Chapter 123: Bonds

Eddie wasn't expecting anyone today. Joe and Iris visited as much as they could, with Barry tagging along almost all the time for whatever reason. They usually talked about how their day went, what cases they were working on, and elaborating on any questions Eddie had about the time he was under. They started visiting less when Eddie started his physical therapy, but they never missed more than one or two days.

Today, however, there was this big event in the Central City Park and all officers were being tapped to guard, especially those in the Anti-Metahuman Criminal Task Force. That meant both Joe and Iris had to be there. Eddie didn't hold it against them, they were only doing their jobs, but it didn't make him a little resentful of his current condition. He wanted to be out there, doing what he loved, not stuck inside trying to see how well his arms and legs still worked.

He couldn't help but stew in his anger, glaring at nothing, until he heard the tell-tale click! of the door opening. He turned to look, and tried not to gape when he saw Barry Allen of all people walking through the door. Barry gave him a small wave before dragging over a chair from the side and seating himself next to Eddie's hospital bed. He placed one of his elbows on the armrests, using a hand to hold up his chin, and gave the other man a placid smile.

"… Why are you here?" Eddie asked tiredly.

Barry raised an eyebrow. "Now that's just mean. Is it really that hard to believe I would be willing to visit you on my own?"

Eddie gave him a flat, unimpressed look. Barry simply stared back, until he finally broke, giving a hard chuckle. "Yeah, you're right. We really don't have the best relationship, do we?"

"I'm pretty sure we hate each other."

The other man snorted. "Eddie, I've hated people before. Trust me, what I feel for you is nowhere near close to hatred." Eddie could be a dick, yes, but in the end, it was mainly posturing between two people who just hadn't clicked at all. Compared to the likes of Zoom, he was more of an annoyance than anything else.

"Even so, I think we've long-established that we don't like each other. Why are you here?"

Barry shrugged. "Honestly? I was bored. I don't have classes today, don't feel like going to the big party over at the park, and don't feel like going to S.T.A.R. Labs. So I figured I'd come here and bug you."

Eddie blinked, frowning. "I'm surprised I was on the list at all."

"Like I said before, Eddie, I don't hate you," Barry stated, leaning back into his chair. "I don't like you, because you tend to act like a dick to me, but I don't hate you."

A scoff. "Oh, like you don't act like a dick to me right back?" Eddie responded sarcastically.

"Oh, no. We were both real jerks to each other, weren't we?" Barry noted, smirking genially. "I don't really understand why. I know you saw me as a threat to your relationship with Iris—"

"—Which you weren't, obviously. I nuked that all on my own," Eddie grumbled. "Well, me and the Flash."

Something flashed in Barry's eyes, but it was gone before Eddie noticed. "Yeah, you did," Barry said bluntly. "Not long after, you went under for nine months, and when you woke up the world had moved on without you. That's why you and Iris haven't talked about the break up yet. She's had nine months to come to terms with it, while you've barely had a couple of weeks."

He sounded so understanding. It pissed Eddie off. "And what would you know about that?" he snapped back.

"Being gone for a long time and coming home to find out that everything is different? I understand that very well."

And just like that, Eddie felt like the biggest asshole in the world.

How could he forget? Eddie might not like Barry, but he should've known better than to touch on that wound. Bagging on a guy for getting stuck on an island for ten years, losing out the rest of his childhood and probably wondering if he would ever get home was a dick move no matter which way you looked at it. Sure, Barry had his 'siblings', but it couldn't have been easy. Eddie felt horrible just thinking about it.

"Sorry," he muttered.

Barry gave a half-shrug. "That's okay. You're going through a hard time yourself. It's like I said, I know how you feel."

Eddie slumped into his bed. "How did you deal with it?"

His companion hummed. "In some ways, I was lucky. Before I left, I didn't have much tying me down to Central City. Just Joe, Iris, and my dad. Everyone else just knew me as the son of a murderer and his victim, that weird boy who thought his dad was innocent. Obviously, that wasn't conductive to making friends. That meant I didn't actually have much to come back to."

"So when you did…" Eddie trailed off.

"It was like starting all over again. I was never in a coma like you, Eddie. I left a child and came back an adult. I knew that things were going to be different when I came back. Hell, if it weren't for my dad, I would've never come back to Central City. I would've just moved to Star with Oliver, Kara and Kal. They were my family now."

Eddie blinked. "What about Joe and Iris?"

Barry shrugged again. "I would've kept in touch, obviously, and visited often, but it's like I said, I had nothing in Central left except for solving my dad's case. If I hadn't reconnected with Joe and Iris, hadn't befriended Cisco and Caitlin and the others and inherited S.T.A.R. Labs, then I probably would've left Central after that was done."

