Disclaimer: If I owned The Flash, I would somehow work in Barry having to tap dance or sing every episode.
Nobody knows quite what to think of Henry Allen.
Iron Heights wasn't exactly filled with the most savory characters, but Allen seemed to be in perpetual solitary – he was given a berth afforded to very few.
On the outset, this was puzzling. When you spoke to him, he seemed polite. Amiable. Agreeable. He was quiet and well-behaved. His disciplinary record positively shone. Overall, he was a model inmate.
Until you arrived at the small point of the violent murder of his wife.
In the beginning, Allen had been just the same as the rest of them. He would protest his innocence at every opportunity, he would rage at the injustice, he would sit in his cell, broken and devastated, and most of all, he was concerned for his son. Then as noise got him nowhere, he quieted. Stilled. Found a sort of external peace, though he could never fully douse the fire that creeped through his veins, slow and steady and nearly unbearable.
It set one's teeth on edge, so see someone who had felt his own wife's heart rend apart seem so serene.
It might have gained him some cred among the inmates, to be a murderer, except that this place was filled with murderers, and it was his defenseless wife he killed, which was rather unpopular. He might have been harassed for it, but for his lack of response. He was strangely apathetic. "Somethin' not right about him," they'd whisper.
The guards drew straws on who would accompany him to see his son. They saw plenty that disgusted them at Iron Heights, abuse victims visiting abusers, fans visiting serial killers. But there was little that sickened them quite as much as a son, who many of them had seen grow from a child into a young man, who they knew to be a deeply good and caring person just from the brief interactions they caught, devotedly visiting the man that murdered his mother, convinced of his innocence after fifteen years.
For several months right after Allen's imprisonment, he got no visits at all. The knowledge that his son thought he had stabbed his own wife in the heart was like a second cell, a metal cage contracting around his heart until he couldn't breathe and he was certain the downtrodden organ was about to burst. He couldn't know, of course, the screaming fights Barry had with his adoptive father, or his shrink, on the subject. He couldn't know that Barry showed up at Iron Heights on a nearly weekly basis, taken there by an unconcerned bus driver. Or that he would shout at the entrance behind the chain-link fence until a beleaguered guard took him into the supervisor's office. ("Gotta admire the kid's persistence," the others would say.) Or how the supervisor would sigh, and take out the well-worn paper with Joe's number written on it. No, he couldn't know how Joe quickly started preemptively driving out to Iron Heights whenever Barry went missing, or how the drive home, at first used for verbal thrashings, quickly drained into sullen and weary silence. He couldn't know how Joe despaired late at night, staring at the bottom of a glass, wondering how he could ever take care of such a child. Eventually, there had to be compromise. It was simply too exhausting. There wasn't even energy left for anger, anymore. He started coming once a month, accompanied by Joe, who stayed silent but glowered to his utmost. Allen was ecstatic.
Now, he came about twice a month, every Father's Day, and, most gut-churningly repellent, every Mother's Day. They would talk about Nora and smile and sometimes cry and it was so indescribably wrong. They both left each visit just a bit brighter, and the guards could only say, "Poor kid."
They were both pleased and worried when he stopped coming. They speculated what could have possibly happened. Then they found out the real reason, and it was worse than anyone thought. Nobody had ever seen Allen so distraught. The overwhelming swell of relief combated the chilling sink of disappointment when he returned, alive, awake, healthy, and just as loyal to his mother's murderer as ever. Allen was so overjoyed it was impossible to say he didn't truly care about the kid. Their reunion was quite heartwarming. The guard on duty couldn't bear to watch.
Every so often, a fresh-faced, frightened, and bright green inmate would find themselves attracted to a kind look in a place utterly devoid of such a thing. Allen would smile at their hesitant approach, and motion for them to come over and sit. He would act as a sort of mentor for awhile, teach them how to survive, and become a bright spot of friendship in an otherwise miserable existence. They would ask what he was in for, and his lips would twist in a wry and bitter way. Their curiosity would be piqued, and they would find someone else, and ask: "So Allen, what's he in for?"
The new guards were the same. It was a bit of a hazing, to take Allen out to see his son. "He's here," would come over the radio, and the veterans would look resigned and heavy. "Newbie, Inmate 147's got a visitor." They would leave, bemused and apprehensive, a whirlwind of dark possibilities running through their heads. They would come back with pity in their hearts for a loving father and dedicated son. So they would ask: "So that inmate, what's he in for?"
"Murdered his wife," was the universal response.
The shock was instantaneous. "Him? No way," they would respond.
"'S true. Bloody knife in his hand and everything. Their son was right there, too."
Horror and betrayal would strike like the wild fist of a raging inmate. They would begin to feel vaguely ill with the clash of emotions, warring images of a good man and heartless murderer that simply couldn't coexist. It was hardly the worst crime anyone in Iron Heights had committed, but Allen wasn't an unstable maniac, ready to fly into a spouse-murdering fury at any moment. He was just too kind.
It was unnerving.
"Must be a real psychopath," they'd mutter around their crawling skin.
"You're telling me."
They would never quite make eye contact with him again. Allen would smile knowingly and the lines around his eyes would cry, and he would perch his glasses on the tip of his nose and sit alone once more.
Nobody knows quite what to think when Henry Allen is released, either.
It was all very sudden. The guards got the order, he was sent out for retrial; one day he was there, the next he wasn't.
It wasn't much of a change at all, barely noticeable at most. His departure left nothing but a subtle sense of relief, like a thin fog right before it dissipates in the heat of the day.
"Haven't seen Allen around lately," an inmate would note.
"Y'know, you're right – maybe he was transferred?" Another would reply.
"Good thing, too. Used to creep me out."
"Dude, you've actually shot people, and some old guy creeps you out?"
"He was weird, man!"
"I heard they let 'im out. He was innocent, 'pparently."
"Huh."
"Right?"
"Lucky bastard."
The guards talked. It was all they could ever do, of course.
"Really?"
"He was innocent all this time?"
"You're full of shit."
"No, it's true, I swear! Heard it from the boss himself!"
Silence would reign for a moment, the news eating sound like a pristine blanket of snow.
"So..."
"Gotta feel for the guy, in here all that time."
"Yeah."
"Hope he got a fantastic settlement."
The room would become a thick stew of guilt, disbelief, relief, pity.
"Well at least he's out now, with his kid."
"Guess the kid was right, this whole time."
A chorus of halfhearted "Yeah"s.
A dry cough.
A crackle on the radio that made everyone jump like their supervisor had just walked in. One rushed to get it, and clipped, hushed voices were the only sound for a moment.
"I knew it."
"Oh, shut up, Jim, you had no idea. Nobody did."
"I did!"
"You nearly threw up when we told you he'd..."
"No, I could tell. He was just too...nice."
"You're full of it," they'd absently reply, mind going to all of Allen's quiet kindnesses that were taken as bizarre and unnerving, now turned into a stifling ball-and-chain of guilt and discomfort.
Silence would fall once more, everyone pretending to get back to work. As if anyone could work when the atmosphere and their stomachs were drying cement.
They put it in a box and sealed it shut and went home, like they had so much practice doing.
But they could never quite forget.
And Henry Allen smiled, genuinely but still with that ironic twist, and he would perch his glasses on the tip of his nose and sit alone once more.