Story: To Simpler Days
Words: 1500
Characters: Joe, Barry
A/N:
The words that are written in Italics between '...' are a throwback to things that have already been said in the past and that Joe's remembering.
Keep it mind; English is not my first language.
Enjoy the Angst!
These kids may be the death of him.
.
.
.
He couldn't really describe the hopeful feeling in his chest when he heard that Cisco had worked all this time on forming a plan to get Barry back. For months Joe had tried to keep his hopes up, tried to keep going just like they had all promised. But a plan to free Barry and stabilize the Speed Force Prison without unleashing another lightning storm on the city? That sounded too good to be true.
'This is neurological.'
Joe pressed his left palm absentmindedly on the scanner and the door glided open smoothly.
"You are right." His son said randomly in agreement. His matter of fact tone startled Joe out of his deep-thought process.
But he was.
He was right.
It was too good to be true.
Because here sat Barry; right in front of him in the flesh. Perfectly alive; something he didn't dare to even hope for in the past few months. And more healthy than he has ever been in his entire life.
And yet his healthy son, stared up at him from the cold metal ground with a white marker in his right hand, absentmindedly drawing random symbols -as if tranced- on the dirty ground. His Barry, his son; broken; probably beyond repair.
Joe's heartbroken eyes tried to capture his son's expression and searched deep down into the now momentarily merrily shining brown eyes of the kid he has raised; searching for at least a small piece of recognition, but finding none. Barry's stare passed right past him to his right hand; holding the reflective bowl with shaving foam and water, a small peaceful smile grazing his face. His own hand never halting with vigorously drawing his symbols.
The symbols that filled up the entire cell by now.
Joe slowly crouched in front of Barry, putting the bowl with water down while staring at his son, who's tracking the object as if tranced with eyes full of loving warmth. Suddenly Barry looks up at Joe, his smile still unwavering but brightening, the warmth in his eyes growing with tenfold. And with a pang Joe realizes that that warmth could only be described as the love a son feels for his father.
It seems… Familiar. In a way.
"You are not." Barry answers resolutely. An air of finality marking his tone, answering Joe's unsaid statement with a sureness that startles Joe and hurts him to his very core. Yet that merrily little smile has not wavered. That gleam has not changed.
And suddenly Joe understands.
"Rot. Shot. DidHeGetShot?!"
'-form of Schizophasia'
"Pot."
'He could be sending us a message.'
Joe's mind suddenly flashes years back, to a time when things were simpler. Not simple. But definitely simpler than this.
And he understands.
"We can help him." Joe said resolutely, turning around from the board full of research that Barry has secretly done in the past… probably years of his life and looking up at him with pride. "We can." Joe said with sureness. "We're gonna figure out who or what killed your mother that night and then we're gonna get your father out of prison." He looked Barry straight in the eyes and said with all the confidence he could master: "Together. "
A pregnant pause later Barry broke the silence; "Joe, what I said about you not being my father…"
"Barry. I know. I know, I'm not your father.-" And even saying it out loud, hurt, immensely. Because – auch- how he wished he was. For just like Iris, Barry was his kid too, his own kin. Just like Iris; Barry was more than just his flesh and blood; Barry was his heart and soul.
"You're right." Barry said resolutely. " You're not. You are just the man who kept me fed and in clothes, who sat on my bed at night until I fell asleep because I was afraid of the dark. You helped me with my homework, you thought me how to drive and shave and dropped me off at college." He looked up at Joe, a smile forming. "It sounds a lot like a dad to me."
And suddenly, looking down at his adoptive kid, his son; his Barry, he feels like crying again. He couldn't take it anymore and he put a hand over his mouth and let out a harsh sob in earnest pain.
"Knot. Lot. Pot."
For his kid was now officially broken.
Suddenly Barry doubled over and started clutching his head, pulling his hair out and yelling rhymes in obvious distress. Screaming his lungs out in pain. Joe panicked and dropped the towel on his arm and bent forward to get a grip of Barry's tear stained face, withholding him from hurting himself in the process. Softly mumbling soothing words and stroking his cheeks with his thumps to reassure him and ease him back into the calmness of before.
"Nora shouldn't be here!"
In a faraway corner of his mind he hears Caitlin's words echo;
'The Speed Force exists beyond space and time, to us Barry was only in there for six months but to him, it could've been 10 000 years. All that time in isolation, it could have caused dementia.'
Was this really Barry's penance? Did Barry really call all this his redemption? Because it wasn't. It couldn't be. All this pain couldn't be all there is. Barry was a hero. Barry deserved better than all of this.
'All this time we were trying to safe Iris, you are telling me we should have tried to save you too?'
He is selfless and brave and always believed that the impossible was within reach. Even when Joe himself didn't believe. Especially when Joe himself didn't believe.
Joe wasn't lying when he told him that no father ever felt more proud of a son then him himself.
Suddenly Barry halted and broke out of his raging. The tear tracks started drying on his face almost immediately and he looked questionably up at Joe and asked astonished: "Public Indecency?"
And Joe was so surprised of the change that he burst out laughing with tears from before spilling from his eyes. "Yes." He said, wiping his own eyes, chuckling with laughter. "That's exactly what happened Baer." He palmed and petted his bearded cheek softly in fatherly love and went forth with wiping his son's cheeks too.
This was their reality now. This was how it was going to be. And he just had to learn how to adjust to it properly.
He would teach him how to shave again.
Absentmindedly Joe started looking around for his razorblade now that he knew Barry was out of his stupor for the time being. "Maybe we should have a few pepperoni, olives with helplines pizza's again, huh, Baer, what do you say? Just like you like them huh."
With crunched confused eyebrows he replied astonished: "Dog leash violation?"
Joe only hmmd with a little smile and started working on making Barry recognizable again. Joe quickly realized that the outburst from before had tired Barry out immensely for he was mostly sitting still and not making a peep except to repeatedly tell Joe that "The stars are flying".
"Crying."
"Dying…"
"Stop with dying!"
When Joe was done he wiped the foam of Barry's face softly with the towel and looked back at his work in satisfaction. He smiled softly. Barry smiled tiredly back.
Joe sighed, exhaling slowly and looking his work over Joe spoke: "Much better."
In response Barry replied with: "You said it yourself." And suddenly Barry's smile faded, and a faraway look replaced its place in his eyes as he stared on behind him. "She goes looking for danger." Barry simply stated.
As answer Joe palmed his cheek in a caressing manner making Barry seem 11 years old again. Lost. Tired. But loved. He heard heels clicking on the floor behind him and immediately knew who the sound belonged too. He picked up his stuff and walked out of the containment cell
In his mind Barry's last words echoes through his head; "She goes looking for danger".
The switch of expressions on Barry's face was so random that it took Joe a few moments to connect the dots. Still Joe connected them.
She does.
A hollowness filled his heart as the door automatically closed and separated him from Barry. And his heartstrings were pulled when he pressed his hand on the scanner and locked it; leaving his son alone in solitude once again.
'That may be all of him that's left.'
That moment, while turning around from Barry and looking up at Iris, Joe understood something. He understood that Barry's cryptic words weren't really a straight message to them, like Cisco thought. It was a throwback to better days. A throwback to when everything was last complicated.
To Simpler Days.
.
.
.
He didn't do those things. He didn't hurt my mom. I was there that night. There was a man!
Plan…
No plan!
Joe knew he would forever live with the guilt.
-L