"But you? You don't have that," he continued. "You went to sleep one day, and woke up to find the world turned completely upside down the next. You didn't get the chance to prepare for that, and that's what sucks about your situation. But, in a way, you also lucked out — while the world has changed, the people in your life haven't. They're still the same, they're just doing different things with their lives now. I didn't have that. When I came back, everyone had changed — including me."

And just like that, it hit Eddie. "Iris. You're talking about Iris," Eddie realized.

Barry didn't answer, but the silence was telling enough.

There was hesitation now, but Eddie pushed past it. "What was she like? Before… you know?" The number of people who knew Iris before what happened to Barry was not many by the time Eddie joined it. And most, if not all of them liked to talk about it out of respect for both Wests. Eddie had heard snippets, of course, but if anyone really knew, it would be Barry.

Barry seemed to read his mind. He paused for a moment, before speaking. "When I first came back, Iris tried to pretend to be the same person she was before, just… older. Bright, optimistic. But if there's anything I learned on the island, it was how to be observant, and it helped that before all this, I knew her better than anyone else. I could see through the cracks."

Eddie was looking at him now, completely raptured.

"She was…harder. Colder, and very jaded. Not that different from me, to be honest. I used to be a happier, more idealistic person." He grinned, sharply and bitterly. "Not so much anymore."

The detective swallowed. "That bad, huh?"

"In some ways, it's like she hasn't changed at all," Barry admitted, a little wistfully. "In others… it's like she's a completely different person. She's so career-driven now. Maybe that's a byproduct of age, but the Iris I knew had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Yeah, she dreamed about being a cop, but back then, we both knew it was never going to happen. Joe was never going to let her go to the police academy, probably would've had the application struck down himself."

"And then you died," Eddie followed up.

"And then I died," Barry agreed. "I died, and everything changed. When I came back, it was hard those first few months. Seeing them so… fractured."

Eddie gripped his blanket. "They were really that close?"

Barry nodded. "You have to remember, Eddie, that before I came into the picture, it had always been just the two of them. They were close as can be. I couldn't imagine them being anything else. And then I came back, and suddenly they weren't." If there was anything he regretted about his disappearance, it was that. It was painful, knowing it had driven a wedge between two of the most important people in his life. Barry had wanted many things in his life, but never that.

"That… that sucks." Eddie didn't know any other way to put it.

"It does," Barry leaned back into his chair. "She was different, and I was different. We wanted to be a part of each other's lives, and we had a foundation, but we basically had to rebuild our entire friendship from scratch. At least you don't have to do something like that."

"I don't," Eddie admitted. It was like Barry said — nobody in his life had really changed. They were just doing different things now.

"You're so lucky, Eddie. You don't have to start over like I did. You still have your job, once you're out of here. You still have you friends. You still have your life," Barry exhaled deeply. "Yeah, things are different, but even if you hadn't gone under when you did, you would have had to deal with all those changes. The only difference is that now, you just need to play a bit of catching up."

A silence followed that statement. As Eddie pondered more over Barry's words, he realized the other man was right. Things hadn't changed as much as he thought they did. Joe might have a new partner, but Eddie and him weren't just partners — they were friends. That hadn't changed, seeing as Joe was visiting him at the hospital every other day. Iris and him might have broken up, but that had happened before the coma. He would have to deal with that either way.

Eddie still had a place in their lives, and in everyone else's. He just needed to take the time to find it.

He turned his head, smiling softly at his companion.

"Thanks, Barry," he told the other man, smiling.

Barry didn't answer, but he did smile back.

The apartment of Dinah Laurel Lance was not in the middle of the Glades. Unfortunately, it was just a touch too pricey for that. It was, however, near the edge, straddling on that invisible line that separated the neighborhood from the rest of the city. Tommy supposed he should count that as fortunate; it made him less likely to be spotted by people who would very much not like him to be anywhere near the Glades. Especially those who wouldn't mind expressing that in a more… physical way.

As he pulled up to the side of the street where the building stood, Tommy was surprised to note he wasn't nervous. Or, at least not as nervous as one would presume him to be. It was always going to be more awkward between Laurel and him than it was between him and Oliver. Oliver, after all, wasn't the one Tommy had feelings for, the one he had been mooning after for years. For that alone, things were never going to be quite as simple between them as it was with Tommy's other best friend.

Even so, it wasn't going to be as bad as they could be, or at least he hoped so. Tommy, after all, no longer had feelings for Laurel. He had once fancied himself in love with her, but time and perspective had allowed him to realize that he never really was; he loved her, yes, but as a friend or even a sister. Truth is, for a long time Laurel had been the only woman in his life that saw him instead of his name, fortune, or even his good looks. Well, her and Sara, but Sara hadn't lived in Starl—Star for any appreciable amount of time in years.

