getting away ; barry allen

chapter 2

chapter 2:
b y t h e t h r o a t

        "Adley." She perked up in the kitchen at the small knock on the door. "Adley, Adley, Adley, Adley."

"Finn?" She swung the door open to reveal her older brother, stood with a small crate in his hand and a bouquet of daffodils in the other.

"Sorry about Barry." A thin sheen of tears pooled over her eyes as she looked at the flowers, inviting him inside before raising a brow at the crate. "Oh! A friend." He opened the door to the crate, putting it onto the carpet. A small husky puppy began pawing the carpet, before hopping forward and pouncing on Adley's sock-clothed foot. Smiling, she reached down to pick up the pup, holding it close to her chest. "The shelter that Amy works at was running out of room and I couldn't let them get rid of him. They named him Mickey."

"Hey, Mickey." He yipped.

"I figured it'd be easy to... you know. Train him."

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm not mind-controlling a dog."

"Do you even know if it works? Can you do that?" She looked down at the dog in her arms, placing him on the ground.

"Sit." He did. Adley looked up to her brother. "Maybe they trained him already?" Finn shrugged, before lounging on her couch. Mickey immediately hopped up beside him, curling into a ball. "Oh that's so sweet."

"We're bros." Adley rolled her eyes, hurrying off to the kitchen to find a snack for her ever-hungry brother.

        Barry wasn't ready to see his entire team. That's why it was so overwhelming to find them all in S.T.A.R. Labs minus his ex-girlfriend-not-really-it's-complicated.

"What are you guys doing here?" He asked breathlessly. Professor Stein and Cisco began talking about the recent meta, ignoring his question. They came to a conclusion of where to find him just as Adley walked through the door.

"Oh, yikes," Adley stated. "I'm late. Well, I don't have super speed and my poor Jeep took a hit a few months ago that I'm yet to fix." Barry ignored her, looking to the others.

"Look, I don't want any of you guys here, right now," he told them, eyes skirting to Adley and then back to the panel.

"Tough," Joe rolled his eyes, "You need your partners, you need your friends."

"And my ex-girlfriend?" Adley flinched at the title, Barry noticing. "Not really. It's complicated."

"Everyone," Iris stressed, "In this room cares about you, and we care about this city. We all wanna make a difference, and that means fighting meta-humans, and that means working with the Flash."

"And your ex-girlfriend," Adley winked, sitting at her desk as Barry, now, flinched.

"Got him! There's a three block dead zone near a hazardous waste reclamation plant. It should be blooming with rads and now it's at zero."

"That's where we'll find your atom smasher." Adley frowned as Professor Stein began explaining his name, because, well, she didn't care.

"Alright, guys, thank you," Though, neither did Barry. "You can go now, okay?"