A/N: Hello! Maybe some of you remember that story, it's been deleted a long time ago, but I thought I would revive it in honor of Crisis on Infinite Earth airing one more time tonight.
Just a little warning before letting you go: I've wrote this way before Crisis first aired and I've done this piece pretty quickly just for the fun of it and get that image I had in my head of Barry disappearing...but coming back months later during Crisis.
SHOUTOUT to the guest who commented on Serpent's Lair, thanks a LOT. And, if you want a story about Barry drowning, Against the Current was made for you and it hasn't been deleted yet.
Anyway, enjoy for a second, or the first, time!
The whole crowd screamed simultaneously at the explosion that pierced through the dawn and echoed all around. In one coordinated movement, they almost all bowed their heads down and covered their ears, instinctively protecting themselves the best they can from the blinding light. Like the rest of the citizens, Chief of police David Singh tightly closed his eyes and held his breath, unsure if he would survive to see another day. His ears were ringing, and a heat wave warmed up his skin underneath his dark blue shirt. It was hard to discern anything, but he sure figured out he got lucky when an enormous piece of scorched debris that was three times his size fell right in front of him. Blinking with difficulty, Singh discerned more pieces flying, more people screaming, and the shape of many people moving fast all around the air to try and change the trajectory of the falling debris or working to move the people on the ground. In all this chaos, there was one sure thing; the heroes that didn't get stunned by the last explosion weren't done protecting the people.
After a few seconds, when the white spots finally started dissipating from his eyes, Singh blinked and analyzed his surroundings; the group of people who found themselves trapped in the city's plaza during the latest attack were tightly squeezing against each other and seeking strangers' contact for support and protection like no one would under any circumstances. The fear of the impending end of the world brought the citizens closer than anyone ever thought possible.
When the sky cleared up, the first observation the chief of police made was that it wasn't red anymore; it was back at his usual darken color with the hope of a new day about to pierce in less than a half-hour. Straight ahead; what used to be this enormous enemy's weapon was gone. The gigantic machinery of mass destruction had been reduced to smoke, debris, and a smoking crater going seemingly deep into the ground.
It was over.
Almost.
The army of unidentified shadows was still there, well most of them were, even if the majority seemed in disarray and running away from the scene, but not without trying to make more victim on their way out.
"Don't let them escape!" shouted a commanding voice in the changing sky, followed by a rush of superheroes charging back into the battle, straight at the shadows and away from the explosion site.
If the weapon was gone, so was the number one enemy who dissipated and the shadows were on the edge of defeat, why was there a knot inside the chief's stomach? Something was wrong. Singh's legs started moving forward before his brain could process what he was doing; why rush toward the spot of destruction and advance into the screen of sand in which the odds of a surprise attack was so much higher? He didn't know, but he still moved his body faster and faster, 'til he obtained a running speed. It was sprinting that Singh covered the hundreds of feet separating him from the crater in the ground and what he saw, at the bottom of it, caused a gasp to pass his dehydrated lips.
"Allen," he whispered in shock.
The Scarlet Speedster, that one that disappeared in an explosion of light alongside the other yellow speedster over six months ago, was laying still and, it was hard to tell with all the particles floating in the air, but he looked in horrible shape. When did he appear on the scene? Was his presence the reason why the Anti-Monitor's weapon finally got destroyed? When did he join the fight? What happened to him? Where had he been for the last few months?
These were good questions, but they would all need to wait a little longer to get their answer. Rushing into action, adrenaline flooding with his veins, David jumped into the hole in the ground and slid gracefully to where lay the form of the CCPD's CSI. What David saw, once reaching the bottom, turned his blood cold. Wherever Barry's been, it must've been hell; the triple ugly and parallels scar on his chest, his shredded uniform and the blood covering every visible part of his body were clues of that. Plus, his ribs were clearly showing on his severely underweight body.
But, the worst part was the little finger and the ring finger both missing from his left hand, which left two ugly, none-fully cicatrized, stumps. David visibly swallowed; Barry didn't deserve all of this pain. Whatever ripped these limbs probably was the same thing that also chewed his right thigh.
Another terrifying fact also registered; the hero was barely breathing; he was struggling with every shallow and uneven inhalation! The policeman's hand quickly went for the younger man's exposed throat, which was easily accessible as there was barely any part of the cowl still left intact which was also doing quite a poor job conceiving his identity. To match the barely moving chest, there wasn't a single pulsation underneath David's fingers. At this instant, he almost lost it.
"HELP!" He desperately shouted at the top of his lungs, in vain; the heroes were too scattered in the chaos to hear his distress call.
"Dammit," he cursed under his breath while realizing now how shaky his body, especially his hands, were becoming.
He was a cop, he's been on the field for a long time before becoming Captain, and then Chief, and he's seen some disturbing scenes for sure, but this time was different. It was The Flash. It was Barry. And it was one of the most gruesome sights he's ever seen. From experience, Singh didn't remember anyone this damaged surviving, and that fact was shaking him more than he was willing to admit it.
