Notes: For Iris West-Allen Appreciation Week - Iris' Birthday
Flickering of the Light
Iris Ann West was born June 24, 1989. Arguably she should have been a grade behind Bartholomew Henry Allen (born March 14, 1989) given when her birthday landed in the void between one school year and the next. But her dad got her into a kindergarten class at the local elementary school when the pre-K she was supposed to attend closed abruptly. And that was that. Iris met Barry on that first day of kindergarten, sat in a circle of other children and their teacher.
Barry was shy and struggled to make friends and that made Iris feel sad. Making friends came easily to her and she didn't want anyone else in class to feel left out or lonely. So by the end of the day she'd already reached out to him and convinced him to play with her. He was fun and sweet and smart and Iris was immediately glad she'd decided to be his friend.
They were going to be best friends forever. Iris could already tell.
Once they were friends, Barry never missed Iris' birthday. Not once.
While he still had his parents, Barry would eagerly show up early for Iris' birthday parties in the summer, armed with a gift he wrapped himself and a bright smile that made Iris feel warm and safe. And after his mother died and Henry went to prison, Barry still gave Iris a present and a smile, even if there was something a little more sad and lost in his expression after his loss.
In turn, Iris made sure she always had a gift and a smile for Barry too. She wanted to see him light up with joy on his birthday, especially after he lost his parents. She figured that if anyone deserved to be happy on their birthday, after so much heartache, it was Barry Allen.
Not even college got in the way of tradition for them, despite Barry attending an out of state college for his Masters degree. March 14th saw Iris driving for hours to surprise Barry with a birthday dinner. June 24th saw Barry on a long bus ride to do the same for Iris.
After Barry graduated and moved back to Central City, birthdays were easier again. No long drives. Just the gifts and the smiles and the knowledge that they loved each other. Best friends forever.
And then the accelerator at STAR Labs exploded. Everything changed.
Iris didn't miss Barry's birthday. She sat at his bedside and cried. A gift she'd wrapped sat in his apartment across the city and there was no smile on her face. Not when the birthday boy lay too still and too quiet and too...
Barry missed Iris' birthday. For the first time in forever. Because he was still comatose. And while Iris held his hand and told Barry the best gift he could give her would be to wake up for her today, it's still a long wait until September before her best friend opens his eyes again.
But that's not to say Iris was alone on her birthday. She still had her dad, who took her out to dinner that evening and reminded her of how loved she was. Twenty-five was a big year. A quarter of a century old. She'd stuck her tongue out at her dad for that one and then teased him that the only person he was making feel old was himself. That earned her a rueful smile and an acknowledgement that she was right. His baby girl was twenty-five. He was so proud of her.
It wasn't just her dad either, though. There was Eddie with his kind smiles and his offering of coffee on days when she needed to feel like she wasn't alone... she'd fallen in love with him somewhere along the way. He took her dancing and helped her feel alive for her birthday. Helped her shake off the feeling that without Barry, her life was somehow on hold too.
Eddie was the light in Iris' life that year and no candles on a cake could compare.
She was supposed to be planning her wedding. That's what is supposed to happen when two people get engaged.
Eddie proposed, Iris accepted, and the hardest part after that should have been Iris calmly explaining to her dad that if he didn't pull his head out of his ass then he wouldn't be invited to the wedding. The second hardest should have been asking Barry if he was okay being her Man of Honor.
Instead, the hardest thing for Iris after getting engaged was burying her fiancé. Except she doesn't really get to do even that much. His body is absorbed by the singularity after he shot himself. No muss, no fuss, and a closed casket on the day services are held. He's not the only one whose body is never found that day. Ronnie Raymond, newly married and he never even got to files the paperwork.
There isn't going to be a wedding.
Iris is twenty-six today, her fiancé is dead, and there isn't going to be a wedding.
