T-minus 253 days.

Nothing changes. Everything changes.

They're in a daze the first day, keeping the news to themselves not out of conscious decision but simple euphoria. Iris doesn't realize that the morning has passed and the afternoon is swiftly following until the sun sets. It doesn't matter; they're pregnant. Sitting in their pajamas on the floor, they eat cheesecake together, and are happy.

It's today, day two, that the ticking clock resumes. Without fanfare, the world picks up its stately routine, drifting back to its familiar winter narrative. If it knows she is pregnant, it gives no sign. Dawn spills pink light around the curtains, tracing the arch of her duvet-clad shoulders. Beyond the frosted windows, the temperature hovers around a cool twelve degrees Fahrenheit. When she finally commits to a shower, it's steaming-hot.

She dresses warmly, but Barry's double-layering method is decidedly more noticeable. Per tradition, he layers up and wears socks around the apartment full-time once the temperatures drop below freezing. No matter how warm he is, he tends to seek out more heat. He curls up with his favorite honey-colored blanket for naps and wears beanies more often than not once the cold weather strikes. Iris doesn't like cold fingers, but Barry would curl up in a lit fireplace if he found a big enough hearth.

Munching on Corn Flakes, he doesn't turn around when she sidles up behind him and hugs him. Humming, he settles his left hand on her arm and finishes off his bowl. She rests her cheek on his shoulder, soaking in some of that speedster-warmth for herself. She almost expects him to be different from the Barry she knows, to have changed overnight, but he still smells like bergamot and firewood, still purrs like a speedster.

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

On the wall calendar, Iris notices a little pencil heart in the previous box labeled December 3rd. There's no explanation, no baby-on-the-way confections. It's just a little heart in Barry's handwriting, a quiet celebration of the first real milestone. She presses her smile against his shoulder, aching for a moment for bare skin. The world is still turning and the world still needs them, but sometimes she just wants to be selfish and keep him for herself.

When he turns and kisses her, it's the next-best-thing.


Intermission: Barry.

T-minus 252 days.

4:49 AM.

Lying flat on his back on the floor with his legs up on the couch, Barry works on a crossword puzzle book.

It's unacceptably early to make breakfast (for Iris; he's already plowed through two pre-breakfast "snacks"), but it's also kind of slow in the city with a blizzard bearing down on them, strangling metahuman activity. He'd hang out with Cisco at STAR Labs, but Cisco clocks out around three. Caitlin is a morning person, which means she is never voluntarily up after midnight, and Ralph's sleep schedule is so mysterious that Barry is afraid to ask.

He's not bored; he has literally thousands of case files at his fingertips and an entire multiverse of people who could use The Flash's help. Deliberately idling, he resists the urge to run the heroic hamster wheel, sticking to his self-imposed eighteen-hour cap. He only needs ninety-six minutes of sleep each night, eliminating a huge chunk of biologically-mandated down-time. By designating six hours every day to non-heroic stuff, he still works nearly three times as much as the average Central Citizen, but he doesn't burn out every day.

He's four words away from completion when he hears a retching sound. Grimacing sympathetically, he freeze-frames the world, Flashes to his feet, and zips back into their room. Slowing down again, he taps on the partially open bathroom door, asking quietly, "Iris?" She groans, kneeling in front of the toilet. "Y'okay?" Another groan. Slowly pushing the door open, he asks, "Do you want space or…?"

She holds out a hand. He sits next to her, settling a hand on the small of her back and rubbing slowly. She takes hold of the front of his Flash tee, eyes closed, still half-asleep. She lists against him, leaning on his side before another round of nausea kicks in. Brushing her hair back, he sticks with her.

The Flash might be clocked out, but as Barry, he can still help her, day or night.


T-minus 250 days.

"We should go to Disney World."

Barry pauses mid-bite of his sandwich, wrapping up second lunch. Swallowing, he asks, "Like – right now?"

Iris shrugs, sitting on the edge of Winn's empty desk. She's feeling good – strong. Normal. Young. "I am not endowed with superspeed, so that is entirely up to you."

He frowns. "Is that safe?" Articulately, he flattens a hand against his own belly.

Iris rolls her eyes, pushing off from the desk and striding over to him, draping her arms around his neck. "I trust the Speed Force."

He hums doubtfully, but he slides his arms around her hips. "Mm. You really wanna go right now?"

She smiles. "We're young and irresponsible."

"Mm." He shakes his head a little, but there's a smile on his face. Then, brightening, he stands and says, "Hold on." Zipping off, he reappears seconds later with Cisco.

Cisco puts a hand to his head and says, "Barry, why."

"I need a favor."

"After that you owe me a favor," Cisco grunts, still holding his head. "What?"

"You can Vibe to specific locations," Barry says.

Cisco waves a hand. "Yes, I know this."

"So. Could you …" He looks at Iris. Lifting his eyebrows expectantly, he waits.

She grins. "How do you feel about Disney World?" she asks Cisco.

Twenty minutes later finds the four of them – because there was no-way, no-how Cisco wasn't gonna bring his B-F-F-X-T (best-friend-forever-times-ten) Cindy with him – in the Magic Kingdom.

It is, hands down, one of Iris' best ideas.

As they're waiting for the fireworks that night, there is all the time in the world to tell Cisco and Cindy about the pregnancy, but neither she nor Barry break the news. Not yet, seems to linger in the air between them, his chin hooked over her shoulder as he holds her. With his arms around her waist, his hands settle naturally on her belly.

