and he tells himself it's because he's observant. It's just his skills as a CSI picking up the details like he did with everything else, but even he knows that's a lie.

He doesn't notice when Eddie has a new suit or Caitlin has new earrings. But with Iris, it's like his mind can't help but hone in on it.

He's sitting on Joe's couch, drinking a beer that he can't feel when he looks up at the sounds of her footfalls and the swish of her dress. New earrings, new skirt - she looks beautiful, but he can't say that right away. That doesn't fall into the "best friend" seat that he's put himself in.

"Wow," he says, a slow smile crossing his features. "You look amazing."

Or maybe he can't help himself and he'll say it anyway.

[nordlys]

[supertardiness]

[Even S.T.A.R. Labs needs revenue so when Cisco manages to create a galaxy in a bottle, clubs across Central City snap them up like crazy. They're even willing to forgive that they're from S.T.A.R. Labs.

That being said, Cisco is a fan of seeing his work in action so on one of their nights off, he drags Barry and Caitlin out with him to check things out. The club is loud but the music is good, so it's a nice distraction for a little while.

Eventually he needs to get some air so he slips out the back, hanging out in the alley and just giving himself a chance to breathe. He takes a few steps out before he spots someone down the alley from him and he falters.]

Oh, sorry. I didn't realize someone else was out here.

tenderly leaves you a thing

[myvictories]

[supertardiness]

[So when Ray Palmer asks you to help him out at a tech convention in National City because he's unveiling something new and cool and awesome, there is no way you say no.

(Also, because this is Ray and most of his inventions are a disaster waiting to happen, so it's best to keep as many superheroes on hand as humanly possible. That's why Thea's there too. Ray wanted to bring Felicity but Felicity would have meant bringing Oliver and apparently that's just awkward.

Still, Thea is pretty cool and easily pacified by coffee.)

Cisco, however, was very upset that he wasn't coming with, for two reasons. One, because he and Ray clearly bonded on a spiritual level the last time Ray was in Central City, and two, because of the fact that National City has a super heroine all their own, and he probably would have spent most of the trip trying to convince Barry that she definitely needed to be a part of Team Flash. And while Barry is all for making more allies, especially ones who could save planes from crashing, he's got a lot of things he's trying to juggle at the moment, all the while Cisco is talking his ear off.]

... It's not like she's just setting up meet and greets, Cisco.

[He's trying his best to keep his voice low, but that's not going to do anything against Kryptonian superhearing.]

There isn't a superhero code word or anything.

I have a problem

[killofthenight]

i don't see this as a problem

[supertardiness]

[So between Helena's love of food and Barry's ungodly metabolism, there is a absolutely insane amount of food being delivered to STAR Labs right now. The Huntress (the version that is not Oliver's ex girlfriend) was a fun temporary addition to the team for a quick metahuman problem in Central City and now they are celebrating by devouring the entire menu from one of the local restaurants.

They totally aren't giant gluttons at all.]

You should try the pastrami.

[He's just saying.]

[kindawimpy]

[supertardiness]

[So once upon a time, Barry Allen wanted to be an astronaut. He still wants to be an astronaut, but now that he's the Flash, it's become a secondary dream but it's still there. It's enough of a dream that it means he will totally drag Gemma with him to the planetarium just because he can.]

Did you know that while Polaris is the North Star for now, it won't always be? Due to the way the planet wobbles on it's axis, eventually the star will variate to a different one?

[thegreatexperiment]

[supertardiness]

[So. Vampires. That's a thing.

Barry isn't sure how much he agrees with the fact that vampires are a thing, but Caitlin's run all the tests, and the results have come back undead. Now, they're sitting in the Cortex, glancing at each other awkwardly as Barry tries to figure out where to go from there.]

So. What are you looking for?

[impulsive]

[While Bart's usually good at this time travel thing, sometimes he goofs up. The Force was practically yelling at him and yet - He didn't listen. He never listens.

Uncle Max was right, about that stopping and smelling the roses thing. If he had, he would've been in the right time and the right universe and not sitting awkwardly in this place called the Cortex with Killer Frost asking him all sorts of scary science questions.

He doesn't even recognize Grandpa at first, but once he does, the relief on his face is as clear as day. While those tests are running and he's left alone with his legendary hero, Bart tugs on Grandpa's arm.]

Where's the nearest burger place? [Killer Frost might be listening, but whatever. He can outrun her freeze ray.] I'm getting kinda hungry.

[supertardiness]

[Okay, first of all, Bart's narration, you're going to have to stop calling Barry's bestie Killer Frost. Second of all, Bart is not Barry's first speedster from the future, but he's the first one that's been a) friendly and b) actually related to him, so he's going to just look down, before glancing back over his shoulder with a nod.]

Yeah, sure. Why don't we go hit up Big Belly Burger?

[emersion]

[supertardiness]

So ... is there a chance that you or any of your past lives knows how to tango?

[There's a lot of things that Barry Allen can do well. For one, he cleans up very nicely. For another, he is very light on his feet. But all the fast footwork in the world isn't going to save him here.

