*Pre "Out of Time"

Prologue.

Yawning, Barry stood up from the mass of blankets piled on the floor and stretched his arms towards the ceiling. After hours and hours of trying to make sense of Professor Stein's time travel equations, everything was starting to run together in a blurry mathematical mess.

To his right, Caitlyn was already dead to the world, silently snoozing in her brown silk pajamas. Cisco was technically awake, but only just. His eyes had started to glaze over, as if hypnotized.

Between bouts of taking criminals down, some people seemed to forget that for every minute of Barry taking down the bad guy, there were hours of prep work behind it to make that minute happen. Sometimes it meant helping Cisco with building gadgetry. Other times it meant helping Caitlyn sort through enormous amounts of medical data. Barry pitched in when he could, but sometimes even the combined minds of STAR Labs couldn't finish all of the work needed to make The Flash a reality. Even with Barry's speed helping.

So sometimes overnighters had to take place.

The first time it happened, they were trying to analyze Peek-a-boo's DNA. They spent all night throwing back coffee as if it was water and Barry used the shower usually reserved for scientists who spilled dangerous substances on themselves when he realized that he didn't want to go into work smelling like he did. Then another overnight happened. And then it happened again. After the fourth time, Barry not so subtly left a pair of pajamas in an empty lab room from STAR Lab's heyday. The next day, Cisco followed his example and left a blanket as well.

From then on, every time it looked like a full night of work was headed for them, the three of them grabbed their pillows and PJ's from the abandoned cubicle and set up camp while Dr. Wells muttered something about unprofessional employees. Barry would run out to get some food, and everyone would get down to work.

They were currently trying to combine their knowledge of Barry's older self being at the scene of his mother's murder and Stein's notes on time travel, with little success. Calculations and simulations had been running on the computer all night, and still, nothing. Barry was alternating between helping plug in variables to the computers and running at the speed they worked out to see if they could pick up any signs of tachyon particles or anything unusual.

Dr. Wells took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "One more try Mr. Allen. Try running at Mach 1.5 with thirteen seconds of steady acceleration. Then we can call it a night."

Barry nodded and tapped his feet to get a little feeling into them. He was drained, both physically and mentally. One part of him was telling himself that every minute that he slacked off on the hunt for his mother's killer was another moment his dad wasted away in prison. His health-conscious side warned him that he was no good to anyone operating as a sleep deprived zombie. He walked onto the treadmill, then waited until Dr. Wells gave the signal that the treadmill had been set to the proper settings.

It started off slow, then got gradually faster. Barry could literally feel the lightning crackling around him, more and more of it until he couldn't feel the ground anymore. He was just moving forward, faster and faster, past the speed of sound, past the speed of everything.

Then nothing.

And in an instant, as far as his friends could see, he was gone. Vanished.

Inside the ball of lightning, surrounded by nothing, Barry panicked. Without a doubt, he wasn't in the lab anymore, although he could still hear Dr. Wells screaming his name. He had no idea where he was. He was going so fast that he couldn't make out anything around him, but somehow he knew that if he stopped, he would cease to exist. He just had to keep running. Instinctively, he felt where he was going. Every time he felt a pull towards a certain direction, he ran toward it. Blind panic and cold fear formed a rock hard core in his stomach. Was he dead?

He couldn't say how long he had been running, seconds or hours, but suddenly he was out. The last thing he remembered was a familiar scent and hands grabbing at him. Then the world went black.

-13 years ago-

Joe pushed open the door to the Allen household, one hand on the door, one hand carrying the salad he had brought as his own contribution to dinner. Iris had already dashed in, and was already chatting Barry's poor ear off.

Henry greeted him at the door with a warm side-hug and ushered him inside. Ever since Barry and Iris had used the amazing power of puppy-dog eyes to convince their parents to let them have a play-date together, it had become a bi-weekly tradition for both families to eat dinner with each other and watch Barry and Iris have innocent fun while the three of them chatted.

Henry set down the salad on the already full-to-bursting dinner table and passed him a beer while Nora absentmindedly ruffled Barry's hair.

"So, this guy comes into the ER with a fractured skull. It took forever to get the reason why out of him, but apparently, his girlfriend cracked him over the head with a metal armadillo after she found out he was cheating on her," said Henry, eyes twinkling. "THAT was a fun insurance form to fill out, let me tell you."

Joe's eyes comically widened in mock offense. "If you think that is the height of stupid that happens in Central, in the break room-," he paused as the lights flickered throughout the house.

Barry and Iris stopped talking.

Then, right over the dinner table, in front of all of them, a small burst of white hot lighting crackled a thin young man with brown hair dressed in a black sweatshirt with some kind of white emblem on it fell out of thin air face first onto the dinner table, unconscious.

A/N. Suggestions anyone? I absolutely adore time travel, especially when the same person can meet themselves and people can see how the character has grown. Again, I love suggestions, to feel free to comment.

-2whitie

YES! As I said once and shall say again, expect me to beg you for updates. 8D Also, dat armadillo though... What you did there; I see it. XD (Inside joke, don't worry about it.)-Mumble