Alex's trip was of course ended earlier than she wanted it to be. It had been three days that she was with her brother when she got a suspicious call from Cisco Ramon with her boyfriend in the background yelling that they would be fine. Considering that he said that he would only call if he absolutely needed she figured that Cisco was telling the truth and that they needed her.
The days that she was at her brothers had gone extremely well. He had finished his last year of university and had gotten a job right out of graduation since he had done a co-op his third year. Alex had never been so proud of him. He was making a success out of his life despite the amount of downfalls and hardships he had.
The first day that she was there had been awkward, after not seeing her brother for years - and the last time not going well - she didn't know where to start. The two chatted about his life, how university had gone, the friends he made, and what his job was. Dylan talked so passionately about what he wanted to do.
Even as a young kid, he always was interested in architecture. From wanting to go to iconic buildings to having his favorite character on How I Met Your Mother as Ted, he loved it all. She was glad that he decided to pursue doing it, if he was happy she was happy. Dylan was exactly where he needed to be in life.
He didn't have a girlfriend but Alex could tell from the glint in his eyes that he was interested in someone. His group of friends was small but inseparable, he always had quality over quantity. One of his buddies was lucky enough to work in the same company as him. Dylan had a good life going for him and Alex was terrified that she would ruin that.
They talked about the accident, Alex had told him the exact same thing that she had told Wally: wrong place, wrong time. She told him about her 'job' at STAR Labs and that she was helping with research involving meta humans. It was mostly a lie but she knew she couldn't tell the full truth or a full lie to him.
She told him about Barry, how they had started dating before the accident and that they had moved in together shortly after. Dylan could tell that he was the reasoning behind her change of heart towards life. She spoke of him so highly and with a lot of respect, he obviously had a large impact on her life and one that was for the good.
The next day he took her to his favourite pizza place in town. Alex told him that she would come back just for the pizza and he pretended to be offended. Even if they were apart for years, it didn't take them to get back into the groove that they had when they were kids. Alex was genuinely happy the whole time during her trip.
Dylan showed her around his work and what they had planned to work on within the next few years. He had a lot planned ahead of him and it was easy to see that he got excited about his job. It wasn't often that people loved working day to day but he got excited to go to work every morning.
They ventured the city more and hung out just as they did when they were younger. It was nice getting back into the groove of things. Alex was teaching a point in her life that she needed what little family she had left to be closer to her.
They spent the rest of the week being the Holt siblings that they were when they were young.
Alexandra was sitting at dinner with her brother when Cisco had called her. She apologized as she took the call and that it was work. He only stated that they needed her in the lab, not what it was about. He felt bad for interrupting her trip but it was something that she needed to see.
Dylan understood that she needed to go back to work. They had spent a great week together and he was getting excited to have his sister back in his life. As the weekend progressed he could see that she was still the same kid that she was fifteen years ago, the one that he loved to be with. It was three years ago that she had fell of the grid from him.
She apologized nearly a dozen times that she had to leave but something was wrong back home. Alex promised that if he wanted her back to visit she would be there. Dylan pulled his sister into a hug and said that he would welcome her back anytime.
Alex left the meal with tears in her eyes. She missed her brother more than she realized.
In a matter of minutes she was back in Central City and in STAR Labs. She had switched into her suit before leaving Coast City, there was no need for someone to see her running the streets with her civilian clothes. She planned to skid to a stop in the middle of the cortex when someone in the room had caught her eye.
Harrison Wells was standing proudly in front of the rest of the team. She didn't hesitate to slam him into the nearest wall with a loud thud. The speed had knocked the wind out of him as well as daze him for a brief moment, it was enough time to land a single punch on the man.
"Alex no!" Cisco yelled at her. He attempted to grab his arm but she was too strong for him. Wells was pushed against the wall an arm locked at his throat and his airway was blocked. Alex started yelling that she better get some answers or he was dead. With Eddie's sacrifice, this man wasn't supposed to exist. "That's Well's from Earth-2. He's a doppelganger."
Alex hesitantly let go of the man in front of her. She faced the rest of the team, who all had the same feelings that she did towards the man that had hurt them in some way. That wasn't the same person that had driven them all to tears, he was someone completely different.
"Alex, I know that he looks like Wells, but he's not. He saved my life," Barry spoke, although he was facing away from everyone. Caitlin spun him around so that he was looking in the right direction. They hadn't told him about how he had gotten hurt, he made them promise not to. "He's not the same man that hurt us, that hurt you."
Alex furrowed her eyebrows at Barry, he was acting strange. For the third time within the last minute he rubbed his eyes and continued to squint at them all. She quietly walked in front of him and waved a hand in front of his face - there was no reaction. Cisco, Caitlin, and Iris all refused to look directly at her - it didn't take long for her to figure it out.
