Title: Performance Review

Sequel to 'The Follow-Up,' set after season 1, before season 2

Summary: The one where Singh has reason to look back on his past interactions with Barry Allen.

A/N: This one has been a long time coming. A lot of re-watching and note-taking went into this to form a coherent timeline. I'd like to make a note of the following points: Singh is preoccupied with wedding planning in 1x21, is away on his honeymoon in 1x22, and is not seen in person again on screen until the singularity. And then sometime between the end of season 1 and the start of season 2, "meta-human" becomes a household name. I've got some meta on the subject over on tumblr...

Also: cliche bad guys are cliche and I'm not even sorry. I'm just too happy to be posting a chapter again, so sorry for the long wait you guys!

slightly more swearing in this chapter compared to previous chapters, but on the whole I don't even know if anyone will notice


A/N2: The Singh stories continue in their own fic, 'Internal Affairs,' now up. ('Inertia' is meant to be a one-shot collection, and while having a follow-up to one chapter wasn't an issue, three chapters is pushing it, and I don't know how many more are to come...) So for the sake of making them easier to read and not spread out all over the place, any future Singh stories will go there.


In the weeks following the revelation that Barry Allen was a meta-human, David was so busy with formalizing wedding plans that puzzling over the origins of their powers and the effects they'd have on his city was put on the back-burner, pushed almost entirely from his mind. He had enough on his plate making sure that the caterers knew to make more than one vegan option, that the florist knew that they'd changed the color scheme to blue and gold, and that the DJ knew that Aunt Sri might try to give a saxophone solo, which under no circumstances must she be allowed to do.

Life went on, time flew by, no matter that there weren't enough hours in the day to get everything done that needed to get done. He was so distracted that he felt like he didn't understand half of what was going on in his own precinct anymore – why did Thawne return from his time off looking more exhausted than David had ever seen him (and even somewhat malnourished)? Why did Joe throw that banana in the trash with extreme prejudice? Where was Barry Allen?

(actually that last was such a perennial question it was more of a reflex than anything else. He'd long ago given up on getting a satisfactory answer)

When the wedding went off without a hitch, David kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Rob chided him for being a cynic and a pessimist, but David couldn't shake the feeling that it had been too easy. Fortunately, his husband did an excellent job distracting him from his worries – they'd chosen Sydney for their honeymoon and had had a fantastic time. Rob got to put his boating experience to good use, and David discovered his new favorite wine.

So of course things would go to hell shortly after their return, when the sky literally ripped open and a black hole appeared above their city. After that, the weirdness of Central City couldn't be ignored any longer, not even by the most die-hard skeptics. Things got... very tense, for a while.

In the aftermath of the clean-up, Cecile asked him if he had any thoughts on how to handle meta-humans; David was briefly flummoxed at where she'd even learned the term, but didn't ask. Some of her questions he had good answers for – STAR Labs would be able to refit Iron Heights with the necessary tech to contain meta-humans, for example, so that was one problem taken care of.

Some of her other questions, not so much. Crime was still crime, on this they agreed, at least; it didn't matter whether someone used a hailstorm to rob a bank or did it the old-fashioned way, it was still a felony. But they disagreed whether assault by a meta-human should automatically be considered "assault with a dangerous weapon," which carried a harsher sentence. David argued against, saying it unfairly targeted meta-humans, who, following that line of logic, must always be considered armed and dangerous. And it could be misapplied to meta-humans whose powers were not involved in the conflict at all; if they used their fists to throw a punch, it shouldn't make a difference if they could breathe underwater or not.

Cecile countered that the power some of these individuals possessed in their pinky finger alone made .45-caliber rounds look like chump change, that while she was sympathetic to his point of view, there was too great a difference between being genuinely unarmed and possessing logic-defying powers to allow a literal reading of 'unarmed.' Ultimately, it wasn't up to them to decide – either the government would pass legislation clarifying the issue, or else a court case would bring things to a head – and they had to let the matter lie. David wasn't particularly looking forward to either scenario.


The city rebuilt, brick by brick. Not quite the same as it was before, but recognizably still home.