She thinks about bringing a baby, their baby, to this magical place, and is grateful that the darkness hides the tears in her eyes. She isn't sure she could explain them to Cisco or Cindy without giving herself away. A bubble of hopefulness in her chest prevents speech.

Not yet.


T-minus 247 days.

It's Iris' favorite five-syllable word in the English language:

Con-gra-tu-la-tions.

Prancing around Disney like kids half their age, it had almost felt like the happy little secret wasn't real. Pregnancy could have been a dream conjured up by the universe to make the cold winter nights a little less lonely, an illusion to take the bite out of disappointment. It didn't matter in the moment that it might not be real, that they might be one of all too many false positives. She was too content to care, dining on mouse-eared ice cream under a balmy Floridian sun with her husband of nearly three years at her side.

But once they returned to the breathless cold of Central City, her hopefulness and anxiety skyrocketed. She couldn't sleep, shifting positions so many times she finally kicked Barry out of bed. Literally. He hit the floor. She apologized at least five times.

He took the sudden interruption in stride. She still felt a little bad about it because he could not fall asleep twice in one night. It was either ninety-six minutes or bust, and though the spring was out of his step from just shy of forty, he still smiled and made coffee.

Iris' gaze inexorably finds the calendar, fixing first on the little pencil heart on the third and then the current date. December 10th.

One week down.

Forty-two days complete.

As Barry can cheerfully and reliably point out, the pregnancy-test-trigger-hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin; yes, she Googled it; no, she can't pronounce it) is only produced after implantation, a phenomenon that takes place about two weeks after conception. It takes another two weeks for hCG levels to build to reliably detectible levels, although an eager parent-to-be might take a pregnancy test as soon as a week after conception. Feeling less than robustly optimistic, Iris waited a week after her expected cycle to test, prompted by the omnipresent app's reminder to log her period!

By the time they decide to make the announcement to Dad, Cecile, Wally, and a handful of other need-to-know friends, she hasn't been pregnant for a week.

She is six weeks pregnant.

Fortuitously, there's a six-syllable word that sums up their reactions to the news perfectly:

Con-gra-tu-la-tions, Mom!

(It's the most gratifying response she's ever gotten to an announcement, and she once won a writing contest in college that came with a $500 cash prize.)


T-minus 246 days.

Humans inherited the contrarian impulse to name a frozen wasteland "Greenland" from the same impulse that caused the universe to invent the affliction known as "morning" sickness.

Actually, humans named that, too.

Staring down at her laptop, well into the workday and determinedly resisting the urge to throw up, Iris concludes that people are garbage.


T-minus 245 days.

Barry, who brings her a heating pad and leaves her alone for four glorious hours, is less garbage than most people.


T-minus 244 days.

Barry, who can drink all the caffeine in the world and needs less than two hours of sleep a night, is more garbage than most people.

At least his shirts are soft, Iris reflects charitably, face-planted on the couch in one of them.


T-minus 243 days.

A confident man walks into a conversation with "Did you know that research shows morning sickness can actually be beneficial for both Mom and baby?"

Sitting propped up against the headboard with her reading glasses on, Iris levels the flattest look in her repertoire at Barry. "Really."

Rocking back on his heels, he clasps his hands together and says simply, "I will take a walk, now."

"Much better."


T-minus 242 days.

The average pregnancy is 280 days long.

According to Barry's infinite supply of nerd facts, a nuclear-powered manned mission to Mars could be completed in as few as 220 days.

Ergo: had Iris boarded the hypothetical GOK 1 the exact moment she submitted her final answer of Yes I Want a Baby, she would still have almost two months of her pregnancy left when she finally landed.

Pros: she'd get to shatter some fantastic records, including laying claim to "First Person on Mars" and "First Pregnant Person on Mars;" transmission time between the two planets is about twenty minutes each way, so she'd have nineteen and a half minutes to compose her historic first words, as well as plenty of time to let out an emphatic and un-air-able "fuck yeah!"; she'd be the first person in human history to ever have an entire planet to themselves (until her partners inevitably stepped out of the capsule, doubtless relieved to not have to share space with a heavily pregnant woman anymore); and her baby bump would be almost forty percent lighter, making life in general decidedly easier.

Cons: her Martian baby would be extremely hard to birth, assuming it survived the more-than-lethal dose of radiation on the trip out and the steep G-forces on the launch itself. Also, she would have to pee into a vacuum. No thank you.

There's also the disconcerting prospect that once you're in, you're in. There is no "return to sender" option on Mars. It's a one-way trip.

Then again, so is a successful pregnancy.

Sighing, Iris shifts positions on the couch, cuddling the giant stuffed Porg that Cisco won in a Target raffle (only took 37 tries; according to him it's not cheating, it's ingenious to use breaches to scout 37 different locations).

She's only been pregnant for twelve – forty-seven – days, but in that little corner of her mind she doesn't tell Barry about, she's kind of ready to bail. She's reaching for the spacecraft's nonexistent "Please Exit Here" lever, anxious to back out before she's too far along. The vacuum of space may suck, but at least it's not an entire human being entirely dependent on her for everything. She can't hurt the vacuum of space's feelings; she certainly can't be a bad parent to it, either. The number of ways she can fail as a parent is enormous, and there is no surefire strategy for success.

This is what you wanted.

Burying her face against the Porg's back, she turns the mental lights off for a time and drifts in space.


T-minus 241 days.

There's still no baby bump.

Why isn't there a bump? Should there be a bump?

