Joe's voice boomed in the cortex at the arrival of the team: "What the hell is going on here?"
Iris almost jumped out of her skin in surprise; what was her dad doing here? Has he been warned about Barry's condition? Swiftly turning on her heels, Iris faced her father while Nora and Caitlin quickly glanced back at them, but kept their concentration on the patient.
"Now, Nora," instructed the doctor to XS just before the speedster put both her hands on her father's chest and sent a beautiful mix of purple and yellow lightings around Barry, efficiently warming the man faster than any heat blanket or moist oxygen could've done it.
"Not now," quietly said Iris to her father before orienting once more her attention to the action going on in front of her. To be honest, Joe probably didn't even hear her intervention as he was also intensively staring ahead, straight at his foster son.
It was working; the colors were slowly but surely returning to Barry's cheeks and lips. Quickly, the frost also melted off his clothes which caused them to become wet and cold. Noticing this almost instantly, Nora rushed ahead to take off the Flash suit, leaving her father exposed in his boxer to his team for a second until Caitlin gently put a blanket on his legs and lifted it to his waist.
A sudden and loud gasp erupted from the red hero's throat accompanied by half-opened and unseen eyes darting around just before Barry started shifting on the bed.
"Hold him still," ordered Caitlin, grateful to see Ralph and Joe jumping into action right away to comply. Their quick response allowed her to strap an oxygen mask over the man's mouth and connect the sensors on Barry's body the best she could.
By the time everything was connected, Barry's eyes were closed again, and his breaths were now fast, shallow and uneven. With all he got, which wasn't much, the CSI was still weakly thrashing in the bed against the hands holding him down. With every passing second, his struggles grew weaker, just like his breathing pattern. His vitals that were displayed on the monitors were all over the place; low, weak and going up and down every few moments.
"Easy, Barry, you're ok, easy," whispered the doctor.
"We're right here," added Iris who moved to the other side of the bed and took one of her husband's hands into her own. She winced in pain when the Flash suddenly crushed her limb before slightly arching his back, but the reporter didn't say a thing.
She was willing to endure all the pain in the world if that was going to ease her soulmate's discomfort. Right now, Barry's desperation to get oxygen to enter his lungs was quickly fogging his mask. As the hero was falling more and more into the darkness, the hold he had on his wife's hand grew weaker, and slight tremors shook his body.
"Shouldn't you intubate him or something?" worriedly inquired Cisco, feeling his heart clenching at the view.
"I might have to. Just give him a moment...Come on, Barry, come on," begged the doctor, staring at the man's vitals.
As if on cue, the oxygen level in the man's body finally started to stabilize before rising a little, which allowed Ralph and Joe to release their grip and the whole crowd in the room to exhale in relief.
"I think the serum is working," said Caitlin who was leaning forward to adjust the oxygen mask that got disturbed a tad by the man's fight, "I think he'll be ok."
Gently and delicately, Iris put back her husband's hand on the bed but refused to let it go completely. Instead, she took a seat to stay by his side. In the last minute alone she somehow managed to completely forget about her dad's surprise appearance in the lab. Except, Joe hadn't forgotten about that.
"Anyone want to tell me what the hell is going on around here?" He requested, looking at every single face around.
That was going to be a long day.
***FLASHFLASHFLASH***
"Hey, Captain, I'm sorry it took me so long to call you back," said Joe, a full hour after arriving at S.T.A.R. Star.
The detective was now seated on a chair placed at Barry's bedside, uncomfortable but happy to get a moment alone with the man he proudly considered his son.
In the last hour, Caitlin managed to stabilize her friend's condition and, helped by Iris, changed the hero into comfortable clothes; sweatpants and warm S.T.A.R. sweater. The only medical equipment left on him was the oxygen mask and the finger pulse oximeter, and now, the only thing they could do was wait.
Unable to keep still any longer, especially considering how painful these uncomfortable chairs were, Joe got up and started walking around in the room. That's when he spotted Barry's phone on the desk and stopped, thinking; the phone had barely vibrated once since the detective got there, which meant the hero only received a text during this period. Except, by this time of day, the speedster should've already received a few extra calls from his boss for not showing up at work.
Singh.
That's when Iris' father took back his seat next to Barry's bed and made the call, suddenly remembering the police captain.
"It's ok, I've been pretty busy and haven't had much chance to think about Flash," said Singh, even if his tired voice was telling a whole different story than his words.
"He's...The Flash had been located," said Joe, acting like he wasn't seeing through his boss' pretenses, "he'll be ok. Or that's what I was able to find out," quickly added the Detective who was poorly trying to keep a cover both interlocutors knew wasn't there anymore.
A sigh of relief was heard on the other side.
"Thank you, Joe."
"Captain, if you don't mind-"
"Just, if you see Allen-" slowly started David with uncertain words. Grabbing a hold on himself, the police captain coughed and cleared his voice before continuing, "he hasn't been showing up today, and he's not answering my calls on his phone."
What calls? The ones on the phone that hadn't received any of them in the last hour? That wasn't suspicious at all. It was almost if the Captain had figured out there was a good reason why his employee was nowhere to be seen and decided not to call. Almost.
"If you see him, just-" continued the CC Police Captain, his tone suddenly getting more gentle, "tell him to be careful and take it easy. That's if he does have a good reason to be so late," corrected Singh.