CCPD had lost a lot of good officers the past year, a record high. Hell, Joe alone had lost two partners in as many years, including his future son-in-law. David didn't want to push him too hard to find another partner, but he knew he couldn't allow Joe to operate on his own indefinitely, especially not after Cecile had pulled him aside and recommended that he keep an eye on Joe (for what reason, she didn't say).

They were getting an influx of new recruits to make up the shortfall, but most of them didn't take the presence of meta-humans in the city seriously enough. David had approved Detective West's plan for an Anti-MetaHuman Taskforce, of course he had, but it struggled to maintain membership; requests for transfers out of Central City spiked notably every time members of the taskforce faced their first real meta-human. Still, he kept Ramon on as a scientific adviser, both because it was necessary and because having him around seemed to lift the spirits of the officers around him, who'd been to more than enough funerals in recent times.

David had hoped that hiring Ramon might help bring Allen out of his shell as well, but as far as he could tell, the young man went out of his way to avoid his friend. Ever since the freak black hole, it had become at once both more important and more difficult to engage Barry Allen, who'd become extremely withdrawn and at times even punctual, which was very out-of-character for him.

So David was not particularly surprised to find himself keeping one eye on the CSI as they processed a home burglary in Windsor Heights. Allen looked much the same as he always did these days, grimly determined and worn ragged at the edges; David was pretty sure he was wearing the same shirt he had worn yesterday. But maybe that was only a side-effect of being called to process evidence at a crime scene at four-thirty in the morning…

There really wasn't much to see, he mused into his second travel cup of coffee. The house's security alarm had alerted the police when the back door had been broken open; however despite the CCPD's rapid response time, the perpetrators had already cleared out by the time patrol cars arrived on the scene. The owners were out of town on vacation for the week, and there weren't any witnesses.

Currently, he was trying to keep warm in the increasingly chilly kitchen, a constant draft of cold, pre-dawn air blowing in from the broken door. Officer Waid was completely absorbed in his phone, clearly ready to call it a day. Ahmed was doing slightly better, at least nominally reviewing the facts of the case on his notepad, but his slightly-glazed expression betrayed him. At least Allen had enough focus for all of them, methodically gathering evidence.

It should have been a routine B&E case – photograph the scene, dust for fingerprints, and move on to other cases while they waited (hoped) for the stolen items to surface.

It should have been routine, so of course the relatively peaceful early morning was interrupted by movement where there shouldn't be movement, and David reflexively drew his sidearm, keeping it at the ready and pointed low.

"This is the police! Show yourself!" he barked in the direction of the dining room, and he was peripherally of his officers coming to attention and similarly readying themselves.

"You'll never get us!" the man's voice came from around the door frame, and he punctuated his statement by firing several wild shots from a pistol.

"Allen, GET DOWN!" David bellowed, pushing the young man down behind the island counter in the middle of the kitchen, following a moment later himself.

'Us,' the man had said. Well, fuck. Their shooter had at least one unknown, possibly-armed accomplice hanging around somewhere. So much for clearing the crime scene – how had they managed to miss that their thieves had not, in fact, left the scene? When David found out who was responsible, he was going to tear them a new one.

But first, they all had to get out of this intact.

He popped his head above the counter just long enough to confirm that Ahmed and Waid had both found shelter, though their sightlines were less than ideal. He could hear, over the ringing in his ears, the sound of Waid requesting backup into his radio – so the stand-off would not continue indefinitely. That was something, at least.

A stray bullet clipped a large copper pot with a resounding clang. David couldn't be sure, but the angle of the shot didn't seem consistent with the others. Two shooters, then, and he couldn't get eyes on the newcomer. He and his officers were effectively pinned down, returning fire when they could, secure enough for the time being… but how long could it last?

"Captain, I can help."

David didn't spare Allen a glance, instead making another quick survey of the room to see if he could spot the second shooter. "Stay down, Allen."

"I can help, Singh," he insisted again, tone dead serious.

He sounded so utterly certain that David paused and looked at him, because maybe Barry could help, he was a meta-human, after all… but more importantly…

"Are you bullet-proof?"

"No."

"Then stay down!" David seized the opportunity to take a shot at an exposed elbow, but missed.

Barry seethed, and for a moment David thought he was going to try to force his way past him to get out from behind the counter - the kitchen island wasn't completely freestanding, since it connected to the wall on one side. Which meant that Barry was effectively penned in, with David bodily blocking the only way out from behind it. David rather liked this arrangement, but Barry apparently had other ideas, if the way he shifted back and forth was any clue.

