Alliance {The Flash/Arrow}

Twenty Three

Ashton

My fingers carefully and expertly smoothed down the clay that I had applied to the bust sitting on the desk. The face in front of me was lifeless up to this point, her eyes or significant features not present. I had gotten called to a crime scene early this morning, and we'd recovered a skull that we were having trouble identifying. Since Barry wasn't coming in until later, I had spent the past few hours in the lab trying to reconstruct the face to kind of help along the process of figuring out who the deceased woman was. I could have taken the easy route and done it on a computer program, but that wasn't the way that I wanted to go with this. It was a great way for me to kill time and keep my mind occupied from the thoughts that had been swirling around in my head for the past few days. Ever since I'd come home from Earth-2, things seemed much more complicated than before I left, and it was hard for me to find time to think everything through. Doing something as constructive and creative as rebuilding someone's face relaxed me enough to where I could fully think through everything that I was bottling up so that I didn't accidentally implode on myself.

My main problem since I had come back was struggling to come to terms with Barry's profession of love for me, and my accidental admittance of my feelings for him. It was difficult for me to grasp that he felt the same way for me as I did for him, and I was glad that he wasn't trying to push the conversation onto me whenever we were in a room together. We'd both been doing our best to avoid the subject while we were at work or at S.T.A.R. Labs so that it wouldn't affect any of our work, and thus far, it had been going pretty well. But I knew that we were going to have to talk things through at some point, and I was hoping that he wasn't suffering too much in the meantime. I was sure that I was going to lose my mind before I was able to make sense of anything, but I was hoping that he would be okay for now. It was common knowledge that he was a very emotional person, and it took a lot to kick him to the ground, but this was something that I knew would floor him. Even though I hadn't' been there to see what everything with Iris had done to him, I knew that it destroyed him. I hated the thought of him going through something like that because of me, and I was hoping that I could find the courage to talk to him soon.

I heard footsteps on the tiled floor, and I hesitantly tore my eyes away from the bust in front of me to see my familiar partner walking into the lab. I greeted him politely before turning back to the skull I had been working on for so long. "What are you doing?" He asked with a small chuckle.

"The detectives downstairs discovered a body this morning, and they dubbed her a Jane Doe." I explained. "There weren't any dental records that matched since the fillings were from another country, and the bones were too decayed to get a DNA sample from the marrow."

"So, you resorted to glorified arts and crafts?"

I smiled before turning back towards him, seeing a smile on his otherwise troubled face. "I'll have you know that this is one of the most effective forms of identification in the forensic science field, Mr. Allen. When computer software fails, glorified arts and crafts prevails." He put his hands up in defense and sat down at his desk. "Why do you look so upset?"

"I'm not upset." He defended.

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn't see. "Barry, I spend upwards of 80% of every day with you. I'm fairly positive that I'm able to figure out when you're upset, so you better just cough it up."

He paused before answering me. "It's nothing, Ashton. I promise."

I sighed heavily, spinning around to face him with as much annoyance as I could muster. "Bartholomew Henry Allen." He arched his eyebrows in shock at my usage of his full name and the bemused tone in which I said it. "Tell me what is going on with you before I have to beat it out of you."