Alliance {The Flash/Arrow}

Six

Barry

A thousand things ran through my head as my feet hit the floor at a steady pace. Who was the girl who showed up the other night? Was she someone that I could actually trust, or was she just trying to take down my entire operation? How was I going to figure all of this out on top of work? I could practically feel my muscles tensing at the thought of having all of this weighing down on my shoulders, and it was a wonder that I wasn't one giant knot of tension by this point. I'd done nothing but worry about this since last night, and it was starting to get to me. I hadn't slept once I got home, my mind still racing at the thought of there being a meta that actually wants to help. I wasn't upset that she had, in all honesty, saved me from getting my head bashed in. If anything, I was thankful that she showed up when she did. I just wished that I knew who she was or what she was doing here now of all times. Things with Zoom were slow now, so I didn't understand why she would show up now. It would have made more sense if she had come in a time of complete turmoil, but this was throwing me for a loop.

"You seem tense." Caitlin chuckled, walking into The Cortex.

I chuckled with her, scratching the back of my neck. "I am. I've got a lot on my mind."

"Any of it having to do with your new partner?" She asked with a smile.

"Surprisingly, no. More on the girl from last night."

"Why is she on your mind?" She questioned, tilting her head to the side slightly.

"I don't know if what she told me was true, about her intentions being like mine when it comes to fighting metas."

"Maybe she was telling the truth. A lot of people want to help, you know."

I sighed, leaning against Cisco's desk. "I know, but it's hard to trust anyone on a whim, especially someone who I don't even know."

"Well, she doesn't know you, but she seems to trust you." She pointed out with a small smile.

I nodded. "You have a point."

She put her hand on my shoulder. "We'll find out who she is in good time, Barry. If she really wants to help us, she'll eventually tell us who she is so that we can trust her. We just have to be patient and not push her away."

I nodded in agreement. "Okay."

She smiled softly at me before walking back into her lab. I sighed heavily, running my hands through my hair as I tried to think of anything other than the mystery girl who was now running around the city. But, instead of pushing her from my mind, an idea popped into my head. I jogged into Cisco's lab, thankful that neither him nor Harry was in there working on something. I sifted through the mounds of trash, paper, and parts until I found the small tracking bullets that Cisco had made a while ago. He engineered them when we were trying to find Grodd in the sewer system, and I was glad that we still had some of them around. They would come in handy for tracking the mystery girl even though it meant that we had to shoot her. I didn't like the idea of shooting someone that was just trying to help, but I couldn't run the risk of having someone potentially causing harm to anyone in my city. I'd spent too much time and energy trying to make sure that everyone was safe, and I wanted to make sure that they stayed that way.

After procuring a couple of the tracking bullets, I ran out of S.T.A.R. Labs and back over to CCPD. I wasn't sure if Ashton was still there or if she had gone home after I left, but I was hoping that she had gone home already. She spent the entire day working away at all of my backlogged work, and I could only imagine how tired she must have been after all of that. I was thankful for the help, though. When Singh told me that I was getting a new partner, I was actually pretty happy that I wasn't going to have to carry pretty much the entire department on my back alone. Granted, I didn't want to put all of the work on her, but I was glad that I wasn't going to have to do it alone anymore. But I was shocked to say the least when he told me that Ashton Chaplin A) worked in forensics at Star Metro and B) that she was transferring here because of me.