Three years ago the most harrowing thing that ever happened to Barry was a man shoving a gun against his neck and telling him he had eight seconds to live.
Joe and he were at an inactive crime scene that lost its prefix when a buddy of the murder victim showed up to exact some revenge and mistook Barry for the killer. He put a gun to Barry's head, shouted incoherently for a bit, but Barry wasn't paying attention to that, heart pounding in his chest. He could feel the cold muzzle pressed against his temple, acutely aware that if it went off, boom. That was it. His entire life – every menial and magnificent thing he'd worked towards for the past twenty-five years – was over. He was over.
It was a sobering experience, a brush with death he didn't opt to repeat.
Until he got struck by lightning. Then he learned to dance with death, to court it in a way that let him walk away. Not unscathed – never unscathed, it seemed, even if his body wasn't canvassed by his work – but alive. That was more than far too many who encountered metahumans could say. He hated that he wasn't fast enough to save them all.
He tried to run faster, to do more, be more, and it still was never enough.
When they find out Grodd is planning to level Central City, their response time is admirable – but it's still too late. Before they can respond to the crisis at hand, there's an eerily loud alarm cutting through the tense quiet. The siren puts a gun to his head and holds the trigger.
No one else can save the city. This really is a job for The Flash.
But The Flash doesn't exist. Only he does.
Barry presses his hands against his face, sick with anxiety because fuck, fuck he can't do this. How is he supposed to keep an attack of this magnitude from destroying everything he holds dear, killing hundreds of thousands of people in seconds, millions over the course of a few years? He ran from a tsunami and a cataclysmic wave of energy created by Vandal Savage's scepter.
When the situation goes critical, he panics and runs. It's what he does. It's all he can do.
He looks around the room and his family is there, his family,his, his Iris, his Joe, his Cisco and Caitlin and Wally and Jesse, his Harry and HR. He can't leave them to die here because he is afraid. He can't ignore their sinking boat to sink just because he can swim.
He hyperventilates on the run over, struggling to hold himself together. His suit readings must be giving away his agitation, and he feels like he's going to pass out, but he's also focused, aware that he doesn't get a second chance at this. He cannot in good conscience abandon his family, his city, his universe to suffer a crime he failed to stop.
If it suffers, then he must suffer with it.
He gets to the site and rips through two access panels like they aren't there, vibrating them out of their slots. There's a kill code, thank God there's a kill code, but it's five digits long and there are nine numbers, which means that there are almost sixty thousand possibilities.
He has less than thirty seconds to test them all.
He flies through the first hundred, the next hundred, the following, too, but he starts to lose steam around four hundred. Panic is swelling in his chest, forcing him to keep going, faster, faster, clumsier, even, but faster-faster-faster. He climbs to the first thousand, then twelve hundred, sixteen hundred, two thousand—
Fifteen seconds.
There's not enough time, there's not enough time, he's working as fast as he can but every instinct in him is rearing, screaming in rebellion, run Barry run! He can't, he can't, he's trapped, he will not leave his family to die, but he must run he has to he has to before it's too late because once it's too late then he's dead—
If it was four hundred combinations farther along, they all would have died.
But it isn't: attempt number 14,562 yields the kill code. He holds onto the machine for balance, shaking with relief. Three seconds to spare. Three hundred codes, maximum, before the rig launched and his world ended.
There wouldn't have been a way to stop it, he knows, sinking to shaking knees. They had no counterattack, no option B, no way to stop destiny from meeting its target. He was it. One shot.
He gasps for breath and hauls himself to his feet. The urge to throw up is powerful, but he shoves it down and takes off, skating into STAR Labs. He doesn't make it to the cortex, sinking to the floor near the end of the hallway, gasping for breath. He hugs his knees to his chest, shaking hard, a mix of adrenaline and horror coursing through him because he cannot be responsible for so much, he cannot be the last the only the fatal resort.