Iris stares at her flat belly for a long time, trying to persuade herself that it's real, that there's a baby, her baby, their baby, but –

Still. No. Bump.

With a disgruntled sound, she tugs on her regular, post-workout shirt and tries to draw comfort in the fact that she can still wear belly-revealing tees at the gym without drawing unwanted attention. God, she kind of wants it to be there already.

Maybe there won't be one. Maybe it was a false positive.

Google tells her that seven weeks is optimistically early to show, but she's pregnant and no stranger on the street would know, she wouldn't know if it weren't for the test, and it grates. There's a discontinuity between her thoughts and the test that promised her there is a baby. She hates that it could all be a wistful idea, a false positive in the truest sense of the words. She doesn't want to get anyone's hopes up only to crush them down. She doesn't want to be wrong, to have to tell them all that it was a lie, that it didn't happen – or, worse, that it ended too soon.

Ten to twenty percent of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion.

She can picture it all too vividly, one-in-five little hearts being erased from their calendars. It brings a lump to her throat to think about how, consciously or unconsciously, even Barry with a big smile and nothing but verbal optimism used something as impermanent as pencil to mark the dates.

She skips a post-workout smoothie with Linda, which is stupid, because now in addition to being nauseous and anxious and sad, she's also hangry, but she doesn't care. She makes her way home, but home is too empty with Barry away. Dropping off her workout bag, she slings her satchel over her shoulders instead and heads back out into the cold.

She doesn't have a destination in mind, but her feet take her to the precinct. When the elevator doors open, she finds her dad first. She could head up to the forensics' lab – there's a good chance that Barry's still there, even this late in the day – but she beelines for her dad's desk. "Hey, baby girl," he says, standing and holding out his arms.

Folding herself into them, she inhales deeply, grounding herself in the real, and exhales slowly.

Somehow, it makes her feel better, safer, more real.


T-minus 237 days.

It's starting to feel routine. The soreness, the crankiness, the "I miss you so much; please come back" calling card of nausea and naps. Barry is pretty chill about the whole affair, which helps. He leaves her alone and is gratifyingly pleased when she finally gets over another robust round of "I hate every man and my husband especially" hormones. She cuddles the Porg plush more than said husband, but he doesn't complain. (Neither does Cisco – good man. She's already categorized Cisco as less garbage than most.)

Then comes the first prenatal visit and oh, Mama, is she a bundle of nerves. Excited nerves. She swears by it, even though there's definitely the anxious little voice screaming into the world's tiniest bullhorn that it was all a lie and they are in for the world's biggest disappointment. Well. Probably not the world's biggest. The world's biggest disappointment was when the dinosaurs disappeared.

She's been dreaming about dinosaurs a lot lately. Baby dinosaurs, following her like she's their Mama. She blames them on Barry and his dragon-baby comments. Clearly, they've rooted deeper in her subconscious than she knew, and if he mentions Khaleesi at all in earshot, she will make him sleep on the couch.

She has not told him about the dinosaur dreams, because he will send her seven different very helpful articles talking about pregnancy and the Miracle of Creation or something, featuring anecdotes from Mamas-to-be with weird pregnancy dreams. She gets it. She is the metaphor. All dreams are metaphors. Life is a metaphor.

Right now, the metaphor is shaped like a hedgehog curled in on itself, quietly and continuously screaming.

Luckily, Barry does not make blueberry pancakes on the morning of "It's Official (Hopefully)" which is good, because if she even catches a whiff of blueberries she will throw up. It's a whole new olfactory experience, being pregnant. Her sense of smell soars. Why? Because pregnant people need to be able to smell deeply.

At least aching breasts make sense.

Anxiously staring at the clock, only two more hours, only one more hour, Iris is certain that she has never simultaneously dreaded and awaited an OB-GYN appointment more than now.

Forty-five minutes out, she finally asks, "Is it too early?"

Two minutes later, they're sitting in the waiting room, Barry bouncing a leg as he sits next to her. When Iris wraps up the paperwork, she takes one of his hands in hers and squeezes it, too nervous to rally a reassuring speech.

Today's the day.

He's letting her win a thumb war when a nurse finally calls her back.

Being a dad-to-be is the easiest job in the world, she grumbles silently, running the full gamut of "First Prenatal Screening, Yay!" tests.


Intermission: Barry.

T-minus 237 days.

Waiting in the waiting room is officially Barry's least favorite activity on Planet Earth, and he was once turned into a kinetic porcupine with over 400 metal quills.


T-minus 237 days, resumed.

Prenatal ultrasounds: paying a medical professional to systematically massage one's abdomen with a rubber medical "wand" and a whole lot of warm blue gel.

Sponsored by "hang on, I have to pee again."

At least it's not painful, Iris muses, even though she's so anxious she feels like she might throw up again.

Meanwhile, with a level of concentration endowed to world chess champions in the final round, Barry leans forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, gaze glued to the black-and-white screen, waiting. Iris watches him for a time, but he doesn't blink or look away from the screen.

After a long moment, it clicks: he's Speeding. She taps his shoulder because she wants him here, not there. A tiny blue spark jumps between them. If either doctor or assistant notices, they don't comment, because Barry promptly startles so violently he tips out of his chair. For the first time in a week, Iris laughs, a nice big belly laugh that takes the edge off.

Bright red, Barry rights himself with several apologies, looking fully prepared to draw his shirt over his face. As a kid, he semi-regularly employed the foolproof strategy of "if I can't see them, they can't see me." It never mattered that he looked even sillier doing it than he did staring down at his shoes, flushed with embarrassment. Hiding his face was his go-to move if he was annoyed or embarrassed. He grew out of it, but he still tugs at his collar a little. She pulls on his sleeve until he gives her his hand instead.

He is wired, strung tighter than steel. She's surprised he hasn't started vibrating in his chair or phased through the floor. It occurs to her that she might have to play off the fact that The Flash is her husband if he can't keep his cool, but he projects outward calm with frankly admirable conviction. She lifts her eyebrows a little. You good? He nods, squeezing her hand reassuringly, and doesn't relax at all.

Without fuss, they're back to the grainy black-and-white screen. She feels Barry fidgeting next to her, silently reassuring her that he's still in real-time, but she doesn't look at him, unable to look away from the screen.

That – that is not a baby.

That's two babies.

There are a lot of metaphors about life – gorgeous metaphors, succinct and sweet and euphoric metaphors, all of which have a time and place. They can encapsulate feelings that she can't articulate in her own words. She'll reflect on this moment at some distant temporal point with an eloquent remark about the "Miracle of Creation," about the overwhelming sense of rightness. She'll tell this story with the same smile that she does when she talks about Barry's proposal. She'll love every second of revisiting this moment. This very moment, when her mind goes quiet, and warmth floods her chest.

But the thing that stands out to her in the exact present is Barry's soft strangled sound, both breathless and beyond speech, and the way he settles his elbow on the side of the bed and brings her hand to his lips, holding it there for a little eternity, like he's searching for a phrase stronger than I love you.

If he ever finds the verbal equivalent, he never shares it, but she understands him perfectly in that moment of silence, that moment of pure unaltered joy, before her favorite five-syllable word finally fills the room:

Con-gra-tu-la-tions.


T-minus 237 days, later that night.

They barely have to announce it formally before Cisco admits that he had a cake ordered (or twelve; hey, he knows his audience, and in the family there are two speedsters).

Each says "Congrats, you're PREGNANT!" In true Cisco fashion, they're all intentionally misspelled.

"They thought I was kidding," Cisco remarks, amused, as he holds up a cake with the affection misspelling of "Gregnant." "Bless their hearts. I'm really proud of this one," he adds, pointing a fork at "Pregante." "Gonna eat any of them?" he asks Barry, who is currently taking pictures of them on his phone. He shakes his head distractedly, but he doesn't make it past "Pregananant," laughing until he cries.

Iris indulges in the thinnest slivers of cake Cisco can carve out. ("I'm not trying to ruin your pregnancy diet, I promise." "Please do.") Her dad, Cecile, and Joanie show up in a little under half an hour, and Wally Flashes into view a mere six minutes after them.

"Sorry, I got caught up off-wor—" He pauses, inhales deeply, and demands, "Is that cake?"

"Kinetic sand, actually," Barry deadpans, popping a forkful into his mouth.

Iris rolls her eyes and nudges him. She's sitting on the same chair, which amounts to sitting three-quarters in his lap and occasionally stealing his fork. The warm pregnancy glow has never felt more real. Her magnanimity even extends to not envying his ability to pack away fully six of the twelve cakes without loss of enthusiasm, settling progressively farther onto his lap until he is fully holding her, plate of cake forgotten. He's also purring, which reminds her one of those massaging chairs, which makes her laugh.

God, she has never been so happy.

They wait until the whole family is present before finally letting them see the ultrasound picture, complete with not one but two clearly discernible babies.

There's a ten-syllable word that sums up their reactions perfectly:

!


T-minus 233 days.

It's Christmas Eve before Iris realizes she hasn't bought Barry a Christmas present.

Between mood swings (yay), persistent morning sickness (double yay), and Cross-Fit (has it literally ever been easier to want to be a quitter?), among other pregnancy joys, she's been a little preoccupied. Watching her diet and remembering to take her eclectic assortment of prenatal vitamins are also not insubstantial time-sucks. Her two emotions have been restricted to a) hangry and b) naps, and said naps are filled with the weirdest dreams she has ever had, bar none.

It doesn't help that eggnog is strictly off the table, hot chocolate exists only in moderation, and the smell of gingerbread or peppermint instantly sets off her gag reflex. To his credit, Barry keeps all of the above out of the apartment and compensates with several hundred paper snowflakes to keep things "fun" and "festive." He also lets her cuddle him while he's wearing his stupidly comfortable Christmas sweaters, which greatly improves his "how garbage is my husband" score.

Still: in spite of it all, she really does love her garbage husband, even if he can still drink eighteen glasses of coffee and promptly die of a heart attack, if he wants to, without risking harm to their future children. God. The American dream.

He's napping on the couch, because he fully intends to stay up all night being Speedster Santa, a venture he's kept up with Wally for three years, now. It gives her a window to head out without drawing his attention – once he clocks out, he's out, awakening only for minor disasters, like being forcibly shunted out of bed – and she calls up Joanie because, hey, sister time.

Plus, Joanie is extremely easy to be around, a sounding board and an equally engaging conversationalist. Iris finds herself enjoying their outing a lot more than she expects to. Joanie wears a reindeer headband and Iris finds a Santa hat because it's Christmas, it's festive. In the spirit of going wherever the below-freezing wind takes them, they end up at a home-goods store with a truly ungodly amount of foam, and who needs foam, but it makes her laugh when Joanie heaves a massive roll clear over her head, declaring solemnly, "I am the Foam Queen."

