The gentle beep of the cardiac monitor wasn't what you would've thought was going to wake me up. Instead, the tightening of my throat caused me to cough myself awake as I shot up in bed as I struggled to breathe.
I saw Caitlin rushing in, along with Barry, and Cisco. She ran over to me, handing me what looked like a big inhaler as I took a quick breath with it, instantly feeling my throat muscles relax and I could breathe normally again, though, it didn't stop me from coughing a few more times.
"How am I alive? I, I was going to die," I croaked, a lump forming as I had a flashback of the events. "You didn't change the timeline, did you?" I asked looking at Barry, who was uncharacteristically quiet and distant.
"No, I didn't," he replied, sounding bitter. The rest of the team turned to him in surprise at his tone, as I slightly narrowed my eyes at him.
"Barry? What's wrong?" I nervously asked.
"I'll tell you what's wrong," he snapped, marching over to me as he threw an iPad down on my lap, before glaring in my direction as he folded his arms over his chest.
"I don't understand," I furrowed my brow in confusion, watching the screen as no significant events were happening since nobody was in the room.
Suddenly, I was brought into the room by Ray, before he laid me out on the bed. Wells was shouting on the video at Caitlin for her to fetch things as Cisco came in and looked panicked and very alarmed. Caitlin had gotten a needle full of a drug, before firing it into my inner elbow.
As if my body had instantly reacted to the medication she had given me, a ball of purple erupted from me as I felt my breath hitch in my throat from a gasp as I looked over at Barry. I continued watching as soon Caitlin had pulled out the birthday card that I had shoved in my pocket after Tina had given it to me.
"I don't want to watch anymore," I cried, nearly on the verge of tears as I kept glancing at Barry and the screen.
"Keep going," Barry mercilessly ordered, forcing my gaze to go back to the tablet as I saw from the video that he had sped into the room, nearly falling over as he saw the sight of me.
"Barry, please, I can't," I pleaded, as the rest of the team decided to leave Barry and I since we all knew that this was going to end well.
"You had so long to tell me about this, months, and you manipulated me-" I butted into his accusations with a cold, bitter laugh at his assumptions. Something inside me completely flipped, causing me to go extremely on the defensive compared to my previous apologetic mood.
"God, you're scolding me as if I had a choice," I retaliated, shaking my head.
"What excuse are you going to throw at me? Actually, don't tell me, because I don't care."
"I don't regret what I did. I had my reasons, and I'll tell you when you're ready to hear them."
"Why are you talking to me like I'm a child? Like you're going to tell me when I'm a big boy?" He shouted, flapping his arms around as he did whenever he was pissed off.
"I'm sorry, but what part of this conversation did you ever think you were being mature about this? You're not willing to listen to why I didn't tell you that I'm the metahuman that you've been flirting with for six months."
"Is that what this is about? You've gotten yourself so wrapped up in this double life that you can't separate the two people you've been pretending to be!"
"I've not been pretending to be anyone! That's me, the better version of me. The more confident, the sexier and more powerful me, not the little lab researcher with a broken family and friends who don't even know when my fucking birthday is!"
"Okay, we deserved that one," Barry muttered, looking at his feet.
"No, Barry! I'm so fed up with being overlooked and ignored! You guys don't appreciate any of the shit I do for you, all of you! I put away double the number of criminals you do, I train every single day while you sit on your ass dreaming about God knows what! If it weren't for the fact that I'm so fucking in love with you, I would've been gone a long time ago."
"I should've figured this out a long time ago, and maybe if I had done we wouldn't have gotten in so deep and this wouldn't be as hard."
"What do you mean, this?" I asked, confused as to where he was going, though, I had a small voice in my head telling me what was about to happen.
"We're done, Emily."
"Barry, at least wait until I've explained this all to you. I want to tell you everything, but you won't let me," I pleaded, trying to get him to think somewhat logically.
"Fine, but we're going on a break. I need some time."
"Thank you," I breathed out a sigh of relief, wiping the dampness from my eyes as I was so tense at what he was going to say.
"There are other people that want to see you, so I'm going to go."
"Okay," I didn't really know what else to say to him, given his distaste for me right now.
I was feeling extremely deflated after my conversation with Barry, even melancholy as my relationship was left in tatters. I wasn't really in the mood to be talking to anyone else at the moment. All I really wanted to do was to curl up in bed and cry and eat garlic bread and milkshakes.
"You've got a queue out here, y'know," Oliver smiled, walking in Diggle.
"What the hell are you guys doing here? I mean, it's great to see you both, but you're always in loads of deep shit," I grinned, shrugging my shoulders as they both chuckled.
"You're not wrong," John replied, "we won't go into details now, but maybe another time."
