"Barry, wait a second!" Joe shouted as Barry was running down the stairs of the precinct.
Barry sighed, stopped, and turned to look at Joe.
"Can we make this quick? I promised Cait that I would be home to have dinner with her." Barry told him, a pleading look on his face. Joe chuckled; he had learned to resist the face long ago.
"Just checking in. Did you finish the Markinson case? They need to use that in court tomorrow." Joe said, continuing down the stairs and motioned Barry to follow.
"Yeah, I gave it to the lead detective for the case. Can I go now?" Barry asked, doing the thing where he would hop slightly from one foot to the other, showing Joe how anxious he was to get out of here.
"Yeah go on, get out of here. Don't forget though, dinner this Sunday! I want one more family dinner that includes all the people that can drink." Joe told him, waving him off.
'Well Caitlin can't actually drink right now, so your last family dinner with people that could drink was about nine months ago." Barry told him, heading towards the doors of the precinct.
"Smart ass. Now go home to your wife!" Joe ordered. Barry laughed and took off towards home.
"Welcome home Mr. Allen." Caitlin greeted him as he walked through the door.
"Glad to be home Mrs. Allen." Barry said with a smile. He walked over to where Caitlin was setting the table for dinner, and pecked her on the cheek.
"You were almost last for dinner." Caitlin told him, going back to stirring her pot on the stove.
"That was Joe's fault. He wanted to make sure I finished up a case they are using in court tomorrow, and he wanted to remind me about Sunday dinner." Barry told her, coming up behind her and putting his arms around her. It felt good to just hug her sometimes, as if to remind himself that she was here.
He did this sometimes. After their time fighting Zoom, after she had been kidnapped, Barry liked to remind himself that she was here, in his arms, safe.
"Of course. How could we forget? It might be one of our last dinners before our little present arrives." Caitlin said happily.
"Did you think of more names, or did we finally decide on our final two." Barry asked her.
"Well if it's a boy, that one was decided years ago, long before he was even a thought. And if it's a girl, well I'm still having trouble deciding that. All I can say for sure is that its not one of the ones Cisco suggested. " Caitlin told him. She stepped back slightly, and Barry let go. The oven timer went off and Barry went to pull whatever was in there out.
"Just don't let Cisco hear you say that until after the birth certificate has been filled out." Barry told her.
"Some of them were fine, but others make me wonder if we should add a psychologist to the team." Caitlin told him. "And now dinner is ready. Can you grab a couple plates out of the cabinet?"
The two of them sat down to a quiet, relaxing evening. They ate dinner, Barry cleaned up the kitchen, and they sat downstairs watching TV, suggesting names if their child was a girl.
"Topanga Iris? No way Barry. What kind name is Topanga?" Caitlin questioned when Barry brought up an old show he used to watch.
"Topanga, what a beautiful name for something you want to love. It would be perfect." Barry insisted.
"No way. That's worse than Bartholomew." Caitlin told him.
"Not many things are worse than that." Barry agreed with a sigh.
"Well, there's always Cisco's list." Caitlin amended. She started to shift to get up, but Barry held her back.
"Don't get up, tell me what you need, I'll get it for you." He insisted.
"Barry, I am pregnant, not invalid. I'm just getting up to use the bathroom, which is something you can't do for me." Caitlin told him.
Barry just settled back onto the couch as Caitlin got up. He was flipping through channels, waiting for her to come back, when Cisco called.
"What's up, Cisco?" Barry answered when he picked up his phone.
"Robberies in progress." Cisco answered shortly.
"Is this something the police can handle? Cause Caitlin and I were discussing names for the kid if it's a girl." Barry said with a sigh, getting up. Barry knew he was going to help anyways, but he wanted to see if there was a chance he could sit this one out.
"Normally yes, but there five happening at once, so the police are spread thin. Joe says to take the one on Main and Ninth. Central City Jewelry. That's the only place with a metahuman attacking it." Cisco said.
"Okay got it." Barry ended the call, and sped upstairs to put on his suit.