(Joanie is a June baby, but their adventure is not forgotten when she unwraps Iris' birthday gift and cackles over the exact same roll of foam, endowed to "The Foam Queen.")

In the end, she gets Barry a sundial watch, because it's cool to look at and hard to read, and he loves that kind of stuff. Plus, he wouldn't be on time even if she somehow persuaded the sun to turn back a few hours, and she loves that about him. It's just part of him. He's the fastest man alive, and he's always late. Somehow, the cosmic oxymoron suits him.


T-minus 232 days.

Barry gets her a giant plush Porg.

If it demotes him to the second best snuggle buddy in Iris' life, he doesn't seem to have a problem with it. It's the heart of their happy marriage. They're both nerds, and they both enjoy a good old-fashioned Star Wars plushie. (Legally obtained on Earth-2, he cheerfully explains: having a speedster friend from another universe has its serious perks.)

Cuddled up to him on the couch later that night at her dad's place, she assures him with a kiss under the chin that he still holds the number one place in her heart. And, yes, his snuggles are better. But don't let it get to his head.

He's already the best husband there ever was.


T-minus 230 days.

Turns out the "Miracle of Creation" is a lot like having a really bad cold.

She's congested and headachy and throwing up so often she calls off work. Barry stays with her, bringing her whatever comforts they think might help. At some point between naps she hears him on the phone with her dad, seeking reassurance and solutions. She feels a little bad at pushing him away earlier that morning because his cologne set her off, why does literally everything set her off, but once he showers to dull it to a tolerably faint whiff, she lets him hold her for a while on the couch while they watch the blandest TV they can find because even laughing makes her want to throw up.

She falls asleep with her face pressed against his belly and his hand stroking her shoulder while he keeps the Speed-purrs to an absolute minimum because he's trying not to set her off. Even his conscientiousness can't stop the groan-inducing need to pee every forty minutes.

Sometimes, the only answer is simply suffer, and it's a little more bearable with him there, so he stays.


T-minus 228 days.

A light at the end of the tunnel. A break. Hallelujah.

Work resumes, life resumes, her sense of control resumes – and yet, when Iris looks down and sees the slightest bump one morning, barely noticeable with a loose shirt but still undeniably there, she feels giddy. Elated. Beyond elated. Euphoric.

It's so lovely, lovely in a way that pizza-belly has never been, lovely in the casual elegance of knowing that she is well and truly pregnant.

She's actually pregnant. Maybe it is a miracle.


T-minus 226 days.

The last day of the year marks the beginning of the tenth week of her pregnancy.

Iris knows it because that little pencil heart is still there, marking the fifth week, four weeks ago, now. Just seeing it still makes her catch her breath, a hand on her belly and a terrible statistic looming large.

One-in-five.

She dares to hope their odds are a sobering but less halting one-in-ten, that their youth and general good health will prevent any catastrophes, but it's out of her hands. She can no sooner will the pregnancy to last than she can guarantee it in the first place. Sometimes, there is a place for chance, and it holds a terrifying amount of sway in the first trimester.

Two more weeks, she consoles herself. Fourteen more days, and their odds improve substantially. Eighty percent of miscarriages happen in the first trimester; only twenty percent happen in the latter part of the pregnancy. It's not the world's most comforting statistic, but it does mean they're almost out of the woods once she ticks week twelve off the calendar.

Aching for the new year, aching for mid-January, she still finds a little smile when Barry wraps his arms around her from behind, pressing a friendly kiss to her cheek and resting his hands on top of hers.

"Y'okay?"

Instead of responding, she turns in his arms and kisses him, because she's finally feeling like herself and she really, really doesn't want to sour it with hopefully fruitless fears.

"Mm-hm."


T-minus 220 days.

Iris is at work, working on an article, when her phone buzzes for the first time in hours.

It's 2:18 PM. Outside, it's a bone-chilling 9 degrees Fahrenheit. She's feeling pretty good, all things considered: less nauseous, more human, a little unfocused but zealous enough to try and work. It's good to stay busy. It keeps her from stressing the pregnancy. Stress is bad, for her and the babies. Stress must be avoided.

Her phone buzzes again. She checks it.

Cisco: Are you at work?

Iris frowns. What's wrong?

In response, Vibe – Vibe – appears, breach opening right there in the center of the hub. The noise in the room escalates as people reel, but he doesn't pause to reassure them.

She wants to sink to the floor. She wants to curl up and avoid the buzzing phone which was silent for so many hours, silent again. She wants to pretend she didn't see the message, that she didn't respond.

Instead, she stands, not yet impeded by a pregnant belly too subtle for strangers to pinpoint it, and steps through another breach with him.

She has no idea what to expect. In her mind, she sees the Cortex covered in blood, shivers as a pallor like death settle over the place, hunches inward as the deep wrongness of something terrible chills her blood. They cross the universes, and she braces for impact.

She actually closes her eyes, and then she opens them, and there is no blood, no deathly pallor. All is quiet. It's too quiet, she thinks immediately and has to close her eyes again the instant it sinks in.

"We lost contact two hours ago," Cisco says quietly.

Rage bursts in her chest. It's so sharp it splinters her lungs, preventing speech. It aches in her, burns in her. At last, with false composure, she demands, "Why did you wait?"

Cisco doesn't respond. She doesn't need him to. She knows why he waited. They lose contact with Barry one out of every four missions. As a rule, she's only roped in if a) she's already present or b) he's been gone for too long. The lulls can be seconds long, known only because they cut off speech, or a few minutes.

