TRIGGER WARNING - not a happy fic, one-shot (rambling), just gonna leave this here
The first couple years he'd stay home from school, wrap himself in blankets, and watch movies and TV until his mind was numb. Iris would tiptoe around him. Joe would take him to her grave. He would cry, sob. At night Joe would sit with him until he fell asleep – sometimes hours into the night.
Sometime between middle school and high school he'd stopped staying home on the anniversary. It was easier to go to school – to pretend everything was fine and like it wasn't the day his mother was murdered in front of him and his dad dragged off to prison. He couldn't escape it for long. He always wound up at her grave, and then Joe sitting on his bed at night, until he was too old for that so he would sit on the couch and watch TV and fall asleep there, where Joe could lean back in the chair opposite and pretend to doze while he waited for his pseudo son to fall asleep.
Junior year, he skipped school. Joe got a call and spent half the day trying to find him, thinking over and over again that he shouldn't have let him go to school that day. He had been acting strange all week, stressed about school and college, upset at the tiniest things, and he found out later, being harassed and bullied by a couple of kids at school. Iris called him thirty-six times that day. Barry was out at the bridge going into the city, where the cars wouldn't see him and sitting on the edge with his legs dangling out in nothing, staring at the water. He stared at it for hours.
Iris was the one to find him. He vaguely remembered her crying, grabbing his arm and pulling him away, step by step. Another therapist, medication he didn't take, half-hearted excuses. They didn't talk about it.
But Joe didn't let him go to school that day the next year either.
In college it got better – more distractions, less triggers. Life caught up to him. He was enjoying school, enjoying college and everything that came with it. It wasn't like it didn't still bother him – but he got drunk on the anniversary and made bad decisions and then woke up the next day with a hangover from hell that was definitely, absolutely worth it. He didn't ever cry until the day after.
And when he was out of college – well it was pretty much the same. He got drunk, but this time Joe was there if he needed him, and Iris always had a movie and ice cream ready. It wasn't as hard to endure.
Then he got struck by lightning. And then the Reverse Flash appeared.
And Barry's world went to hell.
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