What Brings Us Together (A Ralph Dibny/ The Flash Fan-Fiction)

Chapter Twenty-Four: You Let Her Get Away

Barry ran both of us to the address that Caitlin gave us to find a girl in a brown jacket with a man being strangled by a suit of armor.

"Enough." Barry stated. The armor threw the guy.

Whoa. Now, that is a cool suit. Remind me to take some pics for Cisco." Ralph looked away from the knight, so I stepped in front of him, only to have the armored fist collide into my stomach and send Ralph and I both through the window into the next room. I laid my head back against the floor as I realized I'd fractured, or at the very least bruised multiple ribs.

"Laura, are you ok?"

"Do not use my real name when we're out in the field." I whispered, wincing.  Ralph stood up, putting his arms underneath of mine and helping me up. We walked through the window to find the armor collapsed and the woman nowhere to be seen.

"You let her get away." Ralph pointed out.

~~~

"I'm getting the same traces of dark matter from this that I was from the tiger statue." Caitlin reported as we watched the security camera footage from the mission just moments ago.

"Looks like our Meta isn't restricted to animatig just stone." Iris added.

"No, but she does have some limitations. Our of all the artifacts in the office, she could only control the knight." I was leaning against the desk with Iris and Caitlin, an ice pack pressed to my ribs.

"Maybe her abilities are specific to effigies." I theorized, causing Ralph to snort.

"It just means statues." Barry said dryly, shooting him a look.

"Yeah, I don't know. Sounds kinda dirty to me." Everyone rolled their eyes, and I just kind of felt bad. Like, I know Ralph can be immature at times, but I highly doubt treating him like we're annoyed by him is going to make him want to work with us. It kind of looks to me like an evil meta origin story waiting to happen.

"So if the statue looks like people or animals, she can bring them to life." Joe added. "Good thing there's only thousands of those in the city."

"Oh, I got a hit on facial recognition." Iris pulled up her picture on the TV screen 

"Mina Chaytan, professor of Cultural Anthropology? She's a teacher?" Barry asked.

"Was. She became an activist but lost her job six months ago after being arrested."

"Breaking and entering, trespassing, burglary," Caitlin read, "quite an activist. The charges were dropped, but the university still let her go."

"She was trying to reclaim several Sioux art pieces from the museum. Chaytan was at this even before she was a meta."

"Yeah, but now she's decided to upgrade to murder." I said.

"She wants the third piece of that necklace, let's find it before she does."

"Ok. West and West are on the case." Joe and Iris high-fived and Caitlin left the Cortex. I made my way over, rather painfully I might add, to Barry and Ralph.

"How ya feeling?" Barry asked. I shrugged.

"Luckily, they're just bruised, but it's still gonna hurt like nobody's business for a while."

"Can you still work?" I nodded.

"Yeah, I think so. I just may need to take it easy on the fighting front." Barry looked at Ralph.

"What's wrong with you?"

"You could've caught her. You let her get away."

"Yeah, I let her go, but I also saved Banks's life. That was the most important thing in that situation."

"Really Allen? Because when I was a cop, getting the bad guy, that was the most important thing." He shot back. "You're the Flash. You could've saved him and caught her."

"Ralph, it's like we said this yesterday, protecting the people is always the number one priority." I said.

"And we are always going to make the decision to help the person in danger first. That's what we do here."

"Alright well, we'll file that under 'Superhero lesson of the day', you know?" He turned, walking away and Barry sighed, looking at me.

"Just...be patient. Remember how we were at that stage." I told him.

"Well that's not my only bone to pick with him. It's his fault you got hurt and it's like he doesn't even care. He was more upset about losing the bad guy then the fact that you bruised your ribs protecting him."

"Well, also keep in mind when you're stretchy and can take a bullet at point-blank range, it may be difficult to remember that other people can get hurt. IIt's not his fault, I chose to step in front of hiAnd I know he cares, he's just distracted." He shook his head. "Just...be patient."

I turned, walking into the hallway to find Ralph, sitting up against the wall. I painfully lowered myself to the ground, sitting beside him.

"I'm sorry you got hurt." He said.

"Don't worry about it." I groaned. "Happens more often then you'd think. Not all of us are stretchy and have super healing."

"I'm still sorry." He replied, "I just...I don't understand how is letting the bad guy get away the right thing to do?"

"It's just something you're going to have to figure out. You'll get there." He sighed, leaning his head back against the wall too. I sighed, closing my eyes and impulsively leaning my head so that it rested on his shoulder.

"Are you ok?" He questioned.

"Yeah. I think the..." I yawned," ...the pain killers that Caitlin gave me may have drowsiness as one of the side effects. I'll be fine."

"Well, I'm not going anywhere. Feel free to fall asleep if need be." I nodded against his shoulder. 

"I don't think...that'll be...necessary." I told him, despite the fact that I could already feel myself drifting off. I folded my legs so one of my ankles resided under my knee. I felt his hand on top of the knee of my bent leg. 

"Yeah...I can tell." If he said anything after that, I didn't know what it was, because I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder.