Run To You - Barry Allen/The Flash (Book 2)

Constructing A Team Flash

Ella sighed in relief. "Oh okay. You scared me for a minute there Bare. I thought something had happened."

Barry chuckled nervously, secretly concerned as well at what had just happened. He tried to brush it off and not worry. He definitely didn't want her to worry.

"Yeah. No I'm completely fine. Nothings wrong. I'm probably just a little dehydrated. Look hon, I'll see you tonight. I've gotta go."

"Okay. See you later. And don't forget the ice cream and root bear."

He smiled. "I won't."

After hanging up he, Iris and Wally went to see Cisco. When they arrived at the fully functional STAR Labs, now called, Ramone Industries, Barry soon realized that his friend was not at all the same. He was a multi-billionaire and had bought STAR Labs making it a building for his company. He learned that Cisco had helped the two in the past by making his suit, but that they had made a deal. If he helped them that one time they would leave him out of it all.

Cisco was very different in this timeline. He wore a designer blue suit with a silk red tie and his hair was slicked back in a stylish ponytail. He was not happy that Wally and Iris had come to ask for his help.

"You know what happens when you mess with a speedster?" He asked, holding his hand up and shaking it.

Jabbing Iris's shoulder, he pointed at the spot. "That. You get a vibrating hand goin' right through your rib cage."

Barry got a weird feeling, remembering how that had happened to Cisco in one timeline.

"No thanks. My money needs me." He continued, now walking over to his fancy vegetable bar. Barry couldn't believe he wouldn't help them.

"Cisco, you're not gonna help us?"

He looked up and pointed at Barry. "That's another thing. Who the heck is this? Huh? You bright some stranger into my lab and told him I worked with the Flash!"

"Cisco-"

"Uhuh. I don't know you string bean."

Barry looked up, taken back at Cisco's nickname for him. "String-? Mr. Ramone."

"Oh! Yes?" He answered sarcastically.

"I do know what kind of person you are. Deep down you care about helping other people."

Cisco crossed his arms. He looked at Barry incredulously. "Please tell me more."

"I heard a story about how when you were fifteen, your brother Dantè owed a book and he couldn't pay back what he owed so you gave him all the money you earned that summer delivering pizzas to help him."

Cisco's face turned to one of melancholy and shock. He looked to Iris and Wally and then back at Barry. He walked towards him. "How do you know about that?"

Barry hesitated watching his words carefully, but in the end got lost in his momeories. "I have a feeling that. . .we'd work really well as partners. Taking down meta-humans together is what we're supposed to do. We're a team. We're friends."

Suddenly the memories Barry was thinking about: He and Cisco on the first day his speed was tested, the time Cisco introduced the Flash suit to him, the night Barry and Cisco went out, their picture on Earth 2 and other small memories, disappeared from his mind as if they had been violently sucked out.

He leaned over on the long conference table as he felt the returning sharp pain in the back of his head. His ears rang and everything went black as the memories were torn out of his mind. As soon as the pain reached it's peek, it vanished like before. His ears stopped ringing and his sight returned. He looked up, breathing heavily.