"The Flash is needed?" Caitlin asked when Barry came back downstairs.
"Yeah, robberies, might be part of a bigger picture. There's a metahuman involved." Barry told her.
"Okay. I'll head to S.T.A.R. Labs." Caitlin said, turning to search for the keys to the car.
"Why?" Barry asked her. "You know I love you, but I don't think we need you for this one."
"You probably don't, but because this is us, and you are the Flash, and we live in Central City, this is going to blow up into a huge thing. I think an extra set of hands early on would be better." Caitlin told him.
Barry opened his mouth to argue for a moment, then thought the better of it. She wasn't wrong.
"Alright, I'll meet you at the lab once its taken care of. Be careful." Barry told her. Caitlin turned back to him and smiled.
"Of course. See you later." She said. "Oh and what do you think of Alice?"
"Alice Iris? At this point, I'm hoping it's a boy."
"Yes, because Henry Joseph is such a good name."
"Well it flows better than Alice Iris. The problem with having Iris as a middle name, nothing really flows right."
"Whatever Barry, now go save the city."
Barry smiled at her, pecked her on the lips, and took off.
The jewelry shop meta turned out to be fairly easy. It was a girl who could control precious stones. Barry was surprised at how easy it was to take her down. He was back at S.T.A.R. Labs in fairly quickly.
"Gemstone." Was the first thing Cisco said when Barry flashed in with the new meta.
"As her codename or as a name for the kid?" Barry asked, leading the meta to the center of the room.
"Codename. I already gave you a list of totally awesome names for the kid. Do you need more?" Cisco asked.
"Nope, we are good." Caitlin said, waddling into the lab. "And Flash is back in record time. What happened?"
"I think this is just getting easier. She was easy to capture." Barry told Caitlin, motioning to the newest meta in the lab. This one was a short brunette girl, who had a dress made completely out of precious gemstones.
"That's what you think Flash." The girl said darkly. She snapped the handcuffs Barry had put on her, and thrust her hand towards Caitlin. "I'm going to hurt you in a way that's sure to leave permanent damage."
The reactions in the lab were all different. Caitlin moved one hand to block her stomach; the other was reached out as if to shield whatever Gemstone was doing. Barry rushed to get in front of Caitlin, and Cisco rushed to grab gemstone.
But that couldn't change the fact that Gemstone had pulled Caitlin's ring off her finger and sent it flying towards Barry, who was rushing straight into it.
It was the ring that Barry's father had given him when Barry had first mentioned proposing to Caitlin. It had been Barry's mother's ring, and to Barry and Caitlin, it was a symbol of their love.
And it was flying straight through Barry, and a speed high enough to cut right through him.
Barry could see it in his line of sight, heading straight for his heart. He couldn't do anything to stop it, until-
"No!" Barry shouted, sitting straight up in bed. Monitors around him started beeping erratically, a bright white room nearly blinded him, and there was something in his throat.
He started to choke, clawing at his throat to get what felt like a tube out of it.
"Mr. Allen, calm down. We need to get the feeding tube out of your throat, but to do that you need to calm down and breathe, breathe." A calm voice came to him. He did what he was told, and the tube came out.
Gentle hands guided him back down onto a bed, and he looked up to see a short woman with brown hair and a pearl necklace looking at him.
"Gemstone?" Barry asked, softly. His voice felt like it had not been used in months, and the feeding tube down his throat didn't help.
"No, my name is Jewel though. I'm one of your nurses here at Central City Hospital. You've been in a coma for sometime now Mr. Allen. I'm glad to see you have woken up. Dr. Snow will be in in a moment to check over everything and help you." With that, Jewel marked a few things on a clipboard that Barry had just noticed she had, and left the room.
Barry relaxed back on his bed. He looked around the room and confirmed what Nurse Jewel had said. He was definitely in the hospital, and from how heavy his limbs felt, it must have been awhile.
There was a knock on the door and a man walked in wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard. He had red hair, and bore a huge resemblance to Caitlin.
"Cait?" Barry asked, even though he knew that this man wasn't her.
