The Flash - Alternative Lives, New Destines

Chapter 8: A Surprising Visit...And A More Surprising Aftermath...

Author's Side-Note: Warning, this chapter may go dark at some points and involves a fair amount of swearing. You have been warned.

To say that Caitlin wasn't training a lot after Team Flash's unexpected encounter with Reverse Flash during the Christmas period would have been completely wrong: because ever since that day, Caitlin had been increasing her training in an attempt to both get faster, and to get stronger too, and both reasons were simple: so she could defeat Reverse Flash the next time the two of them fought one another!

In fact, the only one who managed to keep her from exhausting herself out most of the time was Barry, and that was because he was tasked with keeping an eye on her vitals during the training sessions...well, that and because he cared about Caitlin, of course. But Caitlin wasn't the only one who was going a little overboard...

What the others didn't know, or at least that's he hoped anyway, was that Barry was running blood tests on himself whenever he had been alone, and had also been tinkering around on something as well when Cisco and Caitlin weren't around, which wasn't as often as you'd think unless they were teaming up to work together since Caitlin often went out on her own.

The tests varied as each day went by, but Barry always strangely got the same result each and every time: absolutely nothing. Whenever he tried and went out for a few minutes to top up on Jitters' coffee and savory goods: the tests would always say that there was no results to them, yet when Barry investigated further into the matter he would always find that someone had tampered with the results and erased the results, leading him nowhere!

And as much as he would try to figure out who or what could have done it, he was left with even less clues and suspects than when he started with for a few good reasons:

1. He had told nobody about these tests so as to not worry anyone, especially Caitlin given how hard she was pushing herself lately.

2. He always hid his tracks whenever he left S.T.A.R. Labs and the tests were going on in case someone like Caitlin, Cisco or Dr. Wells came in and discovered it.

And 3. He trusted everyone at S.T.A.R. Labs with his life, that included Joe whenever he came to S.T.A.R. Labs with a case or to check on everyone.

Unfortunately that also meant that someone must have sneaked in and found a way to access the results before sabotaging them, but who was as much of a mystery as anything...It was then that he sighed in frustration after the same thing happened for the third straight week in a row that he realized what he had to do: he needed help to figure out about the results without them being sabotaged...and he needed to tell someone about why he was doing the tests...more specifically: he needed to tell his friends, Caitlin and Cisco!

That evening after work had finished up: Barry asked both Cisco and Caitlin to meet him at the bar to discuss the matter. Although Barry was a bit cryptic with his message, having said 'Need to talk about something, meet me at the bar.'

The aforementioned bar in particular was the one that the trio had gone to not too long after Barry's return, during the time when all three of them decided to let loose and enjoy a break whilst rekindling and hanging out for old times sake. It was as good of a place for good memories as any.

They arrived not too long afterwards, and they saw a rather stressed looking Barry sitting at the bar with a drink in hand, even if they knew it wouldn't affect him due to his powers. Caitlin was the first to inquire about Barry.

"Barry? Are you okay?" He sighed and slowly shrugged his shoulders. "I've...been better...there's something I need to tell you guys." he began, which got Cisco and Cait a little worried. "What's up dude?" Cisco then asked as his and Caitlin's drinks came to them, and the three sat at a table away from the bar. Barry took a deep breath and slowly began to speak.