Kendra had showed up asking for Team Flash's help with rescuing some more Savage-related artifacts from one of the local museums (and by rescuing she meant stealing) and Barry agreed to help because anything that is Savage related deserves to be locked away, far far away, where no one can get to it.

They managed to talk their way in with Kendra's (possibly stolen) invitation, and mixing and mingling was easy enough, but the door on the far end of the room has a very large dance floor in between them and it, and they needed to get through it without attracting a whole lot of attention.

Hence, the tango question.]

[smoak]

a million years later

[supertardiness]

["I promise" is a pair of words Barry tends to use far more often than he should. Barry is notorious for making promises he can't keep, and today is apparently going to be no exception. Their friends are scattered because of a metahuman that works in temporal anomalies, and while Felicity is trying to get ahold of the Waverider, Barry is getting antsy.]

I can find them Felicity. I promise.

[Never mind what damage is done to the timeline in the process.]

[eloquentness]

[supertardiness]

[Even after Iris had moved on to a better job and away from Jitters, she and Barry still had a coffee date there every now and then. It especially increased after they started for real dating, and he can't help but smile even now as he sits across from her, just soaking in the normality of it all.

Because who knows how long it's going to last.]

So what are you up to today?

i was feeling westallen-y.

[demonstrate]

mmmm, westallen

[supertardiness]

[There's something incredibly easy about things with Iris, now that they've finally settled back into place again. While most of the time he feels this need to constantly move, to the point where standing still is actually uncomfortable, when he's with Iris, there's something about her that manages to still him, allows him to stay and soak in the moment.

With her, it's never too slow. When he's with Iris, everything seems to be never enough.

But for right now, they're currently sprawled on the couch, watching a terrible movie on TV and just enjoying each other's company, when Barry just muses out of nowhere:]

So, I was thinking.

I feel like I'm doing this backwards tbh

[lowerlipthing]

[It's the last thing she could think to try. With her genomes tearing themselves apart and the glimpses of disaster lining up around her, there's only one way forward. She's lined up a series of injections -- gene therapy. With enough of a kick, she reasoned that it would be able to trigger her metahuman healing and trick it into regenerating normal cell structure. It would be like rebooting a computer and forcing it into directed regeneration. She's crunched the numbers, and the odds for success are more than 0%. That's enough to work with.

She hadn't counted for the kickback. It's why Barry will find her alone in an icy cavern of a lab, unconscious and clinging to the edge of her desk, as if she'd passed out in the middle of trying to pull herself up.

But there isn't a single strand of blonde hair on her head. Whatever happened must have been a success. It's everything she wanted.]

nope this is perfect

[supertardiness]

[The thing about Barry is that as much of a scientist as he may be, he usually gets looped out of the experiments unless they need him. Sometimes, they'll at least give him a vague idea before it devolves into scientific explanations far above his pay grade and he just waves them off to let them do their thing.

... In fact, he's beginning to think that they may do that on purpose. Possibly because he gets bored and eventually becomes more of a hindrance than a help. After Iris West, science is the love of his life, but he so does not have patience for the process anymore.

Regardless, the kickback gets his attention from the Cortex, alerts of science gone wrong happening and he's zipping into Caitlin's lab. He hesitates when he feels the cold, unsure of what exactly she was doing in here, but all of that fades when he sees her, and he darts forward to make sure she's okay.]

Caitlin?

[recolte]

what's the contingency plan if you erase your brother's girlfriend from existence?

hypothetically of course.

totally TOTALLY DID NOT HAPPEN

[supertardiness]

[It takes a while for her father to respond to this text because on the one hand, like father like daughter, on the other ... oh my god.]

What did you do?

can we blame mel for this? i blame mel for this.

[scovilles]

parkwestallen family shenanigans
❱ what if wally west went to coast city during his conveniently timed sabbatical?
❱ what if he met linda park there?
❱ what if everyone lived happily ever after?

( picture this: linda park, cross-legged on a barstool in front of her kitchen counter, scanning over the latest edition of the central city picture news. iris west-allen in a byline on the front page earns a smile and a double-tap of her index finger, barely-there pressure so as not to smudge the ink. linda's name is somewhere within the pages too, managing editor beside it in crisp serif font. unlike iris', though, linda's name goes sans hyphen within the black and white. professionally, she's still the same linda park she's always been.

personally? she never bothered to change her name. it didn't seem that important, not when there were so many other important things to be done.

this morning, though, the only important thing she has to do is nothing at all. it's someone else's — possibly wally's, maybe barry's, but not hers — turn at corralling the super kids. flashfam, as irey and jai call themselves. but for today, she's content, finally, to just relax. it's easier now, all the puzzle pieces having seemingly fallen into place; the biggest disaster in recent memory being the short-lived local shortage of coffee. that had been a front page story. central city just couldn't do without its speed boosts.

today, she's content to drink her own cup — two splashes of milk, one spoon of sugar — and enjoy whatever the day brings her. like the quick rap of knuckles against her front door, immediately followed by the turn of a key in the lock and the gentle swoosh of opening over the rug. she knows on instinct that it's barry, if only because iris never bothers to knock. she just texts beforehand. )

Allen. Don't you know better than to interrupt my days off? ( it's said in jest, at least, the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth betraying her attempt at intimidation. ) Are you just here to steal more coffee?

