"Can you feel that?" Caitlin pokes the bottoms of Barry's feet with a sterile needle. She has been testing Barry's motor function below the shattered bones in his spine all day. Best case scenario- Barry's body is in shock from all the trauma of falling sixty stories and his spinal cord just needs time to connect with his brain again. Worse case scenario- Barry is paralyzed for life and will never run again.

Barry shakes his head no. I let out a shaky breath. Please, I think to myself. Running for Barry is like breathing. He needs it to survive.

"Move your toes for me?" Caitlin uses a hopeful tone even though hope fled from view a long time ago.

"I can't," Barry says immediately. I exhale in annoyance and so does Caitlin.

"Barry, I need you to try so I can run an algorithm based on your results," she says frustrated.

"Cait, I can't!"

"Barry!" I yell a little bit louder than I want to. "Please just at least give five seconds to try. I'm trying to not loose all hope today. So please do what Caitlin says. For me."

"Because everything is about you huh. You know, your not the one who is paralyzed here," Barry says aggressively. I counter immediately.

"You know I would trade with you with out a second thought if I could. And no, not everything is about me but when all I want is for you to be better, you don't get to yell at me."

"Oh so now your telling me what I can do? You know that we aren't actually related right? You don't get a say."

Ouch. That stung. I take a sharp intake of breath to keep from screaming at him.

"Just," I say calmly and sigh. "Just move your toes."

"I'm trying."

Caitlin finishes her work-up as I stand at the back of the room, not even glancing at Barry. Any sign of stimulus in Barry's legs is non-existent. Then Caitlin reviews new scans of Barry's spine and find that a few new nerve endings have connected back together. Despite the good news, Barry seems to be even more upset than when we started the work-up.

"So what are the probabilities of me running again?" Barry asks Caitlin monotonously. The doctor looks over all of the data recorded and bites her lip.

"Well, it's a little soon to tell and I'll have to run  the algorithm," she says. Cait is smart, but she's not a genius. It will take hours for her to figure the probabilities out even with the help of STAR Lab's computer programming. Barry rolls his eyes.

"Dawn, tell me," Barry says annoyed with Caitlin's inability to be smarter than a computer. I cower into myself and look down at my socks.

"I don't remember all of the numbers," I lie in a small voice.

"You remember everything. Run the algorithm."

I roll my eyes and pout. With resistance, I quickly start to add numbers in my head including the rate of response to stimuli and nerve regeneration. I then run the averages through such a complicated algorithm that I have to write the numbers in the air a couple of times. After about fifteen seconds of math I say the answer grimly. I contemplate lying to Barry to throw out confidence but he would know that I was lying.

"Barry are you sure you want to know?"

"Oh my God Dawn! If you aren't going to do your job, being a genius, then why are you here," Barry yells in a menacing tone. Anger bubbles up like a volcano about to erupt.

"You have a thirty-six point four percent chance that you are going to walk again, let alone run," I say in a snarky voice. I want to be supportive and sweet but I know that my efforts will be shot down with an abhorrent comment from my big brother.

I see Barry's face turn shocked and pained at the fact that he may never be The Flash again. The scared look in his blurry eyes makes me want to hold him while he cries. I take a few steps closer to Barry to do just that but Caitlin grabs my arm and pulls me back.

"Just give him some space for a minute," she says. Seeing the way Barry is acting makes me die inside. I miss when Barry would always smile no matter what.  I could be having the worst day in the world and just seeing Barry's smile would suddenly make the day less black and white. And despite the immense pain I felt when I woke up from a coma, Barry was there and I instantly felt safe and loved. He had this bright, yellow energy right up until the moment he ran up that building and everything turned upside down. Now that sun has set and all that remains is a cold, dark sky that seems to swallow everything into melancholy. I imagine the last time he was happy; it was when we were running to find Bette. And it hits me- that run may have been our last.

The volcano of rage explodes and the demon inside of me comes out, making my heart turn black. Usually I would be afraid that I would hurt somebody like this, but right now I don't care. I move across the room and towards the door.

"Where are you going," Barry asks on the verge of tears. I think he is afraid that I am leaving him.

"To kill her," I say with a murderous tone.

I hear Caitlin and Barry yelling at me to stop, but I ignore them.

"Dawn Richards, get back here right now," Barry screams. I turn around and give him an angry smirk.

"Catch me," I say angrily and with that, run out of the room.

-*-

"Cisco!" I scream from the Cortex. He comes running through the door, panicked.

"What's the matter?"

"Find her! Now!"

"Who, Bet?"

"No find the President. Yes find that crazy biatch!"

"It will take a while-"

"Now!"

Cisco looks genuinely scared of me. He starts typing on the computer, looking for any sign of the girl who broke Barry's spine.

"What are you going to do to her?" Cisco asks, cautiously while he is typing.

"Do you really need a play by play?"

"No," he says. "Just a general idea."

"I am going to rip her spine out with my fist," I say with a dark smile.

"I won't let you do that," he says and stops typing. The calmed lava starts to heat up again.

"Cisco I am warning you now. Don't. Mess. With. Me. Today." Cisco straightens his face and raises his chin in confidence.

"No. I will not let you kill someone just because you are a little angry."

I scream. "I am not just a little angry, Cisco! I am furious! Vehement about causing the woman who put Barry in a hospital bed some serious harm."

