Notes:
I love Barry a lot and that finale was woah so I wanted to do something centered around him and his thoughts because the poor boy's been through a lot. Also, for some reason I really like it when Barry cries, so I ended up writing about him crying...a lot...
xXx
The thing about nightmares is that you can't really stop them from happening. You can force yourself to stay awake for as long as your body can manage, until your vision is blurry and your limbs are heavy and your head is pounding, but in the end that only makes them worse. He knows this, of course, because he's tried. After his mom is murdered, he forces his eyes open for nearly three nights straight in a bed, a room, a home that isn't his own, until he's shaking with fatigue, until his eyelids are too heavy, until he can't run from it anymore. There's no worse feeling then being trapped inside your head, weighed down by exhaustion and paralyzed by sleep, when you can feel yourself screaming and you just. Can't. Stop.
The first night it happens, Iris is there by his side right away, shaking him awake and then calming him down, holding him close. She runs her fingers through his hair and whispers comforting words in his ear, lets him cry against her shoulder until his throat is raw, and rubs soothing circles around his back until he can breathe right again. It doesn't happen every night, but it happens a lot, especially in those first few months. Sometimes it's Iris who sits by his bed and talks him down from another panic attack, a solid, steady presence he can latch onto when he feels like he's breaking down. Sometimes it's Joe, who won't let go of his hand no matter how tight he squeezes it. It doesn't take long for him to realize that he's so goddamn lucky to have them both.
xXx
The thing about nightmares is that you can relive the same one, over and over and over again. And every time it's just as painful, and every time there's nothing you can do to stop it, and every time you wake up screaming, or crying, or in a cold sweat. He's lost track of the number of times he's watched his mother die, that he's relived that night. The number of times he's been powerless to stop it, heard her screams echoing in his head long after waking up. And then there's the man who will never stop haunting him—glowing red eyes, a storm of lighting, a yellow blur and a force like a tornado. Except in his nightmares, it's always even worse. Standing over his mother's body as she asks him 'why' with her dying breath, why couldn't he save her and why he's just standing there and what about his father, watching the light leave her eyes. The man in yellow cornering him, taunting him, laughing in his face—a sound so dark it leaves a chill deep in his bones and rattles him to his core. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
xXx
The thing about nightmares is that you get them just as bad at 18 as you did when you were 11, only now you're at college and your roommate is asleep and there's no one to hold you when you wake up with a scream caught in your throat, with tears in your eyes, with a burning in your chest. He'll slip out of the room as quiet as he can, make it a good three steps away from the door before he's sliding to the ground with his back against the wall, alone in the hallway at three in the morning with his fist in his mouth, biting down hard to muffle his sobs because the walls here are paper thin and the guys would never let him hear the end of it. In the morning he'll call Iris, but he can't wake her up now even though he knows she'd want him to. By then he'll stop shaking, by then he'll stop crying, by then he'll be well on his way to his 8:30 class like tonight never happened. And he'll never know when the next one's coming.
xXx
The thing about nightmares is that they show your deepest fears, make you relive your most horrifying memories, face your greatest enemies—and you always, always lose. They leave you lying awake all night, because every time you close your eyes it's the same damn thing. And he's so afraid. He's terrified. He knows who killed his mom now and he knows they're out there and he knows that they're stronger than him. He deals with every disaster imaginable on a near daily-basis these days, from shoot-outs to fires to bank robberies to people with superhuman powers, and while most of the time there's nothing else he'd rather do, he's seen such awful things, and for all the people he helps there's always going to be some that he can't. That's the thought weighs on him when he's lying awake at night, and when he finally gives in to sleep it twists and it morphs into something more ugly and terrifying than he'll ever say out loud, a world where it's not only his mom he doesn't save but every single person he cares about looking up at him with those cold, dead eyes, that same blank expression.
xXx
The thing about nightmares is that they play dirty. They come to you when you're at your most vulnerable—asleep, defenseless, and hurting. Even worse is when they come without warning, when you think things are looking up and that time is healing your wounds after all, that the hole in your heart is finally sewing itself shut. It's strange, because even though he enjoys his life now and he loves the people in it, he loves this gift he's been given and he loves what it lets him do, even though he's happy, they still come. Maybe not all the time, but enough, and he wonders if they'll ever really leave.
xXx
The thing about nightmares is that they can feel so fucking real. And by the time he's 25—for Christ's sake, he's only 25—and he's forced to make the biggest decision of his life, he's basically living in one. All these years he's dreamed of saving his mom, all these years he's had every nightmare under the sun about the day he lost her, and now he finally gets the chance and he doesn't take it. He's back at that night except this time everything is exactly as it is in his worst nightmares because everything is so much more real and so much more frightening and the stakes are so much higher and he's not blocks away this time, he's right here listening to her die and he's not doing anything to stop it and he's watching the light leave her eyes and there's blood on his hands and he's wondering if this was really the right choice, because how could it be when it hurts this much? But he closes his eyes and grits his teeth anyway, because this is how it has to be, this is how it has to happen. Things will be as they should be, and he has people he loves waiting for him back at home, because that's where he belongs, and he'll get past this. He'll get past this. This is closure. This is what he needs. And he can't mess with time because he's got everybody else's lives in his hands now too, and the life he's returning to isn't so bad after all, is it?
For a brief moment, he really does feel lighter. He feels free. But then he gets back to the place he almost left and everything goes to shit, and Eddie shoots himself and Iris is crying and there's a black hole tearing its way into Central City and threatening to swallow the world and all he think is 'sorry'. Sorry to those who he couldn't save, who he didn't save, to his mom and to Eddie. Sorry to those who he's leaving behind, who he's dragged into this mess, to Iris, to Joe, to Cisco and Caitlin, to Ronnie and Stein and to everyone in this city, to the entire goddamn world. Because ultimately this is his fault, isn't it?
This is his responsibility, this is a tragedy he created. Because he wasn't strong enough, and he wasn't fast enough, and he couldn't stop one Thawne and he couldn't save the other and he let his mother die, he did nothing to stop it and he listened to her breathe her last breath all for fucking nothing in the end. And he's sorry, he's so fucking sorry. He says he has to try, but it's more than that really—he has to succeed. There's no other option, no other outcome he'll allow—he has to do this, to right this wrong, to stop this nightmare in its tracks.
He squeezes his eyes shut as he runs into the singularity, power and electricity pulsing just underneath his skin and lightning in his veins and a rock-solid purpose in his heart, and prays with every fiber of his being that this will work. He thinks of Iris and he thinks of Joe and he thinks of his mom and his dad and his friends and all those he can still save and all those he couldn't and prays that for once, when he opens his eyes again, this will be over.
xXx
The thing about nightmares, unfortunately, is that sometimes you can't wake up. And for all the running he does, for everything that his speed gives him, they always catch up in the end.