David glared at him, immovable, until he visibly subsided, and then he refocused on his target to fire another shot. He thought their argument was over, but he was wrong.

"*Let me help.*"

David whipped around to stare – that warbled voice hadn't sounded anything like Barry. Warped and resonant, it wasn't a voice he'd ever heard in person before, though it matched descriptions he'd heard. Descriptions of…

"Oh."

So that's why he hadn't wanted David to know what his meta-human ability was. It did rather give the game away. He looked into Allen's eyes – in The Flash's eyes, which blazed with flickering lightning – and gave a small, barely-there nod, shifting to the side so that he was no longer penning Barry behind the counter, and less than a second later a gust of wind blasted past him.

He was still blinking the afterimages of lightning from his eyes when he heard near-simultaneous grunts from the dining room and the side hallway. Quickly surveying the scene, he saw both burglars slumped on the floor, disarmed and handcuffed, the lingering smell of cordite sharp in the air (cordite, and now ozone). The gust of wind returned behind him, and Barry Allen was back as if he'd never left.

Looking slightly sheepish, Allen gave a small wave.

David stared.

The moment stretched.

"Is it over?" Barry eventually asked with exaggerated hopefulness.

David didn't know who he was trying to fool. Not himself, certainly, and he took a moment to marvel at what an astonishingly bad liar Allen was - that attempt to sound guileless was so unconvincing it bordered on parody. But he seemed to be waiting for a response, and David was at a loss.

"What?"

Allen sighed, and jerked his head in the direction of Ahmed and Waid, still out of sight. "Are they gone?" he asked again with false innocence, though now David could see that part of Barry's difficulty with sounding genuine stemmed from the fact that he was pitching his voice to carry across the room.

Headache. He had such a pounding headache from everything that had just happened, his ears hurt from the gunfire, he honestly could not deal with these shenanigans right now.

Didn't seem like he had much of a choice, though.

"Yes," he spoke a little louder than he otherwise might have, "The Flash stopped them. Ahmed, Waid, are you alright?"

"We're fine, Captain." Waid called back, "How's the kid?"

He glanced at Barry, who heaved a long-suffering sigh at the diminutive. "Allen's fine."

Their backup arrived at that point, and the job of processing the crime scene and bagging all the bullets was passed on to a new team, one that hadn't been shot at any time in the last hour. Allen was kept busy filling in his replacement on what needed to be done, which was just as well since it gave David a moment to think.

"Lucky the Flash arrived when he did," Ahmed commented as a paramedic checked him over for injuries.

David grunted in response, too many racing thoughts and too much adrenaline making a garbled mess of his brain. He remembered: *fire and ice and a mythic figure made real* *Allen apologizing, only digging himself deeper* *The Flash racing up the side of Rob's building to put out a fire* *Barry, twitching, "I am a meta-human"*

Ahmed continued undeterred, clearly awed to have been personally saved by The Flash, "How did he know we needed help?"

"He was probably nearby when he heard the gunshots."

"Doesn't he ever sleep?"

David thought about his earlier observations, of a bone-tired young man wearing yesterday's shirt.

"I'm sure he does."


When they got back to the station, there was more activity than usual for such an early morning shift, but that was only to be expected, with a shootout. Instead of disappearing into the crowd or into his lab (or into the wind, David thought abruptly, that was another possibility), Barry was standing in the lobby, gazing up at the wall sculpture that dominated the space.

He approached cautiously, suddenly unsure even though he was clearly expected. "Barry, can we talk?"

Barry's expression was unfathomable, but he did nod. "Sure, Captain."

Barry led him not to his lab but to a roof-access door. Neutral ground, David supposed, looking at the cigarette butts littering the ground and the air vents that arced into the space in irregular intervals. Several yards to the left, the repaired skylight to Barry's lab caught the light of the rising sun and glowed a burnished gold.

"So…" Barry trailed off.

"So." David answered, equally at a loss.

"Ta-daa?" Barry's jazz-hands vibrated through the air for a moment before he dropped his hands to his sides and started drumming his fingers nervously. He was, now that David was looking for it, almost in constant motion.