Anything over ten minutes is cause for concern. By an hour, it's downright alarm.

She feels dizzy, suddenly, and takes a seat at the console because she will not fall, she will not let the news shatter her. "Where was he?" she asks at last, wrestling with the tightness in her throat, straining for composure. She has to be composed. They didn't just call her in because she's Barry's wife; they called her in because she's their leader.

"Right here," Cisco says, and there is something dark and terrible building in her chest, a premonition flexing its claws, aching to become real. "Wally's been scouting the area for hours, but…" He trails off. He still has the goggles on, arms folded across his chest. The anxiety is clear. He could be halfway around the multiverse by now.

"What happened?" she asks, surprised at how cool her own voice sounds. It barely belongs to her. Nothing seems to belong to her. When she rises from the chair, her body feels mechanical, like it's someone else's.

"Off-world metahuman ping," Cisco explains softly. "We didn't want to go in blind, but – something was moving fast, setting off distress signals planetwide. We were gonna wait until we could find out more, but we couldn't … plan." He says the last with a little grimace. "We were just going to check it out. Nobody was going after any metas. Nobody," he insists fiercely.

Then, sighing, he finishes, "It went as planned – Wally stayed here to hold down the fort, I scoped out one potential target area but came up dry, and Barry scoped out another. We were gonna meet in the middle. I don't – I don't know what happened. I found the middle, but Barry wasn't there." His voice is thin, strangled. "I promise you, Iris, we're gonna get him back, but it felt – wrong, to not tell you any longer. I'm sorry."

Iris breathes shallowly. She composes herself, closing her eyes, aching for a sixth sense, something to –

It clicks. "Speed Force," she says.

Cisco frowns, not understanding. "What?"

"I can – Speed Force," she repeats like it's obvious, like all of those ten thousand little gestures might have imprinted something more serious on her soul than an impression, an actual lifeline. "Get Wally."

Still frowning, Cisco presses a button on his sleeve. Flash, and her breath catches, but it's just Wally. She hates the disappointment that floods her. Focus. Heart-pounding hopefulness surges through her, and she says with only a little shakiness in her voice, "Cisco, you can breach us to the Speed Force, right?"

Cisco removes his goggles, staring at her. "No. No, Iris, you're—"

"You're not going to find him," she says shortly, sharply, releasing the blade of a guillotine. He flinches. Good. He needs to understand that there are ten thousand, thousand, thousand universes out there, and Barry could be on – any one of them. There is only one constant throughout it all, one unreachable place that might be able to reach him. Pushing back from the console, she stands.

Wally hasn't found him yet. The world-hopping perpetrators are moving fast. It's been two hours.

There is no time for this.

"Breach us to the Speed Force," she says forcefully. "You'll stay anchored to Earth. Wally and I will find him. We'll stay tethered to you."

"You sure you can find him?" Wally asks seriously.

"Iris, you could lose—"

She holds up a hand. "My body," she says at last, "my rules."

Cisco exhales. He puts the goggles back on. He nods once brusquely. Then he says, "It's easier in the Speed cannon lab."

Wally doesn't wait for further prompting, Flashing them into the room. There's a little electric hum of fear coursing through her, knowing that she's endangering everything, but – this is about Barry.

And there is nothing she won't do for Barry. Absolutely nothing.

She clips the tether onto her wrist, securing it tightly. Cisco locks the remaining cuff on his own wrist. It's a signal, a beacon in the darkness. A North Star in a starless place. As long as she doesn't lose it, she'll always be able to find home. Wally's suit is already tethered to him with the same tech; it's in the emblem.

Sobered, Cisco regards them for a long moment. "Godspeed," he says quietly, throwing open a breach. Wally takes her hand, and together, they step through the breach into the void.

A long moment passes between them. There is no storm, no sea, no land at all. There is only darkness. It is the world before creation, the universe before light. Wally squeezes her hand reassuringly. The cuff lights up, and when she walks forward, it leaves a haze behind her, centralizing around the original point like a slow-moving comet.

Good to go. She doesn't need to exhale, but it brings her stability to perform the act, to simply breathe in a space where she doesn't even technically have a body. As long as she's tethered back to Earth, she does. "All right," she says, and Wally squeezes her hand, letting it go slowly. He doesn't disappear, but he goes dark, becoming nearly opaque. It is only the reflection from her own tether that keeps him in view.

"Tell me where to go," he says simply.

She inhales and exhales again. She closes her eyes, even though it doesn't change the view much.

It is grand and dark and still in this cosmic place of nothing. It is awesome. It is alive.

It is to the darkness that she addresses: "Show me."

She opens her eyes, and in the distance, she sees a tall figure materializes, regarding her with familiar white eyes. Despite the solemn garb, the future Barry – the true hero Barry, the one who even in death committed to helping people – is visible underneath the black mask. For an instant, she feels pain, crushing, suffocating pain, because no. No, no, no. No.

Then, slowly, the Black Flash saunters forward. Wally doesn't move. He can't see the Black Flash. Not yet. She looks the Black Flash head-on. At last, It is near enough that she has to look up. It is then, and only then, that Wally tenses, sensing the cold. The Black Flash extends a bony, gnarled hand towards her. Without hesitation, she takes it.

A lifetime passes between them as It pulls her forward, turning away, white eyes fixing on a distant point she cannot see. She feels a tug behind her, and shakes her head, assuring, "It's okay." Wally lets go. The tether leaves a comet trail behind her. With every step that Death leads her along, she feels the finality, like she may never come back to Earth, like she will disappear into the darkness altogether, like she never-was.