"Are you fucking serious?" Alex snapped, spinning on her heels to face everyone. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes narrowed - she was pissed. "I leave for a week and I come back to another one of these assholes, Barry is blind, and where the hell is Stein?"
Wells opened his mouth to say something but she glared in his direction, surprisingly he remained silent. That was the exact reason that she didn't want to leave them - something always happened as soon as she did. They had always managed to get themselves in trouble one way or another.
"Stein got a new half to FIRESTORM, and left to learn more about it," Caitlin informed. She had missed the whole time that Stein had nearly lost his life and the new addition to the team. There was nothing that she could have done to help stabilize the man and they didn't want to stress her out more than she already was. They hadn't called her then, but Cisco drew the line when Barry became blind.
Barry tried to walk towards her but instead walked towards Iris, she once again changed his direction towards the blonde. Alex crossed her arms, she was not in the mood for some poor excuse that he would come up with. "Cisco shouldn't have called you, we could have handled it here."
"Bare, you're literally blind right now. How on Earth do you think you're supposed to protect yourself from the meta's that are continuously sent your way? Or if something worse was to have happened? Cisco was right to call me."
"Oh thank god," Cisco sighed in relief. He hadn't said anything since she had arrived in fear that she would lose her patience with them. "I was scared you were gonna get mad that I called you in."
"I'm mad you didn't call in sooner," she snapped. Cisco retreated back to behind his desk. Everyone in the room was a little on edge, even Jay and the new Wells who knew next to nothing about her. They didn't know the extent of her powers and what she could do, they would fear her a lot more if they had. "Now someone tell me why the fuck Harrison Wells is standing in our cortex."
"I'm here to help stop Zoom, let me guess the Wells from your Earth did some thing you to?" Alex only glared at him, if there was one thing that she could already tell about that man, it was that he was still an asshole. He took that as a sign that much like everyone else, his face angered her too. "Alright then. I'll be leaving."
"Jay can we have a moment," Alex looked over at the ex-speedster. He nodded and left the room so that it was only herself and the rest of the team. There was a brief moment of silence, everyone waited on her to speak. "You guys can't keep acting like I'm can't help anymore. I'm just as valid member of the team as I was before.
"I'm tired of acting like I'm okay with you guys tip-toeing around me. I'm fine, okay! I feel just the same as I did six months ago and you guys need to realize that. You should have called me when Stein was in trouble and you especially should have called as soon as the Wells look-a-like showed up.
"There was a new meta in town and you didn't think to let me know? When guys knew nothing about them? Now Barry is blind for god knows how long and I could have been here to stop it. He could have been killed and I wouldn't have been there!"
Alex's voice began to waver at the end. She was terrified that Barry's blindness would be permanent. Without his sight he wasn't The Flash and she knew that he would never be as content with his life. The thought of him getting hurt like she was or worse nearly brought her to tears.
The team tilted their heads in shame. They had never seen her like that before and it was obvious that her time back hadn't been what she expected. They should have listened to her better, it would have meant a lot to her. Even Barry wasn't aware that she felt that way.
Her emotions rarely clouded her judgment but they had been more present as she had been making her choices. That was one thing the team noticed, she wasn't stone cold like she was before. Alex didn't show the side of her that they knew when they first met often anymore.
Alexandra didn't mind the person that she was turning into. For so long she had told herself that hiding her true emotions was easier than showing them. Hiding them meant that no one ever worried about her and she never had to be concerned with returning the favor. She was alone, and that was the easiest thing she could do.
Except she wasn't alone anymore. The closer she became to the people around her the more she displayed how she truly felt. Slowly, she dropped the face she kept for years and let herself be who she wanted without fear of being turned away.
The people that she had befriended her accepted her for who she was. She didn't need to worry about them shutting her out - they worried about her shutting down. Alex had often run from her feelings, she knew that as much as she hated to admit it.
When she had realized that she looked at Barry as more than a friend, she had ran to Keystone to get away from him. When she lost her father, she had ran from the responsibility of her brother. When she had gotten her powers, she ran from fear that she would never fit in.
Alex ran when she could feel the tears in her eyes as she talked to her friends at that moment. She ran through the streets on Central City to get away from them, to get away from what she felt. They didn't need to see her emotional, she didn't want them to.
She had always ran, now she could just go a little faster.
"Alex?" Barry tried to walk in the direction that she once stood, unaware that she had left. Iris grabbed her childhood best friend by his arm and sat him down in the chair. She told him that she was gone. "Dammit!" Barry's fist slammed on the desk.
>< >< ><
Alex didn't expect Joe to find her. She had been hidden in the back corner of the bar that she went to with Snart. A glass of whiskey was placed in front on her, the ice sloshing around in it as she took another sip. It was pointless to waste money on alcohol when it wouldn't work but she missed the taste.
