Hurricane {Barry Allen} [2]

Oceans // Seafret

"Barry! Barry get back here!" Cisco yelled as Barry took off sprinting. Unfortunately for the latter, he couldn't seem to use his super speed.

"What the hell?!" Barry stopped and mumbled frustratedly at his inability to run, giving Cisco enough time to catch up to him.

"You are not leaving me behind! Got that Allen?" Cisco scolded.

"Sorry, it just..." Barry trailed off, unable to articulate.

"It just what?" Cisco glared

"Mack. That girl was Mack" Barry mumbled, slightly disbelieving of his own words but stating them nonetheless.

"That?... that one? The one we almost ran over? The one who disappeared??" Cisco frowned.

"Yeah. And now I've lost her. Again" Barry groaned, rubbing his face with both hands defeatedly. Cisco instantly felt sorry for him. The two had spent so long trying to protect each other, they cared so much about one another, they deserved to just finally be together.

"I know. I know" Cisco calmed the boy with a hand on his shoulder, "Now you may not have your super speed, but this is Mack were talking about. Speed never mattered. Use your head and your heart" Cisco advised. "You can do this. You can find her"

Barry took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could do this. He could find her. He knew Mack better than anyone.

Okay, maybe not better than Oliver, but like a really close second.

He took another breath. Where would she be? Where would she go if she wanted to feel safe?

To me, he thought wistfully before shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut further. He needed to focus.

Most people would go somewhere familiar, somewhere they knew. Most people would go home. But not Mackenzie. Mack knew something was wrong; that this blackout wasn't a coincidence and neither was the car. She would get as far away from everyone as possible. She would keep her distance and be somewhere no one would go. Somewhere where she couldn't hurt anyone. She'd abandon the people that she loved to have a closed meeting with someone who wanted to kill her, she'd throw herself into harms way.

She'd lock herself in a power-proof cell and prevent anyone from seeing her.

She died, and he hadn't been there. She might be alive right now, but she had died. And she hadn't allowed anyone one to be there. Because she was confused and not herself, and she didn't want anyone to see her that way. She had died alone to protect them.

Now he was going to do anything and everything to protect her.

Barry's eyes shot open and he began to look around frantically. As his eyes swept the shore, he found it. The lights.

"There! There!" He shouted at Cisco and pointed to the harbor.

Amongst the pitch black city, the lights at the harbor near the ocean remained lit. Flickering occasionally, as if something—or someone—was keeping them on.

The two boys instantly started sprinting towards the dock.

**********

Mack was staring at the ocean. She needed to do something about the power outage, but she didn't know how to control her newly re-acquired powers. She didn't know their extent. She was tired and confused and she had nearly been hit by a car. Her breathing couldn't rectify itself from the quick shallow breathes she was currently taking. She gripped the railing of the dock harder until her knuckles were white. Before her death, she was never this... weak. She hated that. She took a deep breath and turned around. She closed her eyes and held her hands out in front of her, palms to the sky.

"Okay. Come on now. Come back to me" She whispered as she concentrated on the energy inside of her that had been dormant for so long.

Mack realized it had been over a year since she had had powers. Since she had seen Barry alive and well.

"I can do this" She muttered. She closed her eyes. "Now or never" She mumbled, focusing the electricity from her palms directly into the power lines above her.

And sure enough, the lights on the block started flickering on. In order to re-boot the electricity of the entire city, however, Mack would really have to focus for awhile. So she blocked everything out as best as she could and closed her eyes as she concentrated on sending her energy into the power lines.

But a sudden voice pulled her immediately from her focus.

"Mackenzie!"

The sudden outcry broke her concentration and her eyes shot open as she looked around for the source of the voice.

She found it rather easily.

Barry Allen was running full speed towards her.

Mack suddenly found herself unable to breathe. Her heart skipped a few hundred beats at the sight of him.

"Oh my god..." She mumbled in disbelief. She stumbled backwards as her brain was working a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out how this could be possible.

Once he had reached the dock, Barry jumped up the steps two at a time and collided full force with Mackenzie, who had started running to meet him, immediately picking her up into his arms.

Mack instantly wrapped her arms tightly around the boy's neck and her legs around his waist as he spun her around due to sheer momentum.

Then, with both of their breathing heavy from running, he ever so slowly let Mackenzie's feet land on the ground once more, never disconnecting, keeping her pressed against him. His eyes were closed tightly as he tried to commit the feeling of her in his arms to memory: her head resting in the crook of his neck and his cheek against her hair, one arm around her waist and the other bringing her impossibly closer to him. Her arms woven tightly around his neck and her breathing uneven. It almost sounded as if she was crying, but Mack never cried.

And Mackenzie wasn't crying.

She could barely breathe. She tried hard to convince herself that this wasn't a trick her mind had played on her in the darkness. She had spent so long trying to suppress every feeling that came along with even just the thought of Barry. Which had been easy enough when she hadn't had to be with him; but now that he was here, holding her, after a year of being without him, the dam she had built in the last 13 months shattered, letting everything crash over her.

Normally, she'd feel like she was drowning in the emotions that came with Barry, all the extremes she felt when she was with him. But now she knew better. Instead of drowning herself, she simply tried to breath. And her breaths may have been uneven and shallow, but she was breathing. She breathed as the ocean of emotions she had previously desperately tried to outrun washed over her. The sound of the ocean waves and the smell of salt from the harbor and the warmth of Barry's chest and the feeling of his arms around her and his fingers in her hair... it all felt...

Unreal was the word that came to mind.

Like a fantasy or a dream,

And not necessarily the good kind.

Of course, she was thrilled to see Barry, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Wrong with her, wrong with them.

And her breathing began hitching again as she desperately tried to tell herself to calm down. That she was home.

Finally home.