Reality Check : : Barry Allen/The Flash

18

"Anything?" I ask for what must be the millionth time. Mya and I have been looking at these articles for around four hours now, hoping to find anything that could lead us to the Flash. Unfortunately, the only ideas I've come up with so far are things to do with the future and all the stuff I can't talk about.

"Not yet. Wanna take a break?" Mya asks boredly, looking up from the screen of her phone.

"No; if we stop now, we won't want to keep going." I tell her. She sighs and goes back to reading. Wolfgang jumps onto my lap and I stroke his fur absentmindedly.

My train of thought wanders yet again and I end up thinking about Barry's attitude at Jitters this afternoon. I'm positive Rainbow Raider from episode eight hasn't "whammied" him since we only just finished episode four. Maybe something happened at the CCPD or STAR Labs. But what could make him so annoyed? He was fine when he left my apartment this morning.

I still can't believe he said those things. He knows the coma is still a touchy subject for me because of losing the use of my legs and all, and that comment about hallucinating him saving me is just absolute BS.

For the week and a half that I've known I'm in the Flashverse, I've been questioning whether or not it's all real or in my head. If I'm in a coma, like Robin and the messages on my phone suggest, then this whole thing could be in my head. My comatose body can still hear things, right? So it stands to reason that I would know about the voice messages left for me, provided the calls were made within hearing-distance of my body. And I like The Flash a lot, so my brain picked a place I'm comfortable with to put me in while I'm in this coma.

On top of that, circular reasoning means that I can in no way prove whether I'm dreaming or not; if it's in my head then the people around me are all figments of my imagination, but they wouldn't know that and so they'd say that I'm definitely awake and this is all really happening because they think they are real and so everything else around them must be too. But if they aren't in my head and this is real, then the same thing happens.

Basically, no matter what I do, I can't prove that I'm awake... And I can't prove that I'm dreaming.

Circular reasoning sucks.

And it's giving me a headache.

"Okay, I've changed my mind; let's take a break." I would love to dramatically get up and leave, but I can't. Because I'm in a wheelchair. After waking up from a coma. Which Barry reminded me about so kindly this afternoon. Which is why I want to slap him. Very hard.

"If only we could figure out where his base is. Surely he has like some hideout or superhero headquarters or something. If we knew where that was, we'd know his name." Mya whines. My eyes widen as I look over at her.

"Mya, you're a genius!" I say loudly, grinning. I never thought those words would leave my lips. Wolfgang hops off my lap and goes to get a drink.

"So I've heard." My partner agrees, then frowns at me. "Why am I a genius?"

"If we find his base of operations, we can prove he exists and find out who he is. We just need to know which way he goes when he leaves, and where he comes from when he arrives." I explain, thinking out loud. "We need a map."

"I have one!" Mya yells, going over to her bag and pulling out a neatly folded map of the city. "I used to get lost a lot, so I kept this with me wherever I went. I kept getting lost though because I always forgot where it was or that I even had it."

"I'll print off all the articles and get some highlighters. Can you put the map here?" I ask, pointing at the coffee table. She nods and starts to move everything off the table as I do a mass print of every article Iris sent us. "The printer's in the laundry. Can you get the articles while I get the highlighters?"