David had had the time to turn things over in his mind on the drive over; not as much time as he'd have liked, but enough to process through his initial reactions. He'd discovered that his primary reaction, after surprise, was embarrassment.

He didn't mind that Barry hadn't told him – he was neither a therapist nor a confidant, and as a vigilante (in the most technical sense), allowing David to maintain plausible deniability was probably a kindness. Now he'd have to be more mindful of his paperwork, weighing which details should be obscured for the sake of the Flash's identity against which details could be fudged without harming the integrity of the report.

No, what he remembered most of all was the way he'd praised the Flash to high heaven, unwittingly all within earshot of the man in question. Joe's kid, almost twenty years his junior, and David had acted like a complete fanboy, lifting the Flash up on a pedestal as though there was no problem he could not solve.

And Barry, who was the Flash, had heard every word. Mortifying was really the only word for it.

But if he'd known… could he really say that he would not have said exactly the same things? Swallowing his embarrassment might be a bitter pill, but it wasn't as though the praise was undeserved; every piece of flattery had been sincerely meant. It wasn't fair to the hero (or to Barry, for that matter) to think that being Barry Allen when he wasn't wearing red leather could somehow depreciate his heroism. Allen had always been smart, with a drive to uncover the truth, and in possession of the biggest heart David had ever known. If David ever thought that being Barry Allen was a step down from anything, he needed to re-examine his priorities.

The realization that he was talking to The Flash, at this very moment, hit him upside the head once more. All the things he'd wanted to say to the hero if he had the chance burned unspoken in his throat and made his mouth dry.

One thought stood out from all the rest, however, the one thing he would tell the Flash if he could only say one thing (he'd had the chance to say it once, briefly, but it bore repeating).

"Thank you."

"You don't have to…" Barry shifted, looking very uncomfortable.

"I do, and I want to. You saved us tonight, the way you've saved us countless other times."

Barry shrugged, and zipped over to the edge of the roof to peer down without answering. David marveled at the casual display of speed, and wondered how much he held himself back on a daily basis.

He stepped forward so that he was standing at Barry's shoulder. "You saved Rob's life once, too. He said if I should ever come face to face with the Flash, I should pass along his thanks."

"I'm glad he's alright; he seems like a nice guy." His eyes widened and he realized what he might have implied. "Not that being nice is a condition of getting rescued, of course - I'd have rescued him even if he were a big jerk! Er… and I'm not implying anything about your taste in men either, Captain, I didn't say that I thought you'd marry a jerk – you'll remember I said Rob seems nice!"

David blinked at the response, momentarily thrown. "Have you met him?"

Apparently the question took some thought to answer. "I don't… think so? No, well, yes, sort of, but he won't remember it." Barry fidgeted, tugging at the cuffs of his sleeves. "There may have been a small amount of time travel involved, and it never happened."

Time travel. That was… that was something. Definitely something. Something huge that he would think about more at a later date, when he wasn't running on fumes and stubbornness. Why was Barry Allen's life so goddamn strange?

"What changed?"

"Huh?"

"What changed in the timeline that kept you from meeting Rob?" he clarified. "For that matter, what caused you to meet Rob in the first place?"

Barry was quiet for a long time. "You got hurt. Lightning, and a filing cabinet." One of those seemed a lot less severe than the other, until Barry elaborated, "The lightning knocked you into a cabinet, which broke your spine. You survived, but a full recovery was pretty much off the table. Then it became a moot point, since a tidal wave was going to wipe out the entire city later that same day."

"What happened?" A tidal wave? The entire city? How could that even happen? Missouri was smack dab in the middle of the U.S., for fuck's sake! And Jesus Christ, his spine?

"I tried to stop it. I don't even know if I would have succeeded, since, well, since that's when I found myself back in time, one day in the past. And I thought, I thought I could stop it before it started, I could save you, and everybody, before Mardon had the chance to hurt anybody else."

David sucked in a breath between his teeth. It sounded like he'd dodged a bullet, and he hadn't even been aware of it. "It seems to me like you succeeded."

Barry looked pained. "Time… finds ways to compensate. Otherwise…" He shook violently and David started forward reflexively; he looked ready to fall over, or fall apart, "Otherwise what's to stop us from just… g-going back an-and f-fixing things?" His breathing was choked, every uneven breath a gasp.

