song- robbers; 1975

Lucy woke up to the smell of cinnamon rolls and found herself sprawled across the bed still dressed from yesterday. She sat up to find Brad taking the rolls out of the oven, she noticed the blanket and pillow set up on the couch and instantly felt bad. She must've been taking up the whole bed ever since her nap yesterday afternoon.

She looked at the clock- it was almost 10, she had slept nearly 19 hours straight. Sleeping in was normal for her since she primarily worked nights back home, but maybe this was just a sign that she had truly been working her body too hard.

"Good morning sleeping beauty." Brad's voice interrupted her self-analysis. He walked over to her carrying a plate of freshly iced rolls, only stopping to grab her makeup wipes out of the bathroom. "You're gonna want these." He laughed. She scowled but took them anyway knowing he was probably right.

She quickly blackened two wipes before digging into the breakfast food that had been placed in front of her. A few seconds later Brad brought over a glass of apple juice, chuckling when he saw that the plate was almost clean.

"You know if you didn't skip dinner you wouldn't be so hungry." He remarked.

"I honestly don't remember the last time I slept that long..." She elucidated. She got up to put more cinnamon rolls on her plate, and as she faced the counter she felt arms wrap around her waist. She sighed as she decided to let the boy have this moment.

"You excited for S.T.A.R. Labs today?" He asked, resting his chin on her shoulder.

"What?" She asked, confused as to what he was talking about.

"You said you'd let me take you to tour it, we talked about it yesterday morning." He explained, slightly defeated.

"Oh, yeah, right," She tried to salvage the situation, "I'm super excited!" She faked. It's not that she didn't want to hang out with Brad or see the city's infamous lab, she just didn't want him getting any more attached to her. She appreciated him, but she'd be gone soon. "When are we going?" She asked, turning around to face him.

"I figured we'd go around noon? Then maybe get lunch after." She nodded.

"Alright let me shower and change." He gave her a thumbs up and went to clean up the kitchen.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Lucy let Brad hold her hand throughout the entire walk from his apartment to S.T.A.R. Labs, much to her vexation. Public displays of affection weren't a normal thing for her, she much preferred public displays of anger.

They climbed the stairs to the lab and followed the signs that led to the beginning of the tour. The college intern that had a "Tour Guide" button pinned to her shirt was far too cheerful to be conducting tours rather than doing actual science as she had probably expected from an internship.

"The noon tour is leaving now if everyone would follow me!" The girl exclaimed, loud enough to be heard over the chatter of those waiting. The pair followed along, staying at the back of the group.

As they listened to the guide's speech, Brad would add in his own commentary. This commentary, however, added absolutely nothing and just made Lucy make a mental note to never bring Brad to a museum.

She didn't expect anything different from a guy like Brad. He wasn't an intellectual per se, but more of a regular straight white guy. Lucy ignored most of what he was saying so she could focus on the intern's facts. It wasn't until she was pulled away into a corridor that she could no longer ignore him.

"Brad, we're going to lose the group." She complained.

"Oh, come on, that was boring, it was a lot cooler when I came in the 6th grade. Let's just explore." He proposed.

"We're going to get caught and in trouble, and I can't afford to get in any mo-" She cut herself off. Brad looked at her as if he was asking her to explain what she meant. "Okay, fine." She said, primarily to distract from him her last statement. His eyes lit up.

"Awesome, come on." He said dragging her along with him.

They walked quietly down the hallway until they reached some doors. At first glance, there was no signage forbidding the pair access, but upon further inspection, despite being propped open, there was a badge scanner with a little red light, supposedly indicating the door was meant to be locked. This did not deter Brad, however, who pushed through the open door with little care. Lucy felt bad for the careless employee who would most likely get fired for leaving that door propped open, should the pair get caught. She knew that, ultimately, it was that person's fault, but she still felt a twinge of guilt.

They walked down a stark white hallway, passing the occasional door, none seemed to interest Brad. Lucy felt as though she was walking through a hospital, and she hated hospitals.

Her dread continued to rise as they took random turns in the maze of a building, each one preceded by the fear of someone being right around the corner. But the lab had been utterly empty.

'Thank whatever is up there.' Lucy thought. She had promised both Oliver and Roy that she would stay out of trouble, and she was pretty sure getting arrested went completely against that promise. She was lucky she didn't pinky-promise Roy, or she knew she'd likely end up without her pinky at the end of this.

After too many turns to count, they came to a dead end. There was another set of doors. These were heavier, made of dark metal. They seemed out of place in the clinical looking hallway.

"No lock," Brad said, "I guess we're allowed in." His joking tone seemed genuine and it reminded Lucy of the people who tell cashiers that an item is free because there's no price on it.

'Or they didn't think they needed locks on doors behind a locked door.' Lucy thought.

