Thanks for all the support for the last chapter! Also, thank you for being patient with me. I've had a few bumps in the road that delayed me putting this chapter up. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own The Flash
Four months ago
All he wanted to do was sleep, but the man wouldn't let him. Every time Barry tried to close his eyes, pain overwhelmed his body and images overwhelmed his mind.
This memory began with Barry speaking, "Snart wasn't another metahuman. He has some kind of gun. I froze things." He picks up his jacket. "It slowed me down. Enough that I wasn't in time to save someone."
"According to his records, Snart didn't even bother to finish high school, so how did he build a hand-held high-tech snow machine?" A blond woman with glasses asked. Familiarity prickled through the memory. At first, Barry couldn't remember who she was, then a name burst through his mind: Felicity.
"STAR Labs built the cold gun." A man in the wheelchair calmly responded. Who was it? Barry's could feel a headache beginning.
"Dr. Wells and Caitlin had nothing to do with this." Dr. Wells! That's who it was. "I built the gun." He remembered who said this. It was Cisco.
Barry could feel his past self's confusion at this statement. "You did? Why?"
"Because speed and cold are opposites." Cisco explains the science behind the cold gun, and how it could harm Barry and his speed, but what really caught Barry's attention was how he ended it, "I designed a compact cryo engine to achieve absolute zero. I built it to stop you."
Past Barry felt a wave of betrayal, and it showed on his face.
Cisco tried to justify, "I-I-I didn't know who you were back then, Barry. I mean, what if you turned out to be some psycho like Mardon or Nimbus?"
"But I didn't! Did I?" Barry shouts back.
A different woman speaks up, "We built the entire structure you're standing in to do good, and it blew up. In the wake of that, you can understand why Cisco would want to be prepared for the worst." Barry couldn't place her… name was mentioned earlier… Caitlin!
"I can understand that, but what I can't understand is why you didn't tell me what you did. I mean after all we've been through, I thought you trusted me. I thought we were friends." Barry's voice was getting exponentially louder.
Cisco cut in, "We are, Barry."
Barry ignored him, "I mean, if you had just told me, I could have been prepared. But instead, someone died tonight."
That hit Cisco like a ton of bricks. "And I have to live with that."
"No, Cisco, we all do." Then Barry left STAR Labs.
Barry came back to the present, and the pain finally ended, if only for a moment. The copper taste of blood appeared on the speedster's tongue. Did he bite his lip? Was his nose bleeding?"
"I'm exhausted. Please, just let me sleep." He practically sobbed.
The young man was answered with rough hands back on his head and the familiar feeling of agony.
This time, Barry was in his teens, maybe around sixteen or seventeen. Barry had just gotten an internship, and he was excited to start. Is foster dad… Joe even let him borrow the car.
Then everything went south.
As Barry was backing out, he accidentally clipped the mailbox with the front end of the car. It wouldn't have been so bad, except for the long scratch along the vehicle.
What Barry had not expected, however, was Joe's reaction. Joe was moody due to some long hours on a seemingly unsolvable case. When Barry told him about the scratch, it was Joe's last straw.
"What?! You wrecked my car?!" he exploded.
Barry tried to hide is shock. "Well it's a scratch, but I'll pay to get it fixed."
"You sure as hell are." Joe yelled before putting his head in his hands. Barry heard his foster father mumble something like, "Iris would never- why did I even take him in?"
The teenage Barry was beyond shocked. How could Joe say that? Barry went to his room and bawled for hours that night.
As Barry watched himself cry through the memory, he tried to remember Joe apologizing, but he couldn't. Joe must have apologized, right? It's in his nature.
Suddenly, the memory and Barry's thoughts were cut off. The young boy fell into much needed unconsciousness.
"He might be suffering from a form of psychotic break or PTSD. It could also be from the meta's powers." Caitlin explains to Joe. She had just come back from the pipeline where she attempted to assess Barry's mental state.
"What did he say to you?" Joe asks.
"He barely responded to most of my questions, but between his actions from today and yesterday, I think we can all agree that Barry has some major personality changes."
"What can we do for him?"
"I'll need to run some more tests and a brain scan to be sure there isn't any physical damage. Until we know exactly what's wrong, there's not much else we can do. I can tell that Barry is drastically underweight."
"Iris just went down to bring him some food." Joe responds.
"Just say something, Barry. Please." Iris begs her best friend.
The speedster only stares at her, unmoving, with hate in his eyes.
"Well if you aren't going to talk to me, then at least eat. You must be starving."
For the past ten minutes, Iris had been trying to get Barry to eat the Big Belly Burger that she had brought to his cell in the pipeline. He must be very hungry due to his fast metabolism, but he hadn't even looked at it.
As soon as Iris finishes her sentence, The Flash's face contorts with rage. Iris takes an involuntary step back. In all their years as friends and growing up together, she has never seen him like this.
Barry stands then growls, "You don't even know what starving is."
"Then explain it to me." Surprisingly, Iris's voice doesn't shake.
He takes a slow step toward the glass separating them. "There's no way for you to understand what I've been through. The sharp pain in your stomach, or the agonizing wait that comes with not knowing when your next barley edible meal will slide through the door. The only way you can understand is if your experience it." A wild look appears in his eyes. "I could show you."