"You won't be able to live yourself if you do this."

I take a deep breath and calm down. The rage dissipates into sadness. "I'm so sorry," I sob. "I just want this to be over!" Cisco comes over to me and grabs my hands.

"Look at me," he says calmly. "Barry is strong. But he is not strong enough. He needs you to be strong for him. And for the record, I'm all for you kicking butt, as long as no one dies."

"Deal," I say smiling.

"A camera spotted Plastique on 4th and 7th two minutes ago. Be careful." I smile and race to my suit. Then I run fast out of the building and down the street to where Bette was spotted. I run, the wind blowing past my face, the power of the speed force throwing me forward. I turn my head down and alley and spot a mop of orange hair. At the site of her snarky look I gag.

"Well look who it is," she says slowly.

"Can we skip the whole superhero movie dialogue thing and just get to the part where I defeat you?"

Bette fake pouts and then laughs a wild laugh. "Okay she's gone completely crazy," I say to Cisco's voice in my ear.

"Is that little lady bug dead?"

"You mean The Flash?"

"Oh little girl, that is what the city calls him. I call him Barry remember? I was you before you came."

"You don't get to call him Barry and I'm nothing like you," I say with anger.

"Oh but you are," she says cheerfully.

"Was she this crazy last time you saw her," Cisco says through the tiny ear piece that I am wearing.

"Other than throwing Bar off a building? No, this is new," I say out loud.

"Is that Cisco? Tell him I say hi," Bette says with a wild look in her eyes. Cisco hears her and tells me to give her a message.

"I'm not going to say that out loud," I say back to him.

"He cares about you huh," Bette says about Cisco. "He cared about me too. And then he left me, just like Barry left me; forgot that I existed. He's going to do that to you too, they all are-"

The last words of her annoyingly agitating sentence gets cut off when my fist enters her mouth. She flies backwards and lands on her head.

"Whoa there Dawn, take it easy," says Cisco's voice. I assume that he is watching from some street camera or something.

Ignoring Cisco's wise words I continue to punch the life out of Bette and say, "You have no idea what you are talking about!"

I stop smashing my fists against her face to pin her up against a brick wall. For a ninety-eight pound girl, I can put up a fight. "They started out friendly right? And then they made you feel special, like you actually mattered for once. And now you feel like the vibes in STAR Labs are off. Next you will blow up and they will forget about you," Bette grunts as spits out a wad of bloody saliva in my face.

A wild look screams out of my eyes and my fist rises once again to make another dark circle on her face. The skin around Bette's eyes tighten and she speaks in a defiant voice. "Kill me if you want," she says. "It's not gonna change what will happen."

"I'm not going to kill you," I say. "You don't deserve the pleasure."

I hurl my fist at her again but she intercepts my punch with a marble size bomb that explodes by my face. A searing pain floods my face, neck, and shoulder. I stumble backwards and breath a sharp intake of air. I close my eyes for a second to mellow the shock running throughout my body. When I open my eyes, Bette is gone.

-*-

"You got in some good hits dude! Nice job," Cisco says as he high fives me.

"Not 'nice job'," Caitlin says as she pulls a piece of metal out of my shoulder. "You got angry and it blew up in your face. Literally. You have second degree burns!"

"I have a, level one, second degree burn and its the size of a small tea cup. It's not that much worse than a bad sunburn. Most of the bomb just left me with some scrapes, bruises, and shrap metal in my face. No biggie."

"No biggie!? Dawn you could have died," Caitlin says angrily. She's mad. I think that everyone but Cisco is mad at me.

"I don't think that she would have died. If anything, Bette would have died- Dawn rocked it," Cisco is like totally fangirling right now and it is the most hilarious thing that I have ever seen.

"Francisco Ramon! Stop encouraging this behavior," Caitlin yells. Cisco looks at his feet sheepishly.

I wince slightly as Caitlin pulls pieces of a bomb out of my neck with sterile tweezers. Then a booming comes from down the hall.

"Dawn Elephante Richards!"

I groan. I absolutely hate it when people use my middle name to identify me. Wait. That voice belongs to Barry. Sure enough I see Barry, who once towered over me, trudge through the doorway in a motorized wheel chair, now eye level with me. My heart goes ecstatic with the thought of Barry actually getting out of bed until I see the enraged look on his face. His words come out all at once.

"What in the world were you thinking! You could have died! How selfish can you be- how do you think I would have felt if I was left paralyzed and sister-less. Why would you go out there and risk your life?"

I grab the scalpel off of the instrument filled tray that is next to me. Despite my acute pain, I stomp over to my foster brother and stab the scalpel into his leg with all of my strength. I hear gasps from all around the room including from Barry.

"Did you feel that?" He shakes his head, still stund. "That's why I went out there."

Barry looks down and nods understanding. "Sorry," he mumbles under his breath. Caitlin sighs.

"You can stitch that up," she says addressing the scalpel in Barry's leg. Still mad, I shake my head.

"You really don't want me to have needles and scissors around Barry right now," I say coldly. I then start to walk out of the Cortex.

"At least let me finish yours," she calls out.

"I'll heal," I shout as I wave a hand in the air. My phone rings and I answer it. A lady is on the other end of the line and I can tell by the tone in her voice that this was not a good call...