Pink Hollow I'm putting your Arrow prompt in my story Every Night. It'll probably be up in the next day or so.
I will try my best to make you cry.
Prompt from Soul Sear. Barry dies protecting Iris.
Iris wasn't sure what she could do. Eddie was trying his best to comfort her, but there was nothing he could do. He would never be able to do anything to fix this.
He had been . . . gone for three weeks, and the pain had only gotten worse. She had never been away from him this long. Even when he was away for college they talked on the phone almost every night, and he visited every weekend that he could, and she drove up there whenever she had the chance. Even when he was in his coma she visited him every day. She could hold his hand and talk to him even if he couldn't talk back. He was always there, but now . . . all she had now was a cold stone with his name on it.
~_~ Three weeks earlier ~_~
Barry walked into the precinct just like he would any other day: late.
"Allen!" Captain Singh shouted.
"Sorry." Barry winced. "My alarm didn't go off." Because I accidently ran into it and broke it into a million pieces at the speed of sound last night. He mentally added.
"Murder on Fifty Fourth Street. C'mon Allen." Eddie said walking by.
"I'll be right there. I just need to grab some evidence bags . . . and you're already gone. OK." Barry walked up to his lab, grabbed his stuff, and headed to Fifty Fourth Street.
"You eaten today Bear?" Joe asked when he arrived.
"That bad, huh?" Barry took another step and saw it.
The body was frozen with its face contorted into a scream and scorch marks surrounded it.
"Could this be Snart and Rory?" Eddie asked. "They escaped in transit."
"No, there guns cancel each other out, and the guns were destroyed. The fire didn't melt the ice." Barry explained.
"So you're telling me that we're dealing with someone who can produce fire proof ice?" Joe asked. His list of things that should be impossible but aren't was growing every day, and he did not like it.
"Yeah."
"Hey, I'm rather new to all of this, are you saying it's a metahuman? Should we be like consulting the Flash or something?" Eddie asked.
Barry and Joe stared at him. He had saved Barry's life as the Flash, but asking for his help was a big step for the man.
"He came to save one life and saved a lot of people. I think he told Iris the truth when he said he attacked me because he was affected by another metahuman." Eddie watched them to judge their reactions. He was confused by Barry's little smirk, but Joe just nodded his head.
"We are thinking it's a meta, but I think the Flash is already working on it. He's fairly good at knowing when metahumans are causing trouble." Joe told Eddie.
Barry scraped a sample of the ice and gasped quietly in pain. He barely touched it and got frostbite.
"Don't touch the body." Barry told them as Eddie squatted by Barry. He showed them his finger that had come in contact with the ice.
"That happened from brief contact. No wonder this guy was screaming."
"I'm going to take this to STAR Labs, see if they can help me make sense of this one."
The ice metahuman's DNA was already in the Central City criminal database, so finding her identity wasn't difficult. Finding her location was a different story. Even with the facial recognition software Felicity had given them, it took a long time.
"Barry, Barry, come here." Caitlyn called.
Barry ran over.
"Marie Johnson's at Jitters. So is Iris."
"I think you mean Elsa." Cisco said.
"No, Cisco, I really don't."
"Ice Queen?"
"No."
He ran as fast as he could, ignoring Cisco, and reached Jitters in record time, even for him. Eddie, Iris, and the ice meta were the only ones in the coffee shop.
"On the floor, now." Marie commanded.
Barry ran directly in front of Iris.
"Oh, look who decided to join the party. The scarlet speedster." Barry ran towards her and tried to hit her, but where his fist made contact with her face his hand froze. He tried to vibrate quickly enough to melt it, but he couldn't.
In the time it took him to figure out it was impossible to free himself of the ice, Johnson had turned toward Iris.
"Rather protective aren't you, Flash." Her smile was sickly sweet with an evil glint in her eyes.
She blasted ice toward Iris. Barry knew automatically there was no way his was going to be able to move Iris in time. The ice travelled too quickly.
"Gah!" He exclaimed as the ice hit him in the back, but none of it reached Iris and Eddie had just enough time to draw his weapon and fire before she could prepare another icy explosion.
The metahuman fell to the ground dead, but Barry was beginning to realize that Johnson would not be the only metahuman to die that night.
He tried to vibrate, but the thick layer of ice still covered him, and he could feel his power fading. Barry was growing weak. He fell to the ground with a clunk, and the ice still did not even crack.
Iris fell to her knees beside him. "How do we help you? Can we take you to a hospital? Do you have your own medical place or-or something?"
Barry stayed silent he knew he did not have the speed left in him to disguise his voice. He did not want her to find out this way. He didn't want anything to happen this way, but now it was unavoidable.
Silent tears started running down her cheeks. "There's nothing we can do is there?" Iris realized.
He shook his head to the best of his ability and looked toward Eddie who was standing a few feet away unable to accept the situation in front of him.
"Can you talk?" She looked down at him. "You can't vibrate your voice, and you still don't want me to know who you are." She guessed. She always could read him.
He moved his a hair up and down. He looked over to Eddie again