Iris has to fight back the tears blurring her vision. "That… that really happened to you?" she whispers.
Barry scoffs and turns away from her. "Don't pretend to care now."
"I have never stopped caring about you, Barry Allen." Iris breathes tenderly.
She pauses, waiting for a response. None comes. He doesn't even face her.
Finally letting the tears flow, she turns and leaves.
Joe flocks to his daughter as soon as she enters the cortex.
"What happened?" He asks as she wipes at her wet cheeks with her hands.
"He won't eat… and he still thinks we don't love him."
"I'll go talk to him." Cisco responds, already heading to the elevator.
Barry is silent when he walks up the ramp. Cisco eyes the crumpled fast food wrappers that litter the corner of his friend's cell.
"Looks like you could eat after all. No one can refuse Big Belly Burger." Which earns a glare from Barry.
Cisco's joking demeanor vanishes. "None of us want to fight you, Barry. We want to find whoever did this to you. But we can't do it without your help and your trust."
"Why don't you just leave me alone. You're pretty good at that." Barry is obviously exasperated.
That remark stings, but Cisco doesn't give up. "What did we do wrong? Please, just explain."
The speedster stays silent.
"Fine." Cisco simply replies, then goes back to his friends that are waiting for him.
Cisco comes back looking disheartened. "He ate the food you brought him. But something is seriously wrong with Barry."
"We need to figure out exactly what that metahuman did to him." Iris declares.
"How are we going to do that? Barry's the only one who knows anything about his kidnapper, and he's not telling any of us anything." Wally questions.
"Well are we absolutely positive that we haven't seen this meta before?" Joe interjects. "Cause to me this seems a lot like when Barry was whammied by that… red eyed…." Joe waves his fingers over his eye in an attempt to explain the metahuman.
"Rainbow Raider." Cisco cuts in. "It's possible."
He rushes to the computer. On his way, Cisco runs his hand over the desk, and his fingers make contact with the Flash emblem. He stops in his tracks, his eyes become unfocused.
Everyone in the room knows that look all too well.
They know Cisco is back when he gasps and his muscles relax, but he looks visibly shaken.
"What did you vibe?" Caitlin asks.
Cisco gets himself to a chair on shaking legs. "I saw Barry. He was strapped to a chair, and he was screaming. That psychopath was standing over him and grabbing his head." He holds his hands out to demonstrate what he saw.
Hearing this, Iris feels sick to her stomach. Caitlin's face seems to be frozen in shock.
"Did you see his face?" Joe asks.
"No, he was wearing this… black cloth over his face."
"So what are his powers? Was he only hurting Barry, or was he brainwashing him?" Caitlin inquires.
"Barry might be the only one who can answer that." Iris murmurs.
"Back again." Barry says as a greeting when he sees Cisco.
Cisco wastes no time trying to ease Barry into it. "I saw you. When you were being tortured. What happened when he touched your head?"
For the first time since Barry came back, he's caught off guard. The mocking smile slides off the speedster's face, replaced by shock.
"It looked painful. What was he doing to you?"
"It was worse than painful. It was unbearable." Barry mumbles.
Cisco can sense that he's beginning to break through to his friend. He steps closer. "What was happening, Barry?"
In response, Barry squeezes his eyes shut. He swiftly stands and turns away from Cisco.
"I know you don't want to relive it, Barry. But we want to catch him. Make him pay for what he did to you. But we can't do that without knowing what his powers are, and you're the only one who knows." Cisco tries again.
"You wanna know?" The speedster abruptly turns back. There's a haunted look in his eyes. "He was inside my mind!" the young man screams. Then Barry crumples to his knees. With unfocused eyes, he continues softly, "He made me remember everything. Relive all of it."
"All of what?" Cisco breathes, barely audible.
Barry's eyes focus back on Cisco. "Leave." Although his tone is soft, there's a harshness to it.
Cisco hesitates.
"I said leave!" Barry snaps.
Allowing the speedster to recover, Cisco nods and walks out.
In the short distance it takes for him to walk back to the cortex, Cisco becomes filled with determination. As soon as he's through the doorway, Cisco is talking.
"The meta is some kind of mindreader. Barry also mentioned something about him being forced to remember things…?"
Iris speaks up, "Wait, slow down. Remember things. What things?"
Cisco begins typing on his keyboard. "Barry wouldn't say. He seems overwhelmed."
"We can try to talk with him more tomorrow. Get some more specific answers." Joe offers.
"While you're doing that, I can try to get more vibes. Try to figure out where Mind Melter is hiding. Hey, not a bad name." Cisco continues after some glares and groans, "If we can catch him and bring him here, we might be able to force him to undo whatever he did to Barry."
"Or stop him from doing it to anyone else." Wally inputs.
"Personally, I just want him to answer for what he did to my son." Joe says, obvious anger in his voice.
"I'll run some tests tomorrow as well." Caitlin informs.
"We will get justice for Barry." Iris promises.
"Well we finally have some information to go off of." Cisco agrees.