Alarmed, David grabbed him by the shoulder and guided him to sit down with his back against the low wall that bordered the roof. He squatted in front of him and tried to find the words that would make this better, but felt that he could barely understand the problem, let alone fathom a solution. So instead he reached out and rested his hand on Barry's knee – a paltry comfort, and wholly inadequate he felt, though it seemed to work for Barry, who marshalled his reserves of willpower after a minute or two and wiped the snot from his face

"I don't even know why I'm such a mess right now," Barry laughed, shaky, embarrassed, as he got to his feet. David felt like he had a couple of ideas.

"Go home, Allen. Get some rest." David was once again shelving his questions for a later date, but he couldn't in good conscience ask them now. Also, sleep sounded pretty heavenly, and David was not immune to its siren call.

Barry nodded absently, clearly agreeing reflexively without putting a lot of thought into what he was agreeing to. Then David nearly had a heart-attack when he turned around and ran off the side of the roof, but he was back a moment later, looking considerably more alert.

"Er… Captain, are you going to, you know, uh, tell anyone? About me?"

David side-eyed him, "I'm not in the business of outing meta-humans, Allen. We've been over this."

"Yeah but… I'm also a vigilante, operating outside the law. When I hide my identity, there's no accountability… but there's no other way to do it, I can't stand still when people are in danger, and I have to wear a mask in order to – "

"To protect your loved ones. I get it." Barry still looked hesitant, so he repeated himself (and he, as a general rule, strongly disliked repeating himself but he would when it was important, and this was important). "I really, really do. This city needs the Flash; for what reason would I possibly out you?"

"Well, you did have an Anti-Flash Taskforce, once." A surprisingly cheeky response, David thought. Maybe it sounded like something The Flash would say.

"And now we know better." His own rejoinder could use some work, but that's what an adrenaline crash did to one's ability to banter.

Barry hmmed, "Speaking of the Taskforce, can we call it the Meta-human Response Team instead?"

That was actually a really good point. He wondered why no one had thought to say anything sooner – he wondered why Joe hadn't said anything, when the Anti-MetaHuman Taskforce was his own idea. Was he overcompensating, trying to prevent people from looking too closely at Barry by taking a hard line against meta-humans? Even sleep-deprived, David could see that that plan could only backfire. "Sounds great. Do you know what else sounds great right now? Sleep. Sleep sounds really excellent. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mister Allen, it shall be taken care of. Now, go get some rest. I don't want to see you set foot in – or on - this building for at least twenty-four hours."

"Yessir!" Barry snapped a surprisingly professional salute before blasting back over the side of the roof in blur of light and motion and a gust of wind.

David took the opportunity to step closer to the edge and watch the yellow streak weave through the street below before it disappeared from sight. The sun was fully above the horizon now, and traffic was starting to pick up. He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment, not thinking of anything in particular but so grateful, so very very grateful that he was alive, that Rob was alive, that the sun could still rise over Central City.


A/N: On why Barry is having this breakdown in front of Singh and not Iris or Joe: firstly, this is Singh's POV and a single moment in time so we don't know that hasn't, and secondly, for the Team and his family he is trying to be strong and not add to their own grief.

Gosh, I felt like I had so much to say at the end in this note and now I can't think of anything. Well, I'll probably be editing this a bit in the next few days, I really wanted to finally post it.

Oh, I remember! If I knew how to set up a poll, I would: the question is, at what point would it make sense to post these Singh & Barry chapters as a separate story from Inertia? I probably already passed that point, and asking people in an author's note doesn't quite make sense, since the issue is whether or not Singh fans can easily find this work - if you're reading this message, you've obviously already found it...

Lastly, here's a deleted scene that did not make it into the final cut of this story:

"Heeeeeeey, Captain Singh." David had the distinct impression that Allen would have chosen to lean casually against a wall had there been such a wall handy. "Remember when I said that General Eiling knew I was a metahuman in a manner of speaking? Turns out he definitely knows. Also, there may or may not be a telepathic gorilla underneath the city - Joe's still pretty shaken up about it; I know he won't say anything to you, but if you could, maybe, cut him a little slack for a bit? Thanksbye"

"Wha - ALLEN!"