impossible | barry allen

93

"What are you doing?" Tracy Brand's eyes were wide Barry, Cisco, HR and I ran into the room she was in, where she was burning many papers, Barry putting out the fire with a fire extinguisher.

"You mean save you from a painful, fiery death?" Cisco stares at her as if she had gone insane, pointing at the torch she had in her hand.

"I had it under control." Tracy says, the torch clicking on, causing us all to jump.

"Okay, you know what, let's put this down while you still have eyebrows." Cisco grabs the torch, placing it somewhere.

"You're burning this all on purpose?" I let out a shaky breath, staring at her with slight wide eyes.

"Yes, I'm burning everything." Tracy nods, explaining once she noticed us all stammering, "My work. I don't know why they call it "work", especially since none of it works."

"This isn't exactly what I expected." Barry says.

"Yeah, me neither." I mutter.

"Um, Dr. Brand?" Barry calls for her.

"Oh no." Tracy shook her head, "Just Tracy. I failed my dissertation. Nothing like ten years down the drain and a pile of debt as a legacy."

"Tracy," I start, "We- were just hoping you had a moment to talk?"

"Oh no. My bus leaves in my five minutes." Tracy looks into the pot, "Please tell me I didn't burn my bus ticket-"

"Where are you going?" asked HR.

"Big Belly Burger. I hear they're hiring." Tracy said with full seriousness.

Barry laughs, but the angelic sound quickly fades when he sees she was serious, "Wait- you're serious? What about all your research?"

"Oh, you mean my "unsubstantiated and transactional" inquiry into the "purely suppositional" nature of extra-dimensional energy?" She asks.

"Yes-" We say in unison.

"A waste of time, or as Dr. Hersh puts it. "A total misapplication of the university's resources." I might as well start practicing, "Do you want fries with that?"" She mocks Dr. Hersh.

"Look, don't let the naysayers get you down.
Your doubts, they're traitors. Don't believe them. Your mind is too fine to waste turning tubers into finger chips." HR told her.

"Finger chips?" She questions.

"He's from out of town." Cisco explains, a small eye roll following.

"You can't give up-" Barry starts, "Your work on relativistic quantum mechanics and its application to inter-spatial theory to manipulate matter on a subatomic level, it's groundbreaking."

I stare at Barry with wide eyes, my brain not processing any of what he had just said, the words being to sophisticated and huge, practically oozing science.

"I haven't shared that hypothesis with anyone, other than my therapist." Tracy calls out, "Who are you?"

"We're therapists." HR blurts out.

"I-" I start to back him up, "Yeah. We are- we go around, and help people, who need to talk. And, maybe instead of burning all of your work, you could talk about it, and talk about your feelings. I mean- that's our job, to listen and give you our best advice. I'll even throw in a ride to Big Belly Burger if you're interested." I turned my head and glared at HR.

Before Tracy could say anything else, the door behind Tracy broke open, the glass shattered, ice everywhere, Caitlin Snow, who was now fully Killer Frost stepping right through, "Admission here is so easy."