"MORPH"
(1/5 Retribution series)
"she said one day to leave her
sand up to her shoulders
waiting for the tide
to drag her to the ocean
to another sea's shore
'this thing hurts like hell...'
but what did you expect?!"
- 'the sea is a good place to think of the future' by los campesinos!
Wikipedia calls his behavior a sickness.
May lightning strike him (again) if he's wrong, but Barry Allen finds this description to be violently inaccurate.
Wikipedia has not felt the litheness of his form or seen the way his limbs all move in tangible, synchronic grace when he runs, nor has it laid eyes on his once heavy stature's now airy buoyancy. Wikipedia does not understand the overwhelming sense of freedom that comes with being comparable to a feather, or a twig. Barry does understand these things. He has known them firsthand.
This is not sickness, he thinks as he studies his ribcage in the bathroom mirror. This is not chaos. This is his lifeline - a sense of control in a set of wildly uncontrollable circumstances. He runs his hand around and between each rib bone, traces the slightest of dips where his abdomen is beginning to grow concave, falling into itself. If the responsibility is resting upon his shoulders to protect Central City from Zoom, he's going to need a lot more than what he brought to the table last time. He needs to be faster, lighter, undetectable. Small, lithe, quick, capable. A hero. The Flash.
If these things are sickness, Barry decides, then he doesn't ever want to be healthy.
His body burns approximately twenty thousand calories on any given day. This means that, much to his satisfaction, the weight he sees as excess sloughs off without much effort. Five pounds becomes nine becomes fifteen. Morning lattes at Jitters become mugs of bitter black coffee at the precinct, lunches with Joe become sorry, I've just got so much work to do today, and evening meals get lost in the humdrum of training that never seems to make him any faster.
Lithe becomes frail. Buoyant becomes lightheaded. Fast becomes not fast enough, and by the third week of his quest for victory and redemption, he's finding it difficult to break an even four hundred miles per hour without getting winded. Caitlin and Cisco blame it on his recent back injury, plus all the extra training Barry sneaks in when he thinks they aren't looking. They chastise him for pushing himself too hard.
They don't have a clue.
In truth, Barry would go so far as to say that he hasn't been pushing himself hard enough. He still eats a relatively large bowl of cereal if he wakes up shaky in the morning. He keeps Cisco's special high-calorie bars stashed in his bag in case of dizzy spells. Sometimes he stirs a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee.
It is in these moments, as he's consuming these things, that Barry realizes with a crushing sense of guilt how dishonest he's been with himself about his intake. Simultaneously, it is in these moments of crushing guilt that he is struck with a thought: maybe - just maybe - he does not have all of this reigned in as well as he would like to believe.
Barry never counted on his control becoming his controller, but perhaps he should have.
On a different day, in a different timeline, under different circumstances, he might have heeded the logical part of his mind and relinquished his grip on the practice that is choking him in its hold. But the day is today, this is his only world, and an accumulation of his past failures is the reason they all must bear these circumstances the way they are.
Wrongs can be righted, if only the wrongdoer has the strength to correct his mistakes. The pain he has wrought upon his community will not haunt them forever. Zoom will be defeated. Central City will, Barry swears on his life, be safe again. Even if it means he must undergo the painful process of morphing into something even more impossible than what he already is.
So when Patty begins to catch on and pulls him aside of a crime scene one day to ask how he's doing, Barry does something he never has before. He shoots down a gut instinct.
He does not pour out all of his secrets into her like he so desperately wants to. He does not admit to himself that maybe this has all been less about Zoom and protecting Central City and more about coping with his own tremendous guilt, more about creating abstract reasons for his defeat such as I was too heavy and therefore too slow. If I was lighter, I would have had him.
Instead, Barry fakes a smile and lies, "I'm doing fine, why?" He suppresses his own anguish in favor of another's safety and comfort.
Because that's just the sort of thing a hero does.
And this brings him back to the mirror.
The small dip of his stomach is now a gaping cave, framed by his protruded hips, and his sickly pale skin is taut over that ugly ribcage he used to think was beautiful. Just a little smaller, Barry tells himself, for just a little while longer. He vows, among countless other promises he knows he won't keep, that he will allow himself to eat again once the city can breathe without inhaling the fear of Zoom.
Barry hopes and prays that he will not be found out in the meantime, but that feels more like wishful thinking with each passing day. Everyone already knows he hasn't been eating well. How could they not? He is nearly half the size he was a month ago (and still not enough! his heart screams.) He hears them whispering, Caitlin, Cisco, Joe, Iris, even Jay and Harry. They make many guesses as to what could be ailing the less than great Flash but Barry has yet to hear one of them say, "Maybe he does it because he loves us."
They, like Patty, are catching on. They, like Barry, are scared. And they have every right to be. He wonders how he's going to explain his actions to them when that moment comes. They won't understand, he already knows. They won't understand that this is just as dangerous as running into a gunfight or a burning building and that he does it for the same reason - love.
Love is what motivates Barry to feel his skeletal frame under his shaking, blue hands and swear to be a little lighter, a lot faster, a better hero than he is today. This is not sickness. This is not chaos. This is love, and he will fight to keep it alive.
Even if it kills him.
(12/24/15-12/26/15)
I just want to say, to anybody who might be struggling with issues similar to the ones portrayed in this story series, or struggling with anything for that matter: there is somebody who loves and wants the best for you, and can free you from your struggles, and His name is Jesus Christ. If you want to talk about anything - and I literally mean anything - please send me a private message. I will respond to you as quickly as I can and talk with you for as long as you need. Thank you for reading, and God bless!