Left alone, Barry eats, Barry sleeps, and Barry takes care of himself.
But he is not left alone. Relentlessly, around-the-clock, the city needs him.
Iris watches it eat him alive, day-after-day until she finds him at the precinct sleeping with almost desperate abandon at his desk, face drawn. Singh notices, but his admonitions fall short. If Barry doesn't go to work, then he doesn't slow down at all. Better he doze at the desk than keel over from exhaustion in the field.
He's running towards it, chasing collapse. Try though they might, they can't get through to him. You have to rest, they say.
But the city pays in lives, and it's too costly to quit.
Just shy of sunset on the fifth day since the Crisis, she finds him asleep at his desk, again. He hasn't responded to any of Cisco's calls, and Iris knows Cisco is scared because she's scared, too. It relieves a great weight from her shoulders to see him again.
Padding silently across the floor, she encourages him to stand up, c'mon, Bar, and he groans and obliges, too tired to form an argument. He tries to sink to his knees, but the floor is not soft enough for him, not anymore; never was, really, but what was tolerable before is impermissible now. She keeps an arm around his waist, no, baby, and grabs his cane from its place against the wall.
The simple act of grasping it brings him back to attention. His eyes brighten; his shoulders fall back. He looks ready to fight, but he radiates fatigue. She can feel the lightning under his skin, but a mile of ice stands between them. Winter encroaches, and she isn't sure it's the kind that retreats.
He's thirty-five, but he feels ancient, like he's pushing two hundred. Sometimes speedsters seem ageless. Other times they strike her as young, Peter Pan-like. But limping visibly, Barry feels old.
Still his city knocks at his door, day-and-night, dragging him out into the fray.
As thunder growls in the darkening distance, a tarmac city awaits rain. Iris stays close to Barry's side, falling into step beside him on the sidewalk. She takes in the sight of revitalized streets which scarce days before harbored fallout destruction, glowing almost purple in the shadow of the storm, unscarred.
Speedsters work quickly; Jesse and Wally repaired the most significant damage to the city in less than three days' time. Barry, she knows, contributed a substantial piece when none of them were watching him, hacking and disabling the suit's tracker so he could roam the city in peace, a true guardian angel, no-one-knows-where-he-goes.
To curb Barry's Samaritan appetite, Cisco split the comm channels into two frequencies, leaving Barry on the old line and switching Wally and Jesse over to a new one. The hope was that without a direct link to the action, Barry might stand by. Or, one could dream, he would realize what they had done and trust their good judgment. Flying blind was debilitating for most people; maybe it would be strong enough to deter Barry.
Iris knew it then and she knows it now: no deterrent is strong enough to keep Barry from his city.
Even without the feed, Barry walks with satellite purpose, tuned in. White lightning illuminates their panorama; Barry's eyes flash silver, like a photographic film processing in slow motion. The optical shift holds steadier than the storm, Barry's lightning straining with glacial intent towards its final resting place.
By the first crackle of thunder, he's gone.
. o .
Before modern languages evolved, humans still spoke to the earth.
Barry knows the songs of that vast-wandering-disconnected people. He knows how they were unaware of their shared history but cognizant of a shared state of being with the stars, and rivers, and storms. Their songs and dances and legacies were engraved only in the present moment, destined to die like embers in a fire. The storm shakes awake a deep part of him, urging him to pay attention. He keeps his eyes on the skies as another streak of lightning silvers a path from floor to ceiling of the world, eyes alight with it.
And then because he can and because his own lightning lunges with irresistible glee towards it, he takes off, chasing eternity.
. o .
Barry doesn't come home that night.
Iris waits with quiet expectation for him until sometime in the early morning. She dozes off, awakening to the patter of rain trickling feebly across the windows. Can't get a read on Barry's suit, Cisco texts. Keeping her cool, she makes breakfast for herself, sitting at the table in one of his soft Speed-worn shirts, feet propped up on the adjacent seat, his-seat. Send out the search party?
She bites into a deliciously burnt piece of toast, staring at her phone sitting innocuously on the table. No, she types back at last, because Jesse and Wally have been doubling down as it is, pulling later hours than they're used to to compensate for Barry's supposedly extended absence, and she doesn't want them to overwork themselves, either.
By noon, she's rescinded her choice, and still there's no sign of him.
. o .
She feels sick by that night, same-time, venturing to the same-place in the optimistic hope that maybe he's lost and needs direction, like a puppy that slipped under the fence and doesn't remember which way is home.
. o .
The next morning, their long-time barista asks, "Where's your shadow?"
Iris smiles painfully. She says, "Sick" like she has to, sick like he's not dead, sick like everything's going to be okay.