She wakes up that morning and tries to get out of bed and shower and start her day. But there's this hollow in her chest. And there's an empty space in her bed where Eddie's warmth should be lingering. A silence from the bathroom where Eddie should be finishing getting ready for work, since he always got up first and put on a pot of coffee while he did his morning ablutions.
Eddie always made her coffee in the morning, because she'd made enough coffee for everyone else.
Iris calls in sick to work and goes back to sleep.
At lunch time there's a knock on her door and Iris makes herself answer it. Barry's standing there with bags of food in hand. He doesn't say anything as Iris lets him inside. Just settles down at her kitchen table; sets her favorite comfort food from Big Belly Burger in front of her and a larger selection in front of himself (it's still a little surreal to realize how much Barry has to eat these days, but she's getting used to it); and in the quiet of the apartment, they eat their lunch.
Afterwards, Barry finally broke the silence. "I wish I knew what to say to make things better." Then he hugged her tightly. "I have to get back to work. Am I going to see you tonight at Joe's?"
"Yeah. I'll be there," Iris promised. And, shortly after Barry left, Iris got out of her pajamas and into a slouchy, comfy outfit instead. Then she grabbed her tablet, her purse, and her keys in order to drive over to her dad's house. Because if she didn't go now, she'd go back to bed. And if she went back to bed then she wouldn't be keeping her promise to Barry.
Keeping her promise feels important. Barry would understand and forgive her pretty much instantly if she did just... give up on the day. But Iris wants better from herself.
Though she also knows that Eddie wouldn't want her to spend her entire birthday wallowing in grief either.
"I know it's hard," Eddie had told her the year before, as she turned twenty-five without Barry's smile to greet her. "But it's your birthday and it's okay to be happy and enjoy yourself today, even though Barry's not able to celebrate it with you. You aren't betraying him by having fun."
Iris knew that if he were here today, he'd say she wasn't betraying him either by enjoying the day. She just... she didn't know how to do that. Iris felt like Eddie's death had taken all the light in the world and now she was left with... emptiness and dark.
Linda calls to check in with Iris in the afternoon and she's grateful for the concern. Iris hadn't exactly been a great friend to Linda while she was dating Barry, but they'd moved past that fairly quickly. They were good friends and she... she was Iris' first pick for a bridesmaid during that brief time she'd thought she heard wedding bells in her future.
(Iris West-Thawne had such a lovely ring to it and Iris aches that she never got to make that name her own.)
Iris is restless the rest of the afternoon, unable to focus on her reading and her brief attempt to put on the tv for background noise just makes her antsy feelings worse instead of better. She winds up going through her dad's record collection, putting on old jazz records and singing along quietly. There's a comfort in that old familiar music, like she can be a kid again who believes everything really be better because her daddy tells her so. She misses that certainty that her father knows everything and is always right and will always put her first. A time before she gave up her dreams of being a detective herself and knew that her father could be wrong and make awful mistakes and put his own wants and desires so far ahead of his children's that he couldn't see when his own actions became manipulative.
At the same time her dad would swallow his pride and move mountains to make things right when he knew he'd been in the wrong. People were complicated and in the end Iris loved her dad too much to do anything but forgive him.
Iris twisted the ring on her finger, letting the stone scrape uncomfortably against her middle finger and pinky as she twirled it round and round. The music played and the ring twirled and Iris finally zoned out for a bit, her brain quieting to a low hum.
It's a very long, lonely afternoon.
Her dad comes home and hugs her and makes dinner. Barry comes home and hugs her and tells her about a dog stuck in a tree that he rescued for a kid today. How the dog got into the tree is anyone's guess, but Barry suspected the dog was part cat.
The story startles a giggle out of Iris, imagining Barry in his red suit (red bondage suit, though she's not voicing that thought to her poor, blush-prone best friend any time soon; no need to break her friend's brain just to amuse herself... not until he annoys her next, anyway) trying to speed climb a tree without falling and then carrying a dog back down with him. It's a silly mental image and it was probably even more hilarious in reality. And Barry's deadpan retelling is priceless.