Of course, he knew. He knew about what Barry was doing when he wasn't at work. For some reason, Joe wasn't surprised. Not at all. Why else would their boss be so soft on Barry's repetitive absences, be so understanding of his sudden sabbatical and be the only person in town, other than Team Flash, to keep faith in the man after he got accused of murdering Devoe? Singh was smart. He wasn't the Police captain for nothing.
"I will," gently said Joe, "I need to go, now."
"Of course, keep me updated," concluded Singh, not long before hanging up and leaving Joe back to his silent moment in the room, soon joined by both his daughter and granddaughter. The latter was still wearing her speedster suit.
Groans from the bed were the first sign that Barry was finally coming around, hours later, and it prompted Nora to jostle on her chair where she had been dozing on and off for a long moment now. One look to her right confirmed that her grandfather was still out for the count and her mom hadn't come back.
"Dad?" She gently whispered to the man on the bed.
"Nora?" Rasped Barry while slowly opening his tired eyes before blinking a few times to adjust his vision to the light assaulting them, "so, no death, huh?" He mumbled, half-joking, before closing his eyes again.
The half part of the joke got lost on his daughter; no smile brightened up her face. Not only that, but Nora also looked almost angry. Her tensed features were mixed with the dry tear marks on her cheeks.
"You almost died, again!" she shouted.
Well, Barry was almost sure she indeed screamed at him, but it was hard to tell when every single sound sounded like a scream to his still ringing ears.
"I don't-" started to mumble Barry while opening his eyes there were now adjusted to the light and looking up at his daughter.
His sentence died on his lips when his sleeping brain caught up with the real meaning behind XS's the sentence; Nora was referring to his future fate.
His slight confusion didn't get lost on XS who soothed her expression a tad and sat back in her chair. When did she even get up? Nora had no recollection of doing that action in the first place…
The apparent struggle in her young face pushed Barry to move his right arm with the clear intention to reach out to his baby girl. His movement was stopped by the twinge of the needle in his hand connecting him to the IV.
It wasn't entirely in vain, because Nora saw the motion and moved forward, her expression filled with concern. Dragging her chair on the ground, she winced at the unintentional screeching sound it made when the furniture scraped the floor on its way to get as close as possible to the speedster's bedside. Making it, she gently took her father's hand between her own while carefully avoiding disturbing the IV.
"Hey, Caitlin said you shouldn't try to move too much," she said, "you've been out for a full day."
Damn, that long? Anxiety rose in Barry's mind and constricted his chest. No wonder his daughter seemed so disturbed; things must've been bad considering how speedsters could usually regenerate broken bones in a few hours. The CSI wasn't an expert in the art of dying, but the last thing he remembered before going under sure felt like he was. The simple fact of breathing at this very moment was requesting way more effort than it should be.
"I'm sorry I scared you, I didn't want to," weakly said Barry, barely getting to the end of his first full sentence since waking up as the air just felt so heavy, and speaking was just so damn hard. The hero had a feeling he now knew how alpinists feel when they're so high in the mountains that oxygen is incredibly thin.
"I can't lose you, not now, not ever," tearfully answered Nora with her emotions on a roller coaster, going from one extreme to another, "you were dying in my arms and-"
"You won't lose me again," he promised, "we'll find a way to stop this crisis."
Shaking her head, Nora let go of her father's hand, "you can't make such promises, and you know it. What if I can't save you? What if-"
Closing his eyes again and taking a few, short, and difficult breathes, Barry barely heard everything that followed. She was right. So far, despite all the things he changed in the timeline, the article about him going missing hadn't changed a bit. Maybe his destiny was sealed, perhaps his death was a fixed point in time like his mother's.
The thought had his stomach aching.
"No, I can't," he admitted in the middle of Nora's unending speech, which prompted his daughter to look straight back at him with widening eyes. Her dad had always been so optimistic and so comforting; she never thought she would hear these harsh words coming out of him, even if they all knew it was the truth.
"But, Nora," continued Barry, slowly, "if I'm to never come back to you and your mother, I want you to know that I couldn't have asked for a better and stronger daughter. You're slowly becoming a great hero and I'm proud of you. When you'll be back to your time, no matter what, remember that your dad will always love you and always be proud of the person you became."
Carefully listening, the youngster speedsters teared up and nodded.
"I love you too, dad," she whispered, almost choking on her emotions.
She wasn't going to let him die; she was going to fight 'till her last breath if she had to. She wasn't going to allow Barry to disappear in the crisis. That was a promise even if she had to give her own life in the crisis to save her father and ensure she would grow up with The Flash. If that was what it took, so be it.
As she watched her tired father slowly go back to sleep, a dark thought crossed her mind. What if dying in the crisis was already her destiny? What if her mother knew about it and that's why Iris chose to suppress her daughter's powers and keep it a secret from her? The most terrifying part of it was that it meant Nora wasn't going to succeed….
That was, unless, she could change that.
"You're going to be ok, dad, no matter the cost," she whispered to Barry's sleeping form.
THE END
A/N: there you go, what did you think? Leave a comment, always appreciated :)
Sorry it took a few extra days and I hope it doesn't feel too rushed since last week had been way, way crazier than anticipated. If you're not on twitter, the last part is about a theory I expressed a few weeks ago; I believe it's possible Nora will die in the crisis and future Iris knew it will happen and that's why she's been trying so, so hard to keep her daughter from having speed and trying to be a hero. What do you think?
Started working on the next Zero Hour chapters, should be back either by the end of next week or the following friday, stay tuned and HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!