He's a CSI. He studies dead people for a living and solves crimes, he does not dismantle missile launchers and stop a nuclear apocalypse. Joe was right, Joe was so right, this wasn't what he did, you're not a cop, but he was the only one who could stop it, he was the only one fast enough, I am The Flash—
Pressing his forehead against his arms, he holds on tight, willing the rush of fear-fear-fear to back down. He stopped the missile – they're safe, they're fine, everything's fine, he-didn't-shoot-you-you're-fine, but it doesn't feel fine. He remembers that night when he couldn't sleep because all he could think was that he chose the wrong line of work, he is not cut out for this, he is not fine.
That was without the overburden of six hundred thousand people needing him.
He pulls himself together, to his feet, For His Team, and puts on his big congratulatory tone, frayed around the edges but not fraying, holding it together. Iron-fisted and tight-teethed, he keeps his sanity close to his chest, strangling the urge to flee when the thermal imaging scan reveals hundreds of gigantic red apes heading for Central City.
They can't fight hundreds, they can barely fight one, and asking Wally and Jesse to join him is suicidal but he feels guiltily, inescapably better with them at his side because he's not alone.
You're not afraid of the dark, Barry.
You're afraid of being alone in the dark.
He isn't afraid of dying – he already died, twice, once in the horrible contraption Harry built to give him back his Speed (which, technically, worked, albeit in a roundabout way) and once in the magnetar. That experience was particularly memorable as he felt the burn of the magnetar consuming his temporal twin. An eerie phantom pain sprung like firecrackers across his skin, hot and sharp and unexpected, digging under his flesh for hours afterward, his body twisting in pain on the sheets because I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he didn't die and that wasn't enough for the universe which took everything from the Other Barry, always the Other Barry, and it demanded recompense from him.
In the end if it happened to Other People, then he didn't have to worry. (He still would, he always would, Atlas didn't pick up half the world.)
But this is his family. He can't walk away. He has to fight for them: it's his only option.
He isn't afraid of dying, but he's terrified of losing them.
They stand in the middle of the street before an army of howling, raging, gigantic gorillas. It's all up to Cisco, Barry thinks. He isn't the one at the pad, frantically attempting to dissolve a deadly weapon, and he'd feel much safer for it, if the gun wasn't still at the back of his neck. He breathes shallowly, hyperaware that if Cisco fails, they have no alternative plan.
Fight Grodd's army until they keel over or die trying. What a way to go, surrounded by thousands of pounds of fur and blood and rage.
Wally asks for advice and Barry's only response is go for the legs.
Don't die.
Jesse and Wally take off, and Barry watches them charge before refocusing his attention on Grodd, moving briskly towards his intended target. Intervention required, Barry lunges forward, intending to cut him underneath his shield with a punishing Speed-punch, but Grodd detects and deflects, using his momentum against him.
CRASH. He smashes into a parked car and puts a sizeable dent in it, head spinning, back aching in pain. Grodd marches onward, bellowing noiselessly in challenge, and his army overtake Jesse and Wally, flinging them aside.
No. Barry tries to force himself to his feet, so unsteady he can scarcely manage it. I have to—I have to—
His vision darkens at even a slight change in elevation, and he waits for the sickening vertigo to pass, frozen. He cannot pass out here. He wouldn't just be a burden unto himself, vulnerable; he'd be a burden to Jesse and Wally, too, because they're a team, a pack, a family, and they wouldn't leave him to die.
He gets up and a breach opens, a massive portal between worlds, three times the size of any of its predecessors, and for a moment he is dumbfounded. Then a massive, white-haired gorilla he knows leaps out of it, and his heart is caught in his throat. Solovar.
They did it. For better or worse, they did it.
Watching the challengers clash, Barry has to hold onto the car to steady himself, pushing off after a moment. He walks with tender ribs and spinning head. Solovar chases Grodd up a building, cornering him at the top, and the clamor of heavyweights throwing themselves at each other has seismic strength, coupled with their deep, animal roars.
Barry pities the bystander, oblivious to the threat, only aware of those monstrous howls, titans at war.