"Thanks for coming, I really appreciate it. You're a very good distraction to the, um, other things going on,"
"We, uh, we all heard," Ollie awkwardly stuttered, scratching the back of his head.
"Oh, right," I mumbled, fiddling with the blankets covering my legs.
"I think we'll leave you to rest for a bit, you're looking a bit tired."
"Thank you, I'll see you later. Maybe we'll get a Big Belly Burger or something," I suggested, smiling at my friends as they each gave me a gentle hug.
"Definitely," they both nodded. "Could you get Caitlin for me, please? I need to talk to her about something powers related."
"Powers?"
"They're not working," I huffed. "I think I've overexerted myself, but I need to check that it's temporary."
"Oh yeah, you were on the news, it looked pretty cool."
"I've been on the news a lot lately, so it doesn't really phase me anymore," I tried to joke, though, it didn't really work out.
"Oh yeah, congrats on getting shot for the first time," John praised, giving me a fist bump as they waved me goodbye as Caitlin had arrived.
"Hey, Cait," I mumbled. I gathered from her weary eyes and slow movements that she had been here all night, as well as Cisco.
"It's not permanent, you're just exhausted," she told me, knowing what I was going to ask.
"I want to see what I did," I asked, feeling the guilt well up inside of me.
"It was that scary cool where you don't really know what's happening but you looked pretty awesome, even if you looked dead," Cisco explained, popping his head in the door before noticing the somewhat serious conversation going on and left.
"Did I hurt anyone?"
"No, you caused a few power outages but to nowhere important," I sighed in relief, though, it got me a little confused. Why would I cause power outages?
"Well, that's something at least."
"It's going to be fine, Emily," Cisco said, putting his hand on my shoulder in support.
"No, it's not, I'm not safe and neither are any of you. If only I hadn't tried to become a stupid hero in the first place."
"Listen, you're the most selfless person I know. You aren't a hero because you were given powers and you certainly shouldn't be thinking of quitting just because Barry's butt-hurt that you didn't tell him. If anything he needs your help even more now," he said, trying not to get himself too angry over the whole thing.
"What's happened while I've been asleep? You're acting as if something's happene-holy shit. Did he tell you?" I rambled, "About Wells?" I whispered, stretching my neck to see out of the door to check whether he was there.
"Yeah, he did." My breath caught in my throat as I looked over at Caitlin with wide eyes. I was in complete shock, tears in my eyes as I shook my head.
I pulled the electrical pads off of my body, yanking off the heart monitor. "No, no, no, this can't be happening," I panicked, ripping the covers off of my body and getting up off of the bed, trying not to fall as my vision was clouded.
"Stop! Where do you think you're going?" Caitlin called out, pulling my arm to steady me.
"I have to go, it's urgent. He knows that you all know because he fucking knows everything, Caitlin! Barry doesn't know what he's doing, he's going to ruin everything!" I cried, throwing my shoes on as I ran out of the Cortex, feeling a distinct ringing in my head from getting up too quickly.
I ignored her shouts, as well as those coming from Cisco as I continued running until I started running up a few flights of stairs so that I could get into the elevator before them. I also ignored the sounds of Caitlin ringing Barry and shouting that it was an emergency before the stairwell door slammed shut behind me.
I didn't have my powers, so I couldn't simply just fly as I hoped I would be able to do. That was until I could feel the bulge of my keys through the pocket of my jacket that I had pulled from the side of the bed when I dashed out. My car was still at Mercury Labs, which was only a twenty-minute walk and a ten-minute run away.
I kept my keys in their pocket so that they wouldn't be picked up by any security cameras that Cisco was probably looking through to see where I was.
As I was running, I could feel my will pushing me to run faster, and faster, until I realised that I was running anymore. I thought I was running fast, but it turns out I had been flying. I hadn't noticed the wisps return to the bottom of my feet as I blasted off into the direction of my mother.
If anyone had been talking about Wells being the Reverse Flash, there was no doubt that he knew about it. I could've sworn I'd seen bugs around that place, and I don't mean cockroaches.
I landed a few blocks away from the building, slipping through a gap in an alleyway to rejoin the flow of people walking in the street. I blagged my way through reception, running up the stairs as I reached the ward where her room was. I ignored the call of protest from Angela the nurse, who was telling me that I shouldn't be running because some patients were trying to sleep.
I nearly fell on the floor with relief as there was thankfully nobody else in the room, meaning that Thawne didn't know yet and I still had some time. What I would do with this time, I had no idea. Maybe I could convince Barry that we had to get rid of Wells now while we had this advantage, but, it was extremely unlikely considering Barry can't even look at me, and he probably won't get over it for a while.