[supertardiness]

Sure. We can call it that.

[Honestly, Barry is just bored. Iris and Wally took the kids with Joe and the newest West sibling out to some kind of West family adventure and as much as the Wests are Barry's family too, this was important for bonding time with Joe, and he thought it would be best to give them some space. Cecile backed him up too, which means he has all the free time in the world to go bug his favoring managing editor at CCPN.]

The caravan of West cars has left Central City, and I may already be bored.

[He might have overestimated how nice it would be to have a quiet house all to himself. Especially with a speedster brain.]

I was wondering if you wanted to go see a movie or something?

[recolte]

are you up?
I can't sleep

[she's in the past with her dad and he didn't make her go home, she'll probably never sleep again]

[supertardiness]

Yeah. Everything okay?

[Barry is a worrier by nature - but the West-Allens are, really, but this particular scenario was Barry's turn to have the sleepless night - and he may have been lying awake in bed, trying not to picture the splintering timeline or wondering what kind of trouble the speed force might have in store for his daughter.

No big deal. Just dad stuff.]

[recolte]

[It figures that by recklessly diving into Grace's memories alone to keep her secrets, desperate to keep her parents and the rest of the team from finding out who her mentor is in the future, she leads her dad to that big bad secret anyway. Straight to it. She gets stuck and her parents come to rescue her, because she has really awesome, badass parents and her mind leads them straight to it.

The thing about lying, Thawne told her before they started this, is that she didn't have to be good at it. She only ever had to be bad at telling the truth. Distract him with the fact that he never comes home and how Nora really doesn't know anything about him, and how mad at her mom she is-- and none of them will ever look any deeper than that at her motivations. And it's worked, so far, surprisingly well but then Thawne knows everything about the Flash and Barry Allen and his friends and it shouldn't surprised her at all that he knows exactly how to manipulate them.

Only he never told her what to do if her dad finds out the truth. There's no easy half truth that comes to mind. No way to explain away the memories they saw of her and Thawne meeting and planning behind their backs. It's easy to rationalize memories of angry fights with her mom as a sad, lonely little girl who missed her dad and twisted her mom into the villain in her memories. But there's no way to lie about these memories because she shouldn't know Thawne in the first place.]

Dad. [Sitting up, she pulls the memory device off her head, trying so hard not to start crying already.] Dad, I can explain.

[supertardiness]

[He never really goes away, does he?

It's bad enough that he ruined Barry. It's bad enough that they erased him from existence and he still comes back. It's bad enough that he never really goes away, that the damage he did to Barry is always going to be there, and never going to heal, not really. In the end, he always gets what he wants, and in the end, he gets his hooks into Barry's daughter, too. His daughter.

His hand curls into a fist, the first instinct always being that anger that he's carried with him since he was eleven years old. The anger that always comes flashing back every time he has to deal with Thawne. He wants to punch a wall. He wants to be yell at her, demand to know how she could be so stupid to let him manipulate her like that.

But it's not her fault, is it? Barry was gone. Barry should have been the one to teach her about the speed force, to warn her about the dangers. He left her and never came back, and how was she supposed to know?

She didn't even know how her namesake died.

It's a swirl of conflicting emotions that has him holding up a hand before Nora can continue, needing to step back because he loves her so much, and he knows that some of this is his fault, but he also knows how angry this makes him and he doesn't want to say something he'll regret.]

Nora, I ... I can't, I need ...

[A minute. He needs a minute.]

i feel the earth. move. under my feet | for daisy

[supertardiness]

[

♫ ~ don't judge me for my predictable song cues

Are you sure there was a breach?

[Barry and Cisco have been wandering the woods for hours, trying to find some sign of life or danger from where the alleged breach had happened, but so far they've come up with nothing. Cisco looks annoyed that he's being doubted, again.

"I'm sure, Barry. It's not the kind of thing that I just make up to wind up in the woods in the middle of the night on a whim."]

Fair enough.

[The taller man takes a moment to scan the treeline, before turning to Cisco with a sigh.]

You take left, I take right? See what we find?

["Sounds good. Shout if you need help."

Barry nods, before turning to slowly make his way through the woods. True, he could probably go through this really, really quickly, but he's not suited up and he's not look to out himself. At least not quite yet.

Instead, he shouts into the trees like a dumbass.]

Hello? Anybody out here?

[evite]

[ it's the woods. she winds up in thick woods, the canopy blocking out even the low light of the moon, unable to see more than a foot in front of her face. it's not exactly a reassuring backdrop to the destination... especially considering daisy didn't board the multiverse plane willingly.

she'd been testing one of the monolith pieces, and wound up cracking open a rift in the space-time continuum — or whatever garbage scifi phrase fitz would eventually describe her sudden disappearance with. right now, all she knew was that she was in some forest, and that clicking her heels together three times was not getting her home.

instead, it just seemed to get somebody's attention. great. so much for figuring a way out of this. ]

Do me a favor and don't shoot me?

[ ha. ha. very funny. she's so funny. but seriously, don't shoot her. ]