Then a six-hundred-pound projectile is launched off the edge of the rooftop and Barry watches, entranced, as Grodd plummets to his death. This wasn't the plan, he thinks deliriously, caught between horror and relief as Grodd's body hits the pavement. With nimble ease, Solovar flings himself from the same rooftop and lands with a thunderous reverberation on the pavement beside his foe.
A foe which is still breathing, Barry notices. He won't be for much longer, not if Solovar stabs him.
"Stop," he entreats, and he finds strength in his tone where it wants for his conviction. "Spare his life like I spared yours." We'll keep him, he says, making promises he daren't – but must – keep. He won't return to Gorilla City.
Solovar regards him and he senses the dismissal, the puny-human dialogue that threatens to launch that spear through his own shoulder. Then Solovar grunts and lowers his head. It's a concession he didn't earn, but Solovar says, Take us home, and there is only room for accord.
It takes the better part of twenty minutes and virtually all of Cisco's strength, but the parting army is a worthwhile site. Taking ahold of Cisco and Cynthia, Barry glances at Jesse and Wally, on their feet and ready to go, and nods once.
Let's go.
The cortex is a very welcome site, even if Barry feels three days into a cold, sick and heavy and tired.
He limps home without shattering, keeps up a smile for Iris and a gentle touch, a hand on her shoulder a quiet reminder that he would die for her. Their apartment is cool because he bleeds warmth and Iris likes to takes advantage of it when she cuddles closer at night. Without immediate proximity, she shoulders on a throw blanket, wandering into the kitchen and pillaging the less perishable snacks.
He should be hungrier, but he still feels nauseous and opts instead to go to bed. He shrugs out of his suit and sinks onto the sheets. His head hits the pillow and he's out, one arm curled around a pillow.
There's a ticking bomb strapped to his chest.
He fumbles and tries to disable it, but it's locked, there is no kill code, and the countdown flies through triple digits.Panic clogs his throat as they fall beneath one hundred.He tries to hit his comm, to tell Cisco what's happening, to beg for help, but he can't find his comm, he isn't wearing his suit, he's a pedestrian, an ordinary person, and the straps tighten as the bomb reaches zero and—
He lunges upright, shaking hard and clutching his chest, searching for the bomb, the bomb, where is it? A sleepy hand settles on his hip, questioning and concerned. "Bar?" Iris asks, running her thumb in slow, soothing circles. "What's wrong?" When he doesn't respond, she sits up, resting her chin on his shoulder with an arm tucked around his waist. "Babe?" In a low tone, she dares to ask, "Was it Savitar?"
Barry almost laughs because that's what he's supposed to fear, not the contrived demons demanding his unconscious attention. It would be easy enough to lie, wouldn't demand further explanation. But he can't, never could, and he turns his head to her side and presses a relieved kiss to her cheek.
She relaxes against him, but she doesn't let him go and he doesn't, either. "Wasn't Savitar," he manages, voice sleep-heavy and rough. "Just a dream."
Iris squeezes his waist and he knows she's thinking, searching for the right words. At last, she says quietly, "I'm here."
It's what he needs to hear, a reminder. I'm here.
She's falling-asleep-on-him tired, but she doesn't complain about being awoken at God only knows what hour. Barry shuffles so he can hold her and tugs her down on the bed beside him, his chin on top of her head. It's nice, cuddling someone, a tangible reminder that not all the world is broken like he is.
You're okay, he tells her, over and over, lightning curling around her gracefully, reinforcing the message. Everything is okay.
She's asleep in seconds, but he stays up, listening to her breathe. She's so trusting, he thinks, heart in his throat, so utterly trusting of someone who can still mess up, who can still fail to save the day.
But she is here, and so is he, and it is still the best place to be.
I won't lose you, he thinks, his own breathing slowing down. I will keep you safe, Iris West.
It doesn't matter how many Savitars he has to fight to make it so, how many impossible situations he has to survive.
You are my whole world.
Shutting his eyes, he exhales deep and holds her in his sleep.