@akagoddammit continued from here.
He let her catch him. She knew that the second she actually managed to pin him against the wall. They were in an alleyway, maybe two blocks from her building. She’d seen the lightning up ahead, and had ducked into the alley, and on instinct mostly, stuck her arm out. When she felt him collide into her, she’d pushed forward, and somehow, managed to press him against the wall.
She grinned, fully intending to gloat a little, but the look on his face stopped her. That’s when she understood. That it hadn’t been luck or instinct, he had let her catch him. She felt frozen by the pure fear on his face, what she could see of it beneath the mask anyway. Her hand was still holding him up.
“What is it?” she asked in a low whisper, eyes fixed on his. A thought occurred to her, a terrible, twisting thought. She tightened her grip just a little, careful not to cut off his airway, but enough so he wouldn’t be going anywhere either. “Barry…” she whispered. “Who sent you here?”
She could guess, at least at part of it. The Syndicate had figured out Trish wasn’t the one with superstrength. They’d known who she’d been covering for. Maybe the Panel had finally caught up, too.
Running out of breath never happened to Barry on a run but he was breathing heavily as he stared at Jessica. Back pressed to the wall of the alley, he was terrified and he lifted a shaky hand to the side of his head to press the button of his comms.
“Cisco. Somethings wrong.” In the next second all he heard was static and he knew Cisco was jamming the signal so nobody could listen in. “You know who sent me,” he whispered, still scared that he could be blowing his cover right now. Things were escalating quickly after the attack and the Panel was desperate.
Sending The Flash after someone like Jessica was unfair. She could beat him in a fight any day but his abilities weren’t about fighting, they were about running and he had no way of warning her to get the head start she would need. Barry was lucky that he and Cisco already had code words in place so the other knew when to jam the comms, he would tell his bosses later that Jessica had unknowingly broken them when she stopped him.
“Listen, I don’t want to take you in so I need your help.” He took in a heavy breath, licking his lips as his mouth ran dry from nerves. “The only way they’ll believe you got away is if I can’t run,” he stated solemnly. Barry’s plan was to sprain his ankle or break a bone if he needed to. The pain would definitely suck but he would heal within a couple hours and he was desperate too.