"So, that's my story," Barry said as he stood on a rooftop in Starling City, wrapping up the tale he'd just spent the last half hour recounting to Oliver. "I spent my whole life searching for the impossible, never imagining that I would become the impossible."
"So why come to me?" Oliver asked. He'd been standing at the edge of the roof with his back to Barry, looking out over the city, but now he turned to face him. "Something tells me you didn't just run 600 miles to say hi to a friend."
"All my life I've wanted to… just do more," Barry said. "Be more. And now I am, and the first chance I get to help someone, I screw up. What if Wells is right? What if I'm not a hero? What if I'm just some guy who got struck by lightning?"
"I don't think that bolt of lightning struck you, Barry," Oliver said solemnly, his voice carrying the weight of the knowledge of another person's character that came from them saving your life. "I think it chose you."
"I'm just not sure I'm like you, Oliver," Barry replied. "I don't know if I can be some… vigilante."
"You can be better," Oliver told him. "Because you can inspire people in a way that I never could. Watching over your city like a guardian angel, making a difference, saving people… in a flash." He turned away from Barry for a moment, and when he turned back to face him once more, he was wearing the mask that Barry had made for him, and he couldn't help but feel a small glow of pride at the sight of it.
"Take your own advice," Oliver said with a smile. "Wear a mask." Then he turned and swan dived off the edge of the roof, firing a grappling line into the building across the street as he fell and swinging around to land with his feet braced against its side.
"Cool," Barry muttered to himself, and then he turned and ran back to Central City.
"I've been going over unsolved cases from the past nine months," Barry told Wells and the team at STAR Labs a few days later, "and there's been a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people. Your metahumans have been busy."
"Now, I'm not blaming you," he went on, noticing the looks exchanged between them. "I know you didn't mean for any of this to happen. I know you all lost something." He paused for a moment to reflect on that loss before he said, "But I need your help to catch Mardon, and anyone else out there like him. I can't do it without you." There was a long, slightly tense silence while the team considered his words.
"If we're going to do this," Cisco spoke up at last, "I have something that might help." He led them over to a raised worktable covered with a tarp and yanked the tarp off to reveal a dark red bodysuit with an attached cowl and boots, that, when worn, would cover a person from head to toe.
"Something I've been playing with," he said, gesturing toward it. "It's designed to replace the turnouts firefighters traditionally wear. I thought if STAR Labs could do something nice for the community, maybe people wouldn't be so angry at Doctor Wells anymore."
"How's it going to help me?" Barry asked.
"It's made of a reinforced tripolymer," Cisco explained. "It's heat and abrasive resistant, so it should be able to withstand your moving at high velocity speeds, and the aerodynamic design should help you maintain control. Plus, it has built in sensors, so we can track your vitals and stay in contact with you from here.
"Thanks," Barry said. "Now, how do we find Mardon?"
"I've re-tasked STAR Labs' satellites to track meteorological abnormalities over Central City," Caitlin put in. In the back of his mind, Barry noted that they all seemed to have changed their minds about helping him awfully fast. He wondered if his sister had had something to do with that. He refocused on what Caitlin was saying as she went on, "We just got a ping. Atmospheric pressure dropped twenty millibars in a matter of seconds. I've tracked it to a farm just west of the city." Barry instantly what farm that must have been- the one where Mardon and his brother had been hiding out before the particle accelerator explosion.
"Let's go," he said, grabbing the suit from the worktable. "We don't have a lot of time."
When Barry arrived at the farm- just in time to stop Joe and Eddie from being crushed by flying debris- he found Mardon at the center of a massive tornado.
"Barry," Cisco said in his comm. "Barry, this thing is getting closer. Wind speeds are 200 miles per hour and increasing." Barry didn't answer him, too busy trying to catch his breath. He hadn't had to sustain his speed for this long before, and it was taking more out of him that he'd expected.
"Barry!" Cisco said. "Barry, can you hear me?"
"Yeah," Barry managed to reply. "Loud and clear."
"If it keeps up, it could become an F5 tornado," Cisco told him, prompting him to stare at the massive tornado Mardon was in the center of and wonder how it could possibly get any worse.
"And it's headed for the city!" he shouted over the roar of the wind. "How do I stop it?" He received no answer.
"Guys!" he shouted. An idea occurring to him, he asked "What if I unravel it?"
"How the hell are you going to do that?" Caitlin asked.
"I'll run around it in the opposite direction, cut off its legs," Barry shouted in reply.
"He'd have to clock 700 miles per hour to do that," he heard Cisco said, his voice in his comm quiet because he wasn't speaking directly to him.
"Your body may not be able to handle those speeds," Caitlin warned him. "You'll die."
"I have to try," he insisted. Then he took off racing around the bottom of the tornado as fast as he could manage. But it wasn't enough. He could feel himself weakening, his energy flagging, and when Mardon saw what he was doing and shoved a gust of wind in his direction, he wasn't fast enough to dodge it, and he was sent tumbling across the ground, away from the tornado.
"He's too strong!" he shouted, struggling to his feet.
"You can do this, Barry," Wells said in his ear. "You're right- I'm responsible for all of this. So many people have been hurt because of me, and when I looked at you all I saw was another potential victim of my hubris, and yes, I created this madness, but you, Barry, you can stop it. You can do this. Now run, Barry, run!" Mustering up what strength he had left, Barry charged toward the tornado once again, running around its base, faster and faster, until it was just him and Mardon, sprawled in the circle of devastation left behind by the tornado's path.
"Barry?" Caitlin asked.
"Hey!" Mardon called out before Barry could answer her. He got to his feet and turned around to face him.
"I didn't think there was anyone else like me," Mardon said, voice fervent, pointing a gun at him.
"I'm not like you," Barry told him. "You're a murderer." Mardon went to shoot him, but two gunshots rang out in the sudden quiet left behind by the absence of the tornado's roar, and he went down, two bullets in his chest. Barry turned to see Joe running toward him, his gun still out.
"Barry!" Caitlin said urgently.
"It's over," Barry said. "I'm okay." He fell to his knees, too exhausted to hold himself upright anymore, and the next thing he knew, Joe was kneeling in front of him. They sat there like that, staring at each other in stunned silence, until reinforcements began to arrive from the CCPD to take care of Mardon and deal with the aftermath of what he had done.
"What you can do," Joe said as all this was going on. "It was the lightning bolt?"
"More or less," Barry said.
"I'm sorry, Barry," Joe said. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you, and I called you crazy for chasing the impossible. But you really did see something in your house that night when you were eleven." Barry nodded, relieved that someone finally believed him.
"I need you to promise me something," Joe went on. "I don't want you telling Iris about anything you can do. Any of it. I want her safe. Promise me."
"Yeah," Barry agreed.
A few days later, he went to visit his parents, to make up for not having done so when he woke up from his coma. He told about everything that had happened over the last couple of days, or a slightly sanitized version of it, anyway. He didn't want to worry them too much. As he headed toward home afterward, he found himself replaying what Oliver had said to him that night in Starling City in his mind, and thought that just might have given him an idea for what to call himself under his new crime fighting identity.