"No, my name is Charlie. Dr. Charlie Snow. I've been taking care of you while you were in the coma." The doctor told Barry.
"But, you look just like her." Barry answered.
"Who, Mr. Allen?"
"Caitlin. Caitlin Snow."
A sad look came over the doctor's face. He marked something down on the clipboard and walked over to Barry's bedside, taking a seat next to him.
"What's the last thing that you remember?" The doctor asked gently.
"Gemstone made Caitlin's ring fly off and sent to towards me, to kill me." Barry said, confused at that.
The doctor looked surprised for a minute, then a look of understanding appeared on his face.
"Mr. Allen, I'm sorry to say, but that was a dream."
Barry looked at the doctor, dumbfounded.
"You've been in a coma for over a year now Mr. Allen. There was a period around the nine-month mark where you woke up for a bit, but you've been in a coma since. Do you remember the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator?"
Barry nodded. "Yeah, but that happened like five years ago."
"No, it only happened about a year and a half ago. Time moves faster in dreams." The doctor explained.
"But, I was the Flash. I was married to Doctor Caitlin Snow, she worked with me at S.T.A.R. Labs. We were going to have a child together. If it was a boy, Henry Joseph, and we were still deciding on the girl's name. I was going to tell her Bianca Iris the next chance I got. Doctor Cisco Ramon was going to be the godfather, and Iris West was going to be the godmother. When we had our second child, Felicity and Oliver were going to be their godparents. We were supposed to go over to Joe's house this Sunday for a family dinner before the baby came. I couldn't have possibly dreamed all that up." Barry said, looking at the doctor desperately.
The doctor sighed, and looked at Barry sadly.
"Barry, it was a dream. I recognize all those names. Iris and Joe, your foster family. They have been here as much as they could have been. Oliver and Felicity? They run the Queen corporation over in Starling City. Cisco Ramon did work in S.T.A.R. Labs, but he was killed the night of the particle accelerator explosion." The doctor explained calmly.
"What about Caitlin Snow?" Barry asked.
The doctor looked down. "She died too. There were no survivors from S.T.A.R. Labs. She was actually my sister."
Barry looked at the man. He looked so much like Caitlin.
"Then how do I know so much about her, and all of them? How did I know about Cisco?" Barry questioned.
"People have been in here day and night talking to you. So many people came in after the particle accelerator exploded, but not all of them stayed in a coma as long as you. Nurses and doctors have been in and out, just talking to you. Myself included. I told you all about my sister, it was my way of grieving." The doctor explained.
Barry sat back in his hospital bed, going over all the information given to him.
"I'm going to be back in a bit, I'll leave you alone to collect your thoughts." Doctor Snow told him.
Later that day, Iris and Joe came in and were overjoyed that he was awake. Iris was a non stop chatterbox for all he missed, while Joe sat quietly in the corner, smiling at his two kids. Barry spent the next couple days getting checked out by various doctors, who wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with him after being in a coma for so long. Barry spent the time in-between being asked questions and being poked with various things catching up on the world. Some serious shit had gone down with Oliver, but Ollie was still the Arrow, all the way. But Barry wasn't the Flash. There had been no meta humans created from the particle accelerator blast.
Barry was eventually released. He got his old job as a forensic scientist back, and worked cases for the department. He watched Iris and Eddie still be in love, except this time, when Eddie proposed, he stayed alive. Even after the wedding.
Barry just continued with his life, but he could never forget the dream he had when he was in the coma.
He always thought about what could have been, maybe what should have been.
But that wasn't real.
What was real was waking up in his crappy apartment, with a rent that Joe had been kind enough to pay while he was in the coma, eat breakfast and go into the station. Barry would run forensic tests on crime scene evidence for cops, and they would go out to catch the bad guys. Barry would stay in his lab.
This is what was real. Not the Flash, not his charmed life with Caitlin. He had already visited her grave to see that she was, in fact, dead.
There was no future for them together. Iris and Eddie were together, happy, but Barry didn't have that, not anymore.
Reality bites.