Then, all at once, the Black Flash stills in one place, and looks at her expectantly. She looks back at It, at Barry's eyes, ten thousand, thousand, thousand centuries old and still – faintly warm, affectionate even now. He once told her it would take trillions of years for the last stars to burn out. She suspects it is then and only then that that warmth will disappear from the Black Flash's glowing white eyes. The Speed Force's love is deep. It amplifies what exists into something so pure it cannot inhabit the multiverse. It must stay removed.

It does not accompany her as she takes a single step forward without it, and suddenly, there is grass bending beneath her feet. She walks steadily forward even though the landscape materializes slowly around her. At last, she is moving under a moonless sky, ink-black but full of stars, following the path of a long red streak vanishing into the distance. She walks steadily, unerringly, along the length of that slowly-fading comet streak, a red-orange-yellow light that doesn't diverge from its path. It's not hard to discern what it is.

Lightning trail.

One only a speedster could leave. She follows it, for hours, it seems, but exhaustion doesn't overtake her. She's living in Speed-time, now. She can follow it forever, and her feet won't ache, and her breath won't change, and her body will not fail her. This is what it is meant to do, she thinks; the Earth is merely a rigid medium that refuses to cooperate.

A city materializes in the distance, and it reminds her of Central City, but inverted, darkness where buildings should be, buildings where darkness belongs. Moving at the leisurely, eternal pace, she doesn't have any problem navigating the strange space, drawing no attention, stirring no alarms. She follows the lightning trail even as it fades, follows it even after it has become so faint she can barely make it out.

She follows it until finally, she finds him.

Frozen in time, he is sitting on the floor, back to a wall, with a neon blue chain around his neck. Fire burns red in his eyes, but he doesn't look at her: his gaze is fixed on the open doorway where a creature best left in nightmares resides, tall and chaotically built, long protruding teeth, wickedly curled claws, slathering black maw, and hungry yellow-lightning eyes.

She doesn't need to ask what it is to know, intuitively, that it hunts speedsters. Its gaze slides to her, and she feels heart-pounding terror, but it moves with enormous slowness towards her, trapped in ice. Forcing herself even a step farther into the room is nearly impossible with the creature watching her, inexorably attracted to her even though there is no way it can see her, not yet, not at this speed. She takes another step. Barry is maybe four steps away. The creature is less than ten. Faster now. Faster. Faster.

She doesn't know how to unlock the chain, but she doesn't need to: she touches it, and it drops away, sliced clean in half. He finally notices her, moving glacially, head tilting towards her, just beginning to register another presence. Eight steps away. She tugs his arm, and he rises effortlessly. Taking his hand, she runs, and the nightmare creature is five steps away from them when they phase clean through a wall.

Urgency presses her to move faster, faster, retracing the fading comet trail through the strange, nightmare city. She doesn't stroll; she runs, even at this extraordinary pace, world blurring around her completely until there is no world, and it is the void once more.

The Black Flash appears, and she slows down, and suddenly Barry's hand squeezes hers, hard, and he says in dazed disbelief, "What are you—?"

Then the nightmare creature is back, letting out the single worst sound Iris has ever heard, bones cracking, hot pursuit. She wants to run, but she's not fast, nowhere near fast enough, and the creature would have overtaken Barry, too. It's loping towards them – she can hear it, doesn't dare turn to see how close it is – when the Black Flash suddenly materializes behind them. The nightmare creature runs right into its waiting claws. It is dead instantaneously, disappearing in a flash of red sparks, like embers.

She waits for the Black Flash to treat them the same way, banishing them into less than nothingness, but it simply moves on. At some indeterminate point, its steps, soft as bare feet on sand, simply vanish.

She dares to take a step forward. Barry doesn't follow immediately, taking a knee, breathing hard. Almost asthmatically hard, like he's run a marathon and some, eyes shut, jaw dropped. "Hey," she says softly, and it is the easiest thing in the world to draw his arm over her shoulders, to get him back on his feet. She follows the white trail of light across that long, endless darkness, half-guiding, half-carrying him.

Then, all at once, Wally becomes visible, still standing near the tether. "Iris," he shouts, jogging forward and getting underneath Barry's free arm. Together, they retrace their steps to that single brilliant point of light. Upon it, Iris lets go of Barry to press the cuff. At the same time, Wally presses his emblem.

They reappear in the Speed cannon room. The return trip is enough to jostle Wally's grip on Barry; he hits the floor hard, completely limp. "Hey!" Cisco crows, relieved and anxious in equal parts. He snaps the breach shut and surges forward, gripping Iris' arms and asking worriedly, "You okay?" Wally has already Flashed forward and rearranged Barry onto his back, and Iris blinks at him because – she didn't see it.

There's something like disappointment curling in her stomach, that the finite powers were so – finite, but she can't focus on it, can't think about it, not with an unresponsive Barry and a nightmare still breathing down her neck, its cry like breaking bones. "I think he's okay," Wally says, two fingers against his neck, taking his pulse. Cisco's frame visibly relaxes. "It's just slow – picking up steam—" Barry lunges upright, fisting Wally's collar, and Wally grabs his shoulders, locking them in a parody of an embrace. "Hey, hey, you're on Earth-1, it's okay."

