neighbors | barry allen//the flash

nine | fading

"What if you ran so fast you could fly?" Cisco randomly asked as he was sitting in a chair in the Cortex, tossing a bouncy ball in the air and catching it repeatedly. Nothing exciting was happening at the moment, but it was a Saturday night, so the team was hanging out in STAR Labs waiting for an emergency to happen. 

"That would be amazing, but I don't think I'm there yet," Barry admitted. 

"Please don't try anytime soon," Caitlin groaned. "I really don't want to try to fix you up if anything goes wrong, even if you do have accelerated cell regeneration."

"Ahhh," Barry raised his eyebrows curiously. "I almost forgot about that part. That totally increases my chances of surviving by like, a thousand." 

"How could you forget your superpower?" Cisco laughed.

"I don't know," Barry shrugged. "It's just, so much a part of me. Do you ever forget the color of you hair? Or not forget, but just, you're not always thinking, 'Oh, I have brown hair,' all the time. When I'm just walking down the street, I'm not like, 'Oh yeah, I have regenerative powers, so if I tripped right now and skinned my knee I'd totally be fine in two seconds.' Sometimes I just have to trip to remember."

"I guess that kind of makes sense?" Cisco looked at him suspiciously, just as the computer dinged. Caitlin rolled up to the desk in her chair to read the screen. 

"Oh," She said quietly.

"What?" Cisco and Barry asked at the same time. 

"There's a little boy on top of a building," she responded, her voice still faint. "The police think he's going to jump." 

"I'll get him," Barry stated firmly. 

"Barry," Caitlin pleaded, "Be careful with him." Barry gave her a tight nod, then zoomed out of the the Cortex. 

In a matter of seconds, he was on the rooftop with the boy, a careful distance away. The cold, winter wind whipped wildly this high in the air. The kid's little red jacket beat around in the strong gusts of air. Up here, the sirens of the police cars were faint, and thought Barry knew they were trying to use megaphones to talk the boy down, their voices were lost in the night. The boy turned carefully, wobbling too many times for Barry to feel comfortable, to look at the Flash. They boys eyes were shining and tears streaked his face. The dark skinned kid couldn't be older than ten, and Barry's heart thumped unevenly in his chest. 

"You don't have to do this," Barry tried to keep his voice even, strong, confident, anything to reach the boy. 

"I'm sorry," the boy sobbed. "I didn't know any other way." 

"There's always another way," Barry pleaded, taking a few slow steps toward the boy. "There are so many people ready to help you. I want to help you." 

"I didn't know any other way," the boy repeated sadly. "I didn't know any other way to get your attention." 

"What's your name?" Barry asked. The boy's last words caught him off guard, and Barry wasn't entirely sure how to proceed. 

"I'm Luke," the little boy answered. "Please help me." The boy slowly stepped down off the ledge and onto the the solid rooftop. He shrugged off his jacket. Underneath, he had a simple grey tee shirt that exposed his arms to the winter air. Upon careful inspection, Barry noticed chunks of his body were missing, but it didn't look like they were cut off. Instead, they just weren't there. The boy was missing a few fingers on his left arm, had a small hole through his left forearm, and didn't have a right hand at all. There was no blood or anything, that part of his body was just gone. The edges of where his flesh disappeared seemed to be shimmering, glowing.