Hanahaki disease has been around since humanity itself, the long and depressing tales about poor women and even men, choking on unrequited love, now millennia old and relegated to history books.
Given everything he did was rooted in science, Barry should have known what was happening beforehand, but had been under the conscience that after his last meeting with Oliver that his speedstar powers weren't working and it was just the flu. Oliver had just shot him in the back after all, it wasn't a hard guess to see where most of it was going to.
He sticks with that excuse despite the pain fading after a day oo two, that is, until he wakes up in his bed, lips a gentle blue like Caitlin's alter ego and spluttering like a drowned man, bathing in rose petals.
He doesn't know how it got to this point. Everything is normal in his life. He has a stable job as a CI, a small apartment just big enough to fit 2 people and he also has Iris now, which is something he thought may never happen, but it has. Surely that has to be enough?
He'd even brought a ring, hiding it in a drawer that she'd never see, making sure that it never got disturbed. He had been coughing a little at the jewellers thanks to the ache in his back, given it had been the next day, but it's just the perks of being a hero, right?
He's dealt with this before he became a hero, he can deal with it now. Speed or not.
It doesn't get any better from there. The next day and more after that, there are the cold sweats. Random chills. Hallucinations even, nothing that he tells his friends about, though he knows he should. Sometimes, he even finds it difficult to breathe when he speaks or sleeps.
He doesn't want to worry anyone, however.
It takes him off guard one day when he wakes, late as hell for work at the police station, but not caring as a pickling sense of breathlessness, like someone's just gripped at his throat with both hands, fingers like tentacles wrapping around the base and is attempting to choke him to death. Along with this, an invisible force tugs at something within his lungs, and he stumbles into the bathroom, sputtering and clawing before the feeling of nausea creeps up on him and strikes him down again, sending him to the nearby toilet.
His stomach, which is churning so violently that it may actually attempt to use his esophagus as a bungee cord, threatens to spill all over the floor, a series of intense coughs and dry retching that ends as abruptly as they started, Barry's wet eyes peering open to stare at what may have come out below. All he sees is not only his rippling reflection in the bowl, but rose petals floating above its surface, blood red as his outfit and velvety soft, slick and foreboding.
Barry's not dumb, but he's never felt like it more in his 28 years of life. He doesn't need to frantically flip through the old university biology textbooks long caged away within the furthest corners of his mind. He doesn't need to start screaming like he has the feeling of doing.
He knows. He knows very well. 'Unloved, unloved-' his brain screams at him restlessly, chanting the sentence as if it's a mantra or just so he understands it like it is one. Unloved. Unloved by who? The answer is clearer than he'd like it to be and for once, it's not Iris.
He tries to forget, puts himself into the hero thing like it's cocaine, additive and distracting, injuries pulling the attention away from the weight loss and the glassy eyes. The speed has its own way of helping him conceal it, petals are cleaned and disappear as soon as they appear, clothing stained with blood is haphazardly put in the washroom and so on.
He doesn't know just how he pretends to be happy seeing Oliver and Felicity together, but he tries because...he has to. Even if the itching in his lungs tells him otherwise.
The days seem to float by like seeds from a million strands of grass drifting with the breeze, the start of his vision being affected signalling the almost end he was preparing for. He marries Iris, she'd be taken care of at least, police pension and all that. That he's okay with.
He can't think of what to say when Oliver turns up at his wedding, but he can see the change and Barry manages to give him the slip for most of it. He can't even see Iris's dress as she floats down the aisle, just a blur of white and the same is for everyone else, but he manages to stumble over his vows well enough to be concise.
The illness grows worse only just a few days after he's married, as he expected it would after refreshing himself on what to know and just as importantly, how long. It's taken root in his lungs, the stinging feeling of the speed force fighting it with all it has as it's taking over the network of his bronchi in stuttered waves. Somehow though, he fights through it, barely.
It comes for him exactly 2 weeks later and the end is worse than usual. It sadly also comes when Oliver is in town and entering his apartment at the same time, calling out his name. It's too late, however, because as the other man walks in impeccably dressed in a suit and muttering something along the lines of "even when he's a speedster he's still late", he finds the slightly younger convulsing in a puddle of blood and similarly coloured petals instead.
"Barry!" The brunette is sputtering petals slick with spit, mucus and blood like a geyser as terrified tears drip frantically down the skin of his cheeks as Oliver calls, his seizing on the bed, entire frame quivering and lips as blue as the sky, neverending as he spots the outline of Oliver's face in the haze of colours he's had for so long.