Tommy's life had always been a little empty, ever since his mom died, and especially after Oliver had seemingly died. Laurel and Sara were his only real friends, and that downward spiral of drugs and sex and then his desperate claw up the sobriety ladder had prevented him from making more. He was beginning to realize now that the reason he had latched onto Laurel is because she was the only person in his life he still had any real meaningful connection with that was around him consistently. His father was too distant and cold, even after they patched up their relationship, and Sara was off traveling the world. That left Laurel, and he had been so hungry for affection that he had latched onto her instead.

That, perhaps, was why he had grown so jealous of Oliver. Oliver might have lost ten years with them, but he hadn't come back alone. He had come back with a sister and two brothers to add to the family he already had. Two loving parents, a younger sister, Laurel… and him. And he had been so blinded by that, so angry, that he hadn't realized that Oliver had been trying to share all those connections with him. He had shunned the other man instead, for winning Laurel's heart, and that had been his mistake. If he hadn't done that, maybe he wouldn't have fallen for Talia's tricks. Maybe… Isabel would still be alive.

Isabel. God, the thought of her even now still hurt. He was still so very much in love with her, and after he realized that her death was a result of Talia's machinations, it made him wonder if there was some way he could've saved her. If he hadn't isolated himself from his friends, maybe one of them could have caught something, stopped Chase from killing Isabel and setting Tommy on this path. It was foolish, of course, Chase had been one of Talia's students and Tommy doubted any his friends could've stopped him when he came for her, but it didn't stop him from fantasizing the possibility.

Nothing could be done for her now. Isabel was dead, and never coming back. His father had been very explicit on that front; there was no guarantee that even if they dipped her body into a Lazarus Pit that her body would be revived. And even if it did — his father had been clear. Isabel was gone. Whatever came back wouldn't be her. Tommy would just have to make peace with her death, like he had with his mother before. And he was trying, and he guessed this would be the first step to that.

He had arrived with a bottle of wine — one of Laurel's favorite brands. Hopefully that would be enough of a peace offering. Thankfully, Laurel wasn't cooking; Oliver was, and while Tommy was still skeptical, he couldn't deny that whatever he made would be infinitely better than anything Laurel made. Tommy had years of experience to fall back on in that front.

Tommy reached over and pressed the door bell and patiently waited. A few seconds later, the door opened and Laurel peeked her head out. She opened the door more fully when she saw it was him, smiling shyly. "Hey," she said.

"Hey," Tommy said back, holding up the bag he was carrying. "Brought red wine."

"What kind?"

"Tignanello. 2010."

Laurel's smile became a little brighter. "My favorite."

Tommy nodded. "Yeah. Where's Ollie?"

"In the kitchen!" Oliver yelled out from, well, the kitchen. "Making stir fry! You're going to love it!"

"You really will," Laurel told Tommy, stepping aside so her guest could fully step inside. "He's gotten so good at cooking, I've been bugging him to open a restaurant. He said he can't until Speedy becomes CEO."

Tommy blinked. "Speedy is still in college," he replied slowly.

"Yeah. So, we'll have to wait a couple more years until we can reveal Ollie's cooking prowess to the world," Laurel sighed. "A pity."

"Right." Tommy wasn't entirely sure if he believed her, he hadn't eaten Ollie's cooking yet after all, but he'd let her have this one for now. "Can we talk? I have some things I need to say to you, specifically."

Laurel blinked, and then rubbed her arm. "Sure." She went over to her dining table and placed the bottle of wine in the center of the table, setting the bag it came in on a nearby side table. She gestured Tommy over away from the kitchen, near the couch, where Oliver, presumably, wouldn't be able to overhear. She sat herself on one side, watching as Tommy seated himself on the other, and waited for him to speak.

"I know Oliver probably told you, but I do need to say it to you, specifically. I'm sorry, for how I treated you both before I left. I know you two didn't mean to hurt me or anything like that."

"We didn't," Laurel confirmed. "But we should've been more mindful of your feelings. We just got so swept up in what was happening between us that…" she trailed off. "I'm sorry too, Tommy. For that."

Tommy nodded. "It's okay. It's always been him, hasn't it?"

Laurel paused, before nodding back. "Yeah. Even before he was gone, it was him. I just didn't want to admit it until he came back. And that's why, when you confessed, I didn't want to try with you. I knew you had feelings for me, but I never felt the same. And I didn't want to hurt you by telling you it was because it was our other best friend that I wanted." She looked down. "I should've just been honest with you from the beginning. There was no way this was ever going to end without someone getting hurt."

"It's alright. I forgive you."

"And I forgive you. Friends?"

Tommy smiled. "Friends."

The two reached over and hugged.

The dramatic irony in this chapter is just painful. It's going to keep being painful for a while, to be honest.

Well, that's all I have to say without being spoiler-y, so the usual: don't be afraid to review, flames will be ignored and deleted, and don't forget to update the TV Tropes page!