"Figured I'd find you here," Joe sat in the booth across from her. She refused to look up and make eye contact. It had been just over two hours since she had been in the lab and just under half an hour since she had been in the bar.
"I took your advice. Talked to Iris about Francine. She's dying, but I'm assuming you already knew that," Joe questioned. Alex solemnly modded her head. He didn't get mad at her for not saying anything, it wasn't her information to share. "How was your brother?"
"Good."
Joe held back a sigh. He was there to talk to the girl but she was impossible to get to open up to when she didn't want to. The bartender had brought him the same drink as Alex and he took a big gulp as soon as it was in his hand.
"You know that he barely left your side right?" Joe tried again. "When you were in the hospital he spent every spare minute in there with you hoping that you'd wake up. He was terrified that you wouldn't wake up or that if you did you wouldn't be the same as you were before. He was so dead set that when you did wake up that he would never let you touch that suit again.
"We were all scared for you. You came into our lives so unexpectedly that we didn't realize how much we would miss you until you were gone. So, when you did wake up Barry, Caitlin - everyone - wanted to make sure that you would be healthy enough to continue to do what you love.
"Barry has done a lot of great things in his life, but finding you was one of the best choices he could have made. Don't let something like this build up into more that it is and don't like anyone like Harrison Wells influence who you're going to be in the future. You choose who you want to be and who you want in your life."
Joe finished his drink, and without another word left Alex at the bar to once again be stuck in her own thoughts.
>< >< ><
Alexandra found herself back at her apartment just as Iris was helping Barry around the bedroom. She had told the younger West that she could handle it from there. Barry perked up at the sound of her voice, his vision was obviously still gone. The blonde thanked Iris as she left the small apartment.
Barry was sitting on the edge of their bed rubbing his eyes. He felt it dip as she sat next to him and reached out to find her hand. After a few seconds of struggling he finally found her cold hands. He brought them up to his lips and kept them there for a moment. They sat in silence for several minutes, neither knowing what to say.
Thoughts raced through Alex's head about what she wanted to tell him and how she felt about so many things. For so long she kept everything bottled up and hid away that the moment she got the chance to release it all she feared she wouldn't be able to stop. She didn't want to unload her entire life's problems onto him at once.
The silence grew and grew until Barry couldn't stand it anymore. "I'm not going to apologize for worrying about you. I want you to be healthy and not have to worry about random fits again; or for wanting you to spend time with your brother. However, I will say that I'm sorry for not updating you on everything happening here. It wasn't fair to me to assume that you needed to be away from STAR labs. I should have told you what was going on so you could decide if it was worth coming back or not."
"Don't." Alex shook her head even if he couldn't see her doing it. "Don't be sorry for that. You were right to assume that I needed to be away from all of this because I had. I needed to have that time with Dylan. All of you were right to be worried about me because I haven't been fine since coming back.
"I'm scared all the time and I can't hide that anymore. It's tearing me apart and I didn't realize that until today. It's not me I'm scared for, it's you. God, Barry I don't know what the hell I would do without you. You pulled me out of this rut so many months ago and changed my life. Everything you've done for me and for this city - we couldn't live without you.
"I never want to have to see you stuck in that hospital bed because I could not live with myself knowing that you got hurt and there was something that I could have done. Like today, you could have gotten killed out there and I wouldn't have even been here and-" Alex had to cut herself off to stop her voice from wavering.
"Bare, I'm terrified by these feelings I have for you because I have never felt so strongly about someone before. You've brought light into my life and everyday it keeps getting brighter and brighter. Every part of me wants to run away from it but I can't help myself to run towards it. But I'm so fucking tired of running."
"Then stop," Barry chided in. "You never have to run from me, Alex. I will always be by your side no matter what comes at us, we know that we can get through anything together. Whether its fighting a meta, stopping a singularity, or our relationship. I don't want you to fear how you feel because that's not what this is supposed to be.
"Embrace your emotions, there's nothing wrong with showing people - showing me - how you feel. I want you to be honest with me because that's how we grow together. I trust you Alex, with my whole heart and I hope you feel the same."
Alex cut off his spiel with a passion filled kiss. There was more to be said on his behalf but that was all she needed to hear to reassure herself. In truth, she trusted him more than she would like to admit. He had never caused reason for her to feel otherwise. They worked together in unison because they trusted one another on what would they would do next.
Months upon months of training had allowed them both to trust each other. They had worked so well together fighting metas that they always knew what the other was thinking. That was the bond that Alex wanted so hard to keep intact, that was the bond that she needed in her life to stabilize her.
"Wow," Barry pulled away, shocked by the kiss. All the pain, the suffering, the hope, and the infatuation was put into it. He could vaguely see the blonde hair outline her face, though there was no distinction. "I don't want you to feel like you have to be open with me, I want you to want to be open with me."
"Barry Allen, there's no one I'd rather open myself up to than you."