Brad was oblivious to how uncomfortable Lucy was in the situation, but Lucy knew he would go on without her and she felt obligated to stay, just in case. He pushed through the doors, only to be met with yet another hallway, this one, however, was made of the same metal as the doors.

Lucy followed as he eagerly explored the new space, and it didn't take long before they came to a set of stairs leading down to a large open space. Brad quickly descended, leaving Lucy at the top.

She didn't want to go down there, something about the room below vexed her. She listened intently, trying to figure out what Brad was doing down there. She stayed until she heard a crash. Lucy sighed and started to slowly make her way down, she wasn't sure if anyone else had heard the crash, and was unnervingly ready to let Brad take the fall while she escaped.

It wasn't until she got to the bottom that she realized the severity of the situation.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Lucy wanted to run. She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. But she couldn't get her feet to move.

A thick green liquid was creeping slowly across the floor, eating away at everything it touched. The metal surroundings were no match for whatever the substance was and it creaked and groaned as the supports for the ceiling deteriorated. It was only a matter of time before the roof collapsed.

Behind the knocked over barrels was a terrified Brad, trapped between the wall and the ever-approaching danger.

Lucy finally got control of her appendages and ran to the bottom of the stairs, looking for a way around the liquid. There wasn't one. She couldn't get to him.

As it approached the stairs, Lucy backed up. Brad was yelling for her to get help, but she knew there was likely nothing help could do.

She watched in horror as the liquid reached Brad, burning through his shoes and causing him to collapse. His screams were piercing her ears as she slowly backed up the stairs, unable to tear her eyes from the scene.

She had to get out now. It pained her to leave Brad, knowing that he probably wouldn't make it. The room was bound to collapse and she was sure someone would discover the commotion soon enough.

She ran through the doors just as a group of scientists and security guards was nearing.

'Shit.' she thought but continued to run. A security guard immediately took notice of her and ran after her. She coursed through the labyrinth of doors, hoping she could find her way back to the exit.

Lucy could hear yelling behind her as the scientists became increasingly alarmed over the impending collapse of the lab. They were scrambling to evacuate the building.

When she reached the exit, tourists were all running to the exits as the building rumbled. She hoped she'd lose the guard in the crowd. She ran outside, but instead of stopping with everyone else she kept running.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Lucy ran until she reached Brad's apartment. She desperately wanted to stop and break down but she knew that she needed to rid the apartment of any trace of her. If they were possibly able to identify Brad, they'd come looking for her.

She threw her necessities in her bag and the rest in a trash bag, throwing it in the dumpster outside when she left. She walked as quickly as possible to the other side of town, looking for a place to hide.

She came upon an apartment building that was under construction and climbed the scaffolding to get inside. She stashed her bag and sat in silence. She didn't want to sit with her thoughts but they wouldn't leave.

Lucy scolded herself, 'I shouldn't have been so selfish... I should have tried harder to save him..."

As darkness descended on Central City, Lucy focused on the sounds from the street. She was drifting off when she heard a scream. Snapping out of her daze, she jumped to her feet. Outside, in an alley, a group of men was surrounding a girl. It was more guys than she usually took on alone, but after what happened with Brad she wasn't going to let someone else get hurt.

Jumping down the fire escape, she came up behind the group.

"If you know what's good for you, you're gonna leave her alone." Lucy said, startling the men. Who she assumed the be the leader of the group looked at her and chuckled.

"Oh, really honey? How about instead, we don't leave her alone and add you to the menu as well?" He said, cockiness seeping from his words.

Lucy smirked, "Don't say I didn't warn you."

In a flash Lucy took down one of the men closest to her, throwing him to the ground. Two more men lunged towards her, one throwing a punch that Lucy easily evaded and she kicked him in the stomach and he crumpled to the ground. The second man lunged forward in an attempt to tackle her, but a simple sidestep caused him to fall face-first into the concrete.

The man holding the girl let go to go after Lucy, allowing the girl to run away. A sense of relief washed over Lucy, knowing she had saved her, but the relief was short-lived as all of the men surrounded her.

"The girl might've got away, but you're gonna take her place baby." The leader growled. Lucy turned and kicked one guy's legs out from under him and ran down the alleyway. The men following close behind.

She climbed up the fire escape to the roof of the building, running as fast as she could, jumping between buildings. The leader followed on the rooftops, while the rest followed on the ground.

Lucy only stopped when she came to an alley far too wide to jump. The man came up behind her as the rest yelled from below.

"Not so tough huh? My boys are gonna have a great time with you." He said as he pushed her off the building towards the men. She smashed into a dumpster and fell to the ground.

She felt her consciousness fading as the men fled after coming to the conclusion that she could not have survived the fall.

And she wasn't sure she was going to either.

So I know it's not great to wait like almost an entire year between updates but I learned from the best ;) However, this is probably one of the longest chapters I've written for anything in like maybe ever. So enjoy.

xoxo- Del