I needed to train against some speedsters, but Barry was the only one I knew. I needed more time, and this certainly wasn't the time for Barry to be wallowing in a pool of self-pity for however long he needed. It was understandable that he wanted some time to figure everything out in his head, but you would've thought that there would have been some sort of happy thoughts running through his head, like how he's not actually been in love with two people for a few months for different reasons.
In some respects, I was pleased that he had finally found out, and this time I wasn't going to cover it up in his mind. I couldn't do that this time since everyone would know about it, and then everyone would hate me for censoring his right to information that he previously had.
I had walked out of the hospital quite calmly as I figured out where I wanted to go to think everything through. Oliver had said something about my dad and Brendan wanting to talk to me, but my therapy sessions were going to be postponed for a while.
After figuring out that I had a spare twenty bucks in my pocket, I went on over to Big Belly Burger and bought myself as much food as I could before heading to my hiking park of preferred choice.
It was fairly quiet today, given it was the middle of the day. I hovered over to my secluded area which was unreachable by anyone else. It was certainly the best place to sit and eat my three burgers, two milkshakes and four portions of fries.
I didn't know if right now was the right time to be testing out my powers, but I had always wanted to return to the weird energy world I was thrust into with the aliens and weird man and woman, whoever they were. I wanted to get their advice since they certainly gave the impression that they knew what they were doing.
Lying down on the slightly wet rock, I looked up to the sky with a burger in hand. I closed my eyes, trying to envision where I wanted to be. I remembered the weird red, pink and purple marbled energy that surrounded the entire world, the endless depths of swirling power reaching every corner I could see.
When I opened my eyes, I was still staring at the boring blue sky with a burger levitating in front of my face. As if my life could get any worse. You know that you've reached the lowest point when all you can see in front of you is a half-eaten burger.
All of a sudden, I could only see a vortex of colours as I felt my body being contorted from all angles, with my stomach being pulled in the opposite direction and my limbs being pulled from their sockets. The sensation went as quickly as it came, and I found that the sky was no longer boring and blue.
The sound of my burger and my jaw hitting the floor reverberated across the infinite expanse of space as I looked around at the group of aliens who looked as dumbfounded as I did.
"Someone go and fetch the Ancient One and Master Mordo," one of the blue women said, ushering a man to speedily fetch them.
"Mor-who? You guys need to get a Dummies Guide to the Cosmos or something," I asked, shaking my head as I quickly picked up my burger and dusted it off a little.
"What is the meaning of this?" A man shouted as he suddenly appeared in front of the people that had gathered. Are aliens technically still called people? "Oh, it's only you."
"What do you mean 'only me?'" I asked, not feeling impressed at all as I rolled my eyes.
"The universe doesn't revolve around you, Stone," the man muttered, looking as if he were ready to dismiss me.
"Well, Sir, technically it does," one of the aliens called, causing me to whip my head around towards the voice. "Iquireus, it's a pleasure to meet you. Anyway, as I was saying, Master Mordo, theoretically Dr. Stone is the centre of the universe. She connects us to the dead and the living, and so joins the worlds together."
"Iquireus, you know the rules on using myths as a basis for statements of such manner," Mordo stated, his tone stern as the surrounding audience squirmed slightly at the strength of his voice.
"No, no, keep going, Sir," I butted in, receiving a glare from this Mordo fellow as the green-skinned alien sent me a wide grin.
"I like her," he chuckled. "On my planet, our people have told the story of a great woman with cosmic power who could combine the world of the living and the world of the dead and bring peace to the universe. Some stories even went to say that she could connect other forces beyond the ordinary world," Iquireus began to quite excited explain before I butted in.
"Like the speed force?" I asked.
"Exactly."
"Sorry, continue," I replied.
"Actually, I think that's quite enough," a new voice called out as my head turned around to face a woman. As the others became aware of her presence, they instantly bowed their heads in respect, though, I didn't feel the need for some reason. I assumed this woman was the so-called 'Ancient One.'
"Emily, despite how nice it is for you to be here, we are extremely busy at this time," she politely said, obviously trying to get me to leave.
"Can I help?" I offered, receiving a death glare from the Ancient One.
"No, it's nothing of your concern," the bald lady curtly replied.
"Well, I guess I'll come another time," I muttered, a slight edge to my tone as I matched hers. Whipping my head around and turning my heel, I made my way to where I believed the exit was through.
"Iquireus, what have we told you about spreading prophecies around?" I heard the Ancient One scold as whispers broke out among the other people.
I quickly decided that didn't care for the bureaucracy of the Cosmos, meaning that I took my leave and began to imagine myself lying down on the dry rocks.
I transported somewhere, though, it wasn't on the hiking park I was expecting to land in.
A/N
Ooo Barry's mad af boi
I know it's been over a month lol forgive me
Also, it's my eighteenth birthday and because I'm an absolute social butterfly I'm revising hard lol
See you on the dark side,
Charis xo