wanderess ; barry allen

chapter nine

chapter nine;
fix her

        Adley could hear Barry shouting her name on the other side of the door clearly in distress. In an attempt to calm him, she did the only thing she could think of.

"Leave them alone," her voice reverberated around the hallway, and Farooq bought it for a second.

"Why am I here?" he asked, but soon his thoughts were overwhelmed with the need to feed again.

"Whoa, please give me a little more time." Farooq nodded, dazed slightly, but mostly still angry. He grabbed her on the arm, dragging.

Farooq was thick. He was immensely oblivious. He didn't even see when Caitlin and Barry flitted to the wall right under the window, though she was impressed they knew where to go.

Their move to the closet was a lot more under the radar. Farooq threw Adley to the ground, shouting, "Stay here. If you move, I'll kill you." Adley nodded nervously. "Did you know, humans give off energy?" he taunted. "352 watts, I can smell it off of you!" Adley shuttered at his sneering voice, the energy crackling along his words.

Farooq began zapping at the door handle to the closet, but just as he did, the power flickered back on. Curious, Farooq diverted his focus, grabbing Adley and moving to the hallway where they were met with someone not unfamiliar enough.

"Been dying to punch somebody," Tony grumbled, punching Farooq with his iron fist. Farooq sent waves of energy crackling in response, but they were all absorbed by the steel man. "Ouch."

➫

Farooq dragged her all the way down to the parking garage of the lab, zapping the door. She assumed that he smelled all of her friends behind it, and then, the door fell to reveal she was right in her assumption.

Barry, Caitlin, Cisco, and Dr. Wells all were frozen by one of the company vans.

Barry took one look at Adley, feeling his gut well up with guilt. "Adley!"

Farooq took one look at the Flash, shoving Adley aside into one of the walls before stepping over. Barry nearly threw up as Adley fell, her bones falling limp like a rag doll. He felt two of her bones break, but he wasn't sure what hurt him more, the injuries, or the fact that they mostly belonged to the girl he had become quite fond of.

"Guys," Caitlin muttered unsure.

Cisco was taking deep breaths, whispering "Oh my god." over and over again like a mantra. But Wells moved forward.

"Hey!" He called. "You're here for me."

Farooq grinned. "Finally, you show your face."

"Well, I wasn't exactly eager to be killed."

"Neither were my friends." Wells winced.

"I know," he whispered, "I hurt a lot of people that night."

"People?" Farooq sneered. "You don't even know their names."

"Jake Davenport. Darya Kim. Ralph Dibny, Al Rothstein, Grant Emerson, Will Everett, Brendon Heap, Bea Da Costa, Ronnie Raymond." Barry's eyebrows knit together at the mention of a Heap. He had never heard it as a surname before, surely this couldn't be a coincidence. But why hadn't Adley mentioned him? Barry decided to file that away, planning on thinking about it more when Adley wasn't in a damn heap on the floor. "I know the names of every person who died that night. I know they all mattered, and the fact that the world is now deprived of their potential is something that I have to live with every day, but these people.. These people have done nothing wrong. You want to punish me? Fine, let's do that, but let these people live."

"You died that night too." Farooq crackled waves of energy in Wells' direction, knocking him from his chair.

"No!" Barry yelled, feeling his cells moving at a rapid rate. Within seconds he had gotten his Flash suit on and was fighting Farooq. Electricity and lightning flew from both directions, the fight ending as Farooq collapsed to the ground with a resounding crack. Immediately, he ran, scooping Adley into his arms and carrying her up to the Cortex, knowing the others would be safe now.

The others arrived to see him stroking her hair, soft sighs escaping his lips as he parted her dark locks to reveal a dark red patch of skin where her head collided with the cement wall. He looked up at Caitlin, tears forming in his eyes. "Fix her."

➫

A soft tug on her hair woke Adley up, the first sound coming from her a grunt at the feeling of a thousand weights in the back of her skull.

"Hell," she groaned, moving her hand from the iron vice of a grip Barry had on it.

"Hey, easy, you really cracked your head." Adley could tell from Barry's voice that he was feeling it too.

"Did you get your speed back?" she asked out of curiosity, still sounding a bit drowsy from her extended period unconscious.

"I used it to save wells. I killed Farooq."

Adley flinched, before covering it up. "He was going to kill us all."

"Yeah, I guess." Barry sighed, dropping his head into his hands. "Who's Brendon?" Adley froze, as did Barry. He hadn't meant to ask, he was just tired. He had forgotten what it was like to heal at a mortal rate, and now he was really feeling it through Adley.

She wanted to avoid the question, but she didn't think he would drop it. "My little brother. Remember all of those weeks ago when I said there's always more than one explanation for something, and proceeded to list those explanations. I was in Central City the night of the blast."

Cisco had walked into the room just at the beginning of her confession. "What? You lied to us?"

"You sound surprised." At the hurt tone of Cisco's voice, Dr. Wells and Caitlin joined them as well, and then Adley was confessing to all of her new friends. "Adley Rose Heap, is caricature of who I used to be. I used to be flirty, kind of like a teenager. My mom used to say that you're really born with two umbilical cords. The one that physically connects you to your mother, and the one that connects you to infantry. My emotional cord was cut when that accelerator went up. It took my brother from me.

"We were in Central City, celebrating my older brother's birthday. I'm the middle child by the way, an Aquarius, who likes long walks on the beach now that it's all coming out. My cord was cut when he was struck by lightning and collapsed right in front of me. I felt his heart stop beating under my fingertips, and then I passed out. They thought I was in shock, but really I woke up meta. The first emotion I tasted was sadness. More like depression. My older brother, Finn, broke the news to me that Brendon couldn't be saved. He found my brother dead next to me, broke down in the middle of the sidewalk because he thought I was dead too. I woke up a different person. He hasn't spoken to me since."

Barry pieced it together. "That's why you came here. You came back."

"To see if I could figure out what killed my brother. Then I befriended it." Adley gestured to the team. "I'm not gonna go all on about how the dead would feel, because dead don't feel, but I think he would've loved me having superpowers and shit though. He'd dig it." Adley awkwardly looked to her feet, getting lost in the small band of pale skin between where her dark jeans ended and where her black socks began.

"I'm so sorry, Miss Heap," Dr. Wells sounded sincere.

"That word is so lost on me by now. I'm changed."

➫

a/n: so you got a bit of adley's backstory. i love my baby i wish she was in the show @pheobetonkin join the flash date barry please badley is my favorite