He wants to speak, but he can't find his voice, helpless as Oliver grabs him by the chest and supports his head in his lap, shaking him as if it would help him in some way, panic in the elder's eyes as he's watching him cough up flower petal after flower petal, whole blooms speckled in between patterning his bedsheets in blood red, breath an airy wheeze now.
/Hanahaki disease./ He can see with what little vision he has left that Oliver's lips are muttering the very words that have burned themselves in his soul, most likely remembering the things he knows, that he saw in high school and more in his anatomy course as he trained to become the man he used to be, the basic images of bloody daisies and their petals, pink, white, red, blue and even some mixed, strewn across a bedroom floor like an abstract painting, streaked and violating.
"I'm–" Barry can barely breathe, bloody petals spilling from his gasping lips as he tries to talk, darkness creeping in the edges of his summer haze that is attempting to stay awake. "I'm sorry, I couldn't be like Fel- /fuck,/ I'm sorry I'm not her." The words aren't resentful, more wistful and damning, as the acidic taste clawing its way up Oliver's throat and the choking feeling he has seeing this scene playing out in front of him is already bitter enough.
"I'm sorry too. Barry, I'm so fucking sorry. Please don't go." His statement is whispered, hurting, but still ever so cruel despite its gentle delivery.
It's also like poisonous deception if they had known, if he had known; like he'd been laying on a bed of roses the whole time, only to realise that the thorns weren't plucked off and the petals were inside him, only bringing peace to his tormented mind once they've been burrowed deep into his flesh and shit, he would never blame Oliver, but it does hurt. Badly.
"Tell me you lo-love me, Oliver." If a lie, bold, terrible and no longer able to somehow save him is to be one of the last things he hears on this Earth that he's now leaving, so be it. "You don't ha-have-have to mean it. It's okay. Just say it. P-P-P-Please"
"I love you." The phrase is filled with pain, but only just that. Other than, it's empty with no real love behind it, but that's all Barry needs, eyes scrunched shut as he braces for what's coming now that's over with.
He wonders if the next words will make any difference, but as he says them, he really doesn't care. "Love you too." The sky around his mouth whispers, before he retches one last rose that lands square on his chest, the bloom open like his heart as vines tangle around it and his bones, finally cutting their way through to block his windpipe. He doesn't breathe anymore.
Before the curtains fall, he remembers the sight of Oliver for the first time they met each other and how little they had known before then, before now. Would they have ever had a chance? Would Oliver and he ever see eachother again? The thoughts coupled with the uncertainty ached more than the pull of death ever could.
"A man fell in love with me once, you know. A really long time ago." Oliver murmurs quietly as he sits by his daughter's bedside, her blonde hair luminous under his hand and fingers as the window's light shines in on it.
"Was he handsome?" Mia's inquiry is purely innocent, her tone laced with naivety and also curiosity as the 3-year-old watches his face for the answer. "Oh yeah, /very/, more than most." He emphasises to sate her. "Promise." He has to pretend that his eyes don't sting with unshed tears or that his chest isn't burning.
"What happened to him, Daddy?" His little girl is on the verge of falling asleep and Oliver prays that despite everything, she doesn't feel him almost choke and hands automatically clench as he tries to keep himself under control. It's been just under 7 years since Barry's death, he should be better at this by now. "I couldn't love him the way he needed me to and so he had to leave."
"Do you know where is he now? Can I meet him one day when he comes back?" Thankfully, Mia doesn't stay awake to hear the answer that Oliver really doesn't have on him at that moment, her head having lulled as well the muscles of his small arms falling limp across his waist as he tucks her in and leaves her little room, staggering towards the door of his own room where Felicity is waiting for him before his brain finally crumbles and the tears fall as he whispers to the naked night air. "You already have, my darling. More than ever.."
He wasn't lying. Barry is still here, watching over the people that he'd loved dearly. Barry is still here, brown eyes in the corner of every mirror and laughter echoing off of every wall even half a century or more later.
Barry is still here, in the present, somehow,a flurry of lighting and brokenness haunting his heart as he lives on, grieving while others take no notice.
It's all the more reason for Oliver to hate himself until one day, he coughs…
...and a single red rose petal calls out his name, just like Barry did, before it went black.