Bravery Requires Fear

7. Cold

A/N: See end of chapter for triggers in this chapter.
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" So how was your first day at work Allen?" 

He walked into the precinct at seven a.m. and didn't even get a chance to see Elaine until nine, although he was glad for that. She hadn't been the most accepting of him getting a job, thought it unnecessary because she could handle it, because he was still recovering.

Still recovering his ass, Grayson said all the internal bleeding had stopped weeks ago and he was perfectly fine.

Either way though, he was surprised when he walked into the lab and saw her. It was a small room, much smaller than his lab back at home. The first thing he noticed when he walked in was the wall of windows, they weren't dirty like the windows back at his old lab, they were clear and pristine, that was the first thing he noticed. It took him back so fast, he could remember the way he'd scrub at those panes for hours after closing; he could remember how Joe used to bring Iris in with him and eat pizza while they waited for him to stop being stubborn. Elaine had to put a hand on his shoulder to snap him out.

The second thing he noticed were the shelves, the left wall was lined entirely with shelves. There were so many beakers and vials and boxes, and the shelves were organized almost exactly how he organized his back on his earth. Just looking at them made his heart ache. Barry had sorely missed this. When he turned his head it was to find Elaine already on the right side of the room, examining something under a microscope. On the right side by the door there were a few cabinets, when he moved closer he read Lyn, Elaine and Allen, Bartholomew written by two separate lockers. If he ignored the fact that the cabinets were a terrible shade of yellow, he could learn to appreciate them.

On the far right side, away from the cabinets, the room was filled with machines and computer databases of all kinds. It was amazing, just how different their technology could be on her earth. He had to stifle his confusion the first time he saw the computers they had at their headquarters but, after his month or so of living on Earth-8, he came to realize that their technology was quite a bit behind the technology on his earth. It was like Elaine with The Incredibles, they were almost still in the 2010s. When Barry came back to his body he found Elaine sitting by one of the desks. There were two of them, made from what looked like cheap wood, and they were situated on either side of the window wall.

Elaine shot him a look and motioned for him to come over, but it wasn't her hand that made him still. It was the corkboard on the wall behind her, there was something about a man's picture strung up on the left that drew his attention.

He walked over to the desk in a haze, could vaguely feel Elaine's cold touch on his forearm as he breezed past her to touch the man's face on the board. He could feel her finger's tightening along his wrist but he didn't care, he had to figure out what was so familiar about that man. His eyes, they were brown, and his hair was a few shades lighter than Elaine's. When he looked closer at his face though, something snapped into place inside of him that had him staggering backwards into a cabinet. He dropped to his knees and hurled into the trashcan shoved in his face, could feel his body as he heaved what he'd eaten for breakfast into the metal of the can.

Cold, it was all so cold. Cold and red. His hands were stained, the floor was stained, Elaine was stained. Wails tore through his throat at the sight of the boy to his left, dead. He was dead, Wally was dead and lying on the floor to the left of him. They were back outside, in the stone courtyard behind that old warehouse, and him and Wally were fighting the duo.

He could hear Iris's voice shoot through the coms as he ran off to distract Sandpiper, " Barry can you hear me? You need to get Wally through to the left!"