It was swallowing his saliva and pushing down all of his emotions that the chief of police entangled his dirty fingers that were already stained with Barry's blood and pushed down on the hero's abdomen that was already mostly exposed through the shredded suit. One, two, three, four…
Singh's breathing speed increased as adrenaline flooded his system and his arms rhythmically pushed against the hero's chest again and again, desperately trying to bring back some life into the beaten body.
"Come on, Allen, come on!" He shouted in frustration after finishing the first set of compression just to realize nothing has changed.
Oh, wait. It wasn't true. Something has indeed changed; Barry had wholly stopped breathing, and the policemen inhaled sharply. Going back to do a second set of compression, David grunted in fatigue and annoyance when his weapon rubbed against the unconscious victim. That's when it hit him. Wait. His gun.
As swiftly as he could, Singh unsheathed his gun and fired, without hesitation, four shots in the air. The loud bangs echoed in his ears. If anything was ever going to catch someone's attention, it was that. After throwing the weapon to the ground and next to him, since there wasn't any extra second to lose, the man returned to his task. One...ten...twenty…
"Don't do this, Barry," he grunted in his work, not even realizing he used the hero's first name.
Just as he was finishing the latest set of compressions, a figure going down from the sky prompted Singh to grab his weapon hurriedly in case of an attack. Except, he stopped in the middle of his movement when recognition flickered in his eyes; he knew that flying woman that just landed in front of him, he'd seen her with the rest of the fighting team. What was her name….? Supergirl! That's it. Thank God! He succeeded in grabbing someone's attention.
Her already serious features tensed and her mouth opened in shock when she got a glimpse of the red uniform, or what was left of it.
"Save him!" He requested, not that he needed to because the strong woman had already quickly taken the wounded in her arm as if Barry wasn't weighing more than a leaf.
All she did was to nod swiftly, eyes filled with worry mirroring the same anxiety than the chief, before flying away in a heartbeat and rushing straight to the one place that could save him.
After Supergirl flew away, Singh jumped on the closest means of transportation he could find, an abandoned and damaged bicycle, and started zigzagging through the war zone of broken roads, debris and crashed cars on his way to the place he knew he would find his ex-employee. When he finally made it to S.T.A.R. Lab, the cop sprinted faster than probably even The Flash would have to get to the main level. It wasn't without cursing under his breath that Singh climbed the stairs one by one, thanks to the global power outage in the city preventing the use of the elevator, before finally arriving at his destination, sweating and breathing heavily. The aches in his muscles didn't make him stop 'til he finally arrived in the cortex that was filled with many familiars, and less familiar faces, right before the entrance of the med bay.
The first sound he heard finally allowed the air to leave his drained lungs; there was a heart monitor, working thanks to this level's generator, that was producing irregular beeping sounds. Barry's friend did it; they restarted the hero's heart. Pushing his way around the crowd of at least a dozen people, which wasn't easy considering how everyone was trying to get a peek inside the same room, David finally found himself in the front row peaking through the partly opened door.
"How i-" He started to say to the person right next to him, Supergirl.
"Critical," she whispered, "he might not make it 'til noon."
Noon? That was barely a few hours away as the morning was awakening outside in the wake of the terrible battle. Singh shivered and took a peek inside the room; witnessing his ex-employees face turned toward the outside of the room; Flash was pale as a ghost and had a significant wound on his forehead that was disappearing under his hair. The oxygen mask over his mouth and nose was doing a poor job helping Barry breath as his struggles could be heard in the cortex. Rushing around the shirtless, bloody and way underweight figure was Dr. Caitlin Snow who was wearing the new dirty Killer Frost outfit under what probably used to be a white lab coat, used to being the keyword since an impressive blood strain was forming on her left shoulder. A grim injury that would need treatment later was probably hidden underneath.
The chief's brain barely halted for a second when he made the connection; so, the ice metahuman that first attacked the precinct a few years ago before joining Team flash was the same person that had been appearing around Barry and his friends since all of this started? Singh had his suspicions, but it was the one Metahuman he never was entirely sure. It's been evident for years that Allen was The Flash with all his weird requests, his disappearances matching those of the Scarlet Speedster, his repeated absences from work at the same time criminals were arrested in a spectacle of lightning...
Vibe had been pretty easy to guess too, how many people in Central City had these hairs and had been seen around Allen so often? And, Elongated Man? Tall as a giraffe and build like that? It had to be Dibny. The story of how somehow Allen and Diby became a crime-fighting duo despite their history in the force probably was a good one. Speaking of, turning his head around, Singh indeed spotted none-other-than Ralph Dibny, his ex-detective, in full superhero suit and with his mask off. Few faces in the room looked vaguely familiar; some of them fought to protect the city before, but there were other people the newly promoted policeman had never seen before.
Putting back his attention forward and into the medbay, he whispered;
"You gotta fight, Allen, fight for your wife and your child."
A/N: Let me know in the comments what you think :)