What We Do For Love (Flash x Reader)

Chapter 36

Barry and Y/N made their way to back to S.T.A.R. Labs, both hoping that maybe they would find an answer there. 

They walked into the Cortex and saw the terrified expressions of everyone as they saw the bomb detonate on the screens. Joe, Cait, and Julian were all there...frozen; Harry was most likely down in his workstation while Wally had recently gone on a trip to Blue Valley, he was completely unaware of what was happening, Y/N envied his freedom from this situation.

"Okay, let's start brainstorming," Barry said grabbing a marker and heading over to one of the many glass boards in the room. Y/N sat down in a chair next to him.

"Umm...speed force?" Y/N suggested resting her head in one of her hands.

Barry shook his head, "Cisco couldn't Vibe a portal open, which probably means that we can't run one to the speed force open either," Barry explained.

Y/N sighed as Barry crossed out the idea, "What about running back in time?" Barry questioned.

"No," Y/N quickly said, denying what Barry suggested. "If we go back, you'd only want to go back mere minutes before it happened to avoid damage to the space-time continuum, if we did that we'd run into our past selves and that creates a whole other set of issues on top of the ones that we have right now," she explained.

Again, Barry crossed out the idea, several hours later and several ideas later the two speedsters still had no answers.

"What if we evacuate everyone?" Barry asked. "We run them away from the problem."

"What you're suggesting would have us run all of Central City out of the blast zone. That's a lot of running and searching and we still might miss someone," Y/N explained. "It won't work, we don't have that kind of time," she added. "How long has it been?" Y/N asked as she wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead.

"Nearly 24 hours," Barry answered as he made his way over to Y/N, he kneeled down in front of her, laying his head in her lap. "I don't know what to do," he choked out. Y/N continued to run her fingers through his hair, slowly massaging his head.

Y/N lifted his chin, bringing his eyes up to hers, "You and I are going to figure this out."

Barry nodded, he slowly and groggily stood up, pulling Y/N up with him, he wrapped his arms around her snug, "What next?" he asked.

Y/N pulled her head out of his chest, "What about Caitlin and Julian, do you think that they would be of any help?"

Barry shrugged, "I hope so," he said walking over to them, Barry put his hand on Julian's shoulder and Y/N did the same to Caitlin, bringing them both into Flash-time as Cisco would call it.

"What the- what is this?" Julian said as he noticed what was happening around him, Caitlin appeared to be in a silent sort of shock.

"You're in Flash-time or super speed stasis. The bomb detonated, Barry and I are both moving so fast that we have brought time to a near stop," Y/N explained through heavy breaths.

"How long have you two been like this?" Caitlin worriedly asked.

"Just over 24 hours," Barry answered wiping his forehead.

Julian was shocked by the answer, "Excuse me? 24 hours? Do you even know what type of exhaustion that this is putting your bodies through, you can't keep doing this to yourselves, this is deadly."

Barry was about to say something back when collapsed onto the floor, his breathing rushed. He slowly pushed himself into a sitting position.

"This is not safe, if you two keep doing this to yourselves you could run your bodies into a state of over-exhaustion which could lead to death," Caitlin said. "And if you two are dead then the bomb goes off, and then what have we accomplished."