He stares at Wally, dazed, eyes a little bloodshot, and slowly looks around. His gaze fixes on Iris. He Flashes to his feet and hits the floor a second later. Would hit the floor – Wally catches him under the arms this time. "Y'ever run a marathon?" he grunts, supporting Barry's weight in real-time, no Speed Force. "Lotta runners pass out after stopping. Wait for it." He tightens his grip when Barry tenses, eyes flying open. Calmly, Wally asserts, "You're good. Take a breath."

"Iris," he says, voice little more than a rasp, and she finally surges forward. "You – you're okay." His eyes are glassy; the band around his neck has bruised to an ugly black already. It'll be gone before sunset. He slumps in Wally's arms, feet scraping the floor as he tries to plant them underneath himself firmly. Rather than helping him up, Wally lowers him back to the floor. "Cisco," he says suddenly, anxiously.

"Right here," Cisco pipes in, reaching forward to clasp his shoulder. "Hey, buddy. It's okay. Don't move too fast."

Barry groans, reaching up to hold his head with a hand. "It was … feeding, on my Speed," he says, eyes squinting shut. "I don't know where we were. Some kinda mirror universe, maybe. Everything was backwards. Light where dark s'posed to…" He exhales, abandoning the narrative to ask, "What happened?"

"The Speed Force," Iris muses. She feels – good. Whole. At peace. "I think it …" gave me Speed. It feels like a dream. All of it. She looks at the three of them and expects them to dissolve suddenly, to wake up cuddling the Porg plushy on the couch, nauseatingly pregnant once more. She pinches her arm lightly, but nothing changes. As the seconds tick by uninterrupted, she smells the faint burn of Speed Force on them, and knows that it's no dream.

Now there's a tremble building in her hands, residual panic and shock wracking her, but she holds it together, Team Leader. She holds it together long enough to get Barry back on his feet, to fill Cisco and Wally in to the best of her ability, to reestablish order and confirm that there is no nightmare Speed-feeding monster coming after them. She's really starting to feel the strain by the time Cisco finally breaches them back to Barry and her apartment because it's nine-thirty at night and where did the perfect day go?

To the Speed Force, she muses, wondering about those hours wandering, wandering, wandering down a seemingly endless plain.

She's ravenous and nauseous at the same time, a combination not helped by the anxiety associated with Barry's borderline catatonia. He's lying on his back on the couch with one arm draped over his head like it's hurting him, chest rising and falling slowly. He's not asleep, making soft affirmative and negative noises to questions, but he doesn't lift his head or provide actual answers. He really, really needs to eat – he's sweating through his suit and ghostly pale – but he's not moving any time soon and she doesn't have the strength to force it.

She doesn't, so she calls for reinforcements. Dad and Cecile are there in about fifteen minutes.

Iris debriefs them at the door, fatigue pressing down on her. She's still hungry, but she's more tired than that – much, much more tired, she thinks, stifling a yawn – and so she beelines for the bedroom instead of the kitchen. Cecile gets her comfortable and brings her crackers and water. She downs both in less time than it takes Dad to strongarm Barry into sitting up.

Their grumbling conversation filters across the space. Barry is actually whining – "Joe, come on, don't – lea'me alone." – which is a testament to exactly how nonexistent his reserves are. She doesn't know how the argument ends; the sleeve of crackers is gone, and with it her last urge to stay even slightly awake vanishes. She burrows down into the blankets, still clothed in workday clothes that smell faintly like lightning, exhausted to her core.

Dad and Barry continue to argue in the adjacent room, more good-natured than serious.

Tuning them out, she shuts her eyes and dreams of her dinosaur babies on fire.


T-minus 219 days.

Iris awakes at three in the morning.

She blinks at her phone sluggishly, turning onto her side to confront a low grumbling noise near her. It makes her think of dragons, and lo: it's Barry, the fading bruises around his neck almost but not entirely invisible. He's got his face smooshed against a pillow, hair wild. She shimmies closer and wraps herself around his back, the rhythmic rumble of his Speed-purrs finally coaxing her eyes shut, her grip on consciousness vanishing.

He's near her, come six AM, but the bruises are gone, and he smells freshly showered. She realizes that she's no longer in pants and a work blouse, having exchanged them for a loose set of pajamas instead. She doesn't remember putting them on, but she sighs happily and returns to her former place against his back, nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder bare shoulder. He's throwing off Speed-heat again, and it's welcome.

Dozing, she stays in bed until three in the afternoon. To her surprise, he stays, too, even though she hears him crunching snacks at regular interludes before shimmying back down to her level and holding up an arm so she can cozy down into his embrace. He taps silently at his phone at times and shifts positions often enough to disrupt her doze, but he doesn't leave, even when it would be easy enough to let the Porg take over the "sleeping pillow" role.

When she finally deigns to greet the day, the sun is setting, but she showers and freshens up like it's five in the morning, and joins him on the couch so they can watch a recorded episode of The Bachelorette together. Silver Fox, their favorite, is still in the running, albeit against strong contenders, including Blue Eyes and the Chris Hemsworth lookalike. It pleases her irrationally to see him still in the running, even though she knows it's possible that he's already been sent home, because, hey, simple pleasures matter, and Silver Fox is good to Dana.

Barry finishes off five of Cisco's super-packed calorie bars in the span of one episode, which he equates to the speedster equivalent of eating fifty good-sized pancakes, or nine-tenths of his daily minimum calorie requirement. Ergo: he's lying on his side with his head on her thigh, only half-watching the show as she idly brushes a hand through his hair.

Sometimes their lives are chaotic and weird; other times they're companionable and uncomplicated.

As long as Iris gets to keep him, she's willing to live with both sides.


To be continued…