The Flash - Alternative Lives, New Destines

Chapter 2: How It All Began Pt.2...

Caitlin remained in the coma she had been forced into by the disastrous event that was the Particle Accelerator explosion for 9 long months, all the while during this time she had no idea what was going on outside in the world whilst she lay unconscious in the state she was in. After the Accelerator had gone off, S.T.A.R. Labs reputation had been destroyed. Cisco had gained new powers though from that night as well, being able to create portals that could allow him to travel through dimensions and to any place needed to go, and he could also channel his powers into a weapon to use against his enemies...not that he had a chance to test it out against anything other than dummies when he wasn't looking after Caitlin;s unconscious body...

The night of the explosion, Joe had found Caitlin and had brought her to the hospital, telling Cisco about what had happened to Caitlin once he had managed to get through to him. They knew that she had been struck by lightning, but they were dumbfounded and extremely surprised that she had not been killed by it. It took some time, but Dr. Wells had managed to convince some people and pull some strings to get Caitlin transferred to S.T.A.R. Labs for observations, after the heart rate monitors thought Caitlin was dying...when in reality her heart was beating far more faster then a human heart should have been beating normally. It was almost as if Wells knew what was happening to her...

There had been reports at the hospital that a unknown man in a cloak had tried to see Caitlin when she was still at the hospital, but he had gone missing when Joe and Cisco tried to inquire about it and was nowhere to be seen. The day that Caitlin did wake up however was when things got more complicated and strange, at least for her; because by that point Wells and Cisco, and even Joe when he found out through Cisco during those 9 months, albeit by accident, had begun to find out that Cisco and Caitlin weren't the only ones affected by the Particle Accelerator explosion...not that they had been able to act on it at the time.

All Caitlin could think of when she was in the coma was 3 things: the night Ronnie died, the night she was struck by lightning...and most of all, Barry. The latter had been more present in her mind then everything, and the only reason why she thought she saw him more was because she was seeing her regrets: her regrets for arguing with him at the party years ago, regrets for not telling him how much he actually meant to her, regrets for not going to see him wherever he was at the time...and regrets for their friendship being in tatters when he was killed. But on the day she was about to wake up...something different happened.

She was thinking of Barry once again, but this one was different. Most of the things she saw whenever she thought of Barry was the times that they had spent together as a duo or with their friends like Cisco...but what she saw was something she hadn't seen before, in fact the Barry she saw in this looked only a few years older then how he looked when they had last spoken to each other at the party, and he was laying down unconscious on a hospitals stretcher bed in a hospital room with a neck brace on, his left arm in a sling, his ribs bandaged up heavily, and wired up to a heartbeat monitor. It was a memory she had never seen before in her life, and it both shocked and scared her.

Then it changed once again to a scene were Barry was driving in his car in the middle of a forest road in the middle of the night, his destination was to Central City, and Caitlin knew instantly what this memory was, even if she hadn't been present at this one either...it was the day that Barry was killed...and soon she the moment when a tired Barry, who looked like he was struggling to stay awake behind the wheel at the time and looking for someplace to stop for a rest, was killed by a colliding car at high speeds that was way above the speed limit, causing both cars to crash off and into a nearby tree...killing Barry instantly as something from the colliding car smashed into through the window.

The two memories caused Caitlin to wake up screaming Barry's name with a start, awakening her from her 9 month long coma. She got an even bigger surprise when she saw a blue portal appear out of nowhere before Cisco jumped out of it, before he said surprised "Caitlin!? You're up!" Caitlin was unsure what was going on. It took some explaining from Cisco and Dr. Wells, who she was surprised to see was in a wheelchair now after the Particle Accelerator had gone haywire, but she found out that the lightning that had struck her had managed to transform her DNA and had altered her genetic structure, making her go to speeds that nobody could ever imagine reaching.