. o .
Where's The Flash? clamor his online followers, one-week-and-counting since the Crisis.
Missing, she types, like she has to. Like he's okay. Like he's not dead.
. o .
Singh doesn't ask, Where's Allen?
He's relieved because he thinks Barry is sick, and going to be okay, and not dead.
. o .
Eobard doesn't even ask.
He just smiles, because he knows Barry isn't sick.
. o .
FLASH MISSING: VANISHES IN CRISIS.
Sitting at her dad's table and staring at the headline she wrote, Iris wonders if self-fulfilling prophecies aren't a universal joke, a reminder that no matter how far the puppet strays from the strings, there will always be a catch. There will come an opportunistic moment when the world drops out from underneath them, bringing them back into step. She can almost see Barry's shadow, the ghost of Speed Force, The Flash, sitting in his place on Dad's couch, gazing somberly at the space where its left leg lies, indistinct and intangible.
She says its name twice and the shadow finally turns its head to look at her. It doesn't morph, doesn't assume the shape of any Barry, even though every Barry is at its disposal. It watches her. She stands and approaches and sits next to it, needing proximity. When she leans her shoulder against it there's a firmness and promise there she doesn't expect.
Confidence and peace emanates from it. We're here. We're right here.
Burying her face against its shoulder, she pleads, "Come home to me."
The Flash insists, We're here without saying a word.
Then it rises and she sits up, letting it, reaching out to hold onto a hand that isn't there, and it looks at her and insists a third time, We're here before it vanishes.
Dad climbs down the stairs and asks, "You okay, baby?"
Iris breathes in and out slowly and wills the tears not to come.
. o .
Nine days since the Crisis, and four since Barry went missing.
Iris is losing her mind.
Stupid with fatigue, she nearly overfills her cup before she pulls it away from the coffeemaker. It's a slow day at work – no big headlines to snatch a hopeful journalist's eye – which is a refreshing change of pace for a city seemingly constantly under attack. Even Kid and Quick have seemingly taken the day off, preferring to romp around the beach as their alter egos, playfully disengaged from the weight of the world.
Linda levels a sympathetic look at her when Iris turns around and Iris' throat closes up. She tries to smile but it won't come; she knows Linda doesn't expect it to.
Sinking into her seat, she fires up her computer and sorts through old files, unable to start a new project. Her work is mercifully heavy, dragging her down, down, down into the world of written affairs. She can almost lose herself in it, almost forget that something is not right with her world, almost feel okay.
And then, with thunderclap instantaneity, she feels it.
Out of her seat, she barely excuses herself before stepping outside, stepping only just out of sight before she takes off running, heart pounding, breath filling her lungs in ecstatic bursts because he's-here-he's-here-he's-here-oh-my-God—
She flies down the streets, sprinting up a familiar staircase at the back of Jitters, and is breathless by the time she shoves open the door to the rooftop.
He's there, turning to look at her and saying, "I'm so sorry, I got lost, Iris, Iris—"
He catches her when she closes the gap between them and hugs him, almost taking him to the ground, too shaken to cry, too relieved to stay silent. "I thought I lost you, I thought I lost you."
He rubs her back, a low Speed-purr deep in his chest, exuding gratitude and joy and apology. "I'm right here," he promises. "I'm right here."
It's like they have to say it twice, once for him and once for the Speed which stands inescapably with him, and she cups his face and presses her forehead against his.
They don't need words for it, then; because he's home.
. o .
She was wrong, in a way.
In the Speed Force, all speedsters are dead. There are simply no parameters to quantify living: no breath to draw, no heart to beat, no body to express a coherent form. How can one be alive without them? And yet Barry was inarguably present. Awake. Aware. Neither dead nor alive, but somewhere in between, something beyond.
Courting the Speed Force and his city, the worldly and otherworldly and the point of contact between them, he's not really either.
And he's both. He is very decidedly both.
There's fire in his eyes when he limps, a determination that supersedes and concedes to the things he cannot change, and Iris waits until he steps forward, suited up, before she cups his face again and looks into those brilliant hazel eyes.
"Are you sure?" she asks.
Nodding once, he flashes a smile. "Never more."
It's the first time he's worn the suit since That Night, since the world changed, since-the-world-fell-out-from-underneath-her, but standing on firm ground with him, she realizes she can't hide him, and he can't spare her.
Their lives are imperfect entanglements, approximations of normal that tango with the supernatural.
But telling The Flash, "Go," feels like a declaration, a stand against the universe that would separate them. "And come home to me," she insists to Barry.
He presses their foreheads together, one-last-time, for-good-luck, and vanishes.