Dinner is delicious and Iris smiles as best she can as her dad wishes her happy birthday. Then she slips out into the backyard to stare up at the sky.
When she was little, Iris had thought the dead watched from the night sky. She doesn't remember where she picked that one up from - could have been a dozen places, to be honest - and it had been a comfort to stargaze at night, thinking her mom was watching from Cassiopeia. After all, her mom had been beautiful just like the queen immortalized in the constellation, so it made sense that was where her mom was now. But she's an adult now and she knows what the stars in the night sky are now. Amazing though the reality of it might be, Iris misses the awe and the wonder of looking up and thinking 'there's mom, watching over me'. She wishes, as she looked up now, that she could imagine Eddie watching over her from above now too. Located in the constellation of Orion, no doubt the resting place of heroes.
And Eddie was a hero. Iris' hero.
The sound of the door squeaks open and shut behind Iris and Barry walks over to sit down beside her. "I know you don't feel like celebrating today. And it's not a particularly happy birthday for you, but..." Barry handed Iris a plate with a small cake on it, two number candles proclaiming 26 sitting atop it and one small, regular birthday candle in front of those. They aren't lit, not yet. Probably to make it safer for Barry to carry the plate.
"Twenty six written in candles... plus one to grow on," Barry told her.
Iris balanced the plate on her lap as Barry held out something else. A bright little bag covered in Hello Kitty faces that made Iris smile despite herself. Inside is a brand new writing journal with a beautiful painting of a forest waterfall for the cover. Iris set it aside and leaned against Barry's shoulder. "Thank you. It's beautiful. And it'll definitely see a lot of use."
"You're welcome. I... know I made your birthday last year difficult too and I just... I wanted to bring you a little light this year, in the face of everything." Barry pulled a lighter out of his pocket. "Mind if I..."
"Go ahead," Iris managed to say in a normal voice despite how... strange her chest felt at those words. "Bring you a little light," he said... like he knew what she'd been thinking all day.
Barry flicked the lighter open and lit the flame, lighting one... two... three candles.
Iris felt tears slowly start to spill from her eyes and roll down her lashes and her cheeks.
"Are you going to make a wish?" Barry asked.
"In a minute, I... I'd like to enjoy the lights for a bit first," Iris replied.
Barry nodded, like it somehow made perfect sense to him. So he gently reached up to rub her back as they watched the candles slowly burn down, getting wax all over the chocolate icing. But, eventually, Iris made a wish and blew out the candles.
She's not entirely sure what her wish is. Never to lose someone she loved to suicide again. Never to lose a loved one to depression again. To find the strength to do what Eddie would want her to... to live her life and have many, many happy birthdays to come. It's all of that and probably a lot more besides.
"We should go inside and split the cake in thirds," Iris decided.
"Sounds good to me," Barry said. He stood up and then gave Iris a hand up, offering to help carry whatever she needed help with.
It sounded like he meant more than the gift and the cake. Like he was offering to help carry what was burdening her down all day. And when Iris took Barry's hand so he could pull her to her feet, Barry smiled at her.
The smile was not the megawatt smile that made her feel warm and safe and loved the way only her best friend could. Today was... not a day when Iris could handle that smile and, in his own grief, no doubt Barry wasn't in the frame of mind to give it either. But it was a kind smile and there was a fragile light flickering in it, not unlike the candles they'd just watched. It'd take time for those flickers to grow back into the brightness Barry usually carried around and Iris found herself looking forward to seeing Barry shine with happiness again. To seeing herself shine with it too.
The wind picked up around them and so Iris and Barry hurried inside, but...
Iris could almost swear she heard Eddie's voice, murmuring quietly to her. "I know it's hard. But it's your birthday and it's okay to be happy and enjoy yourself today, even though I'm not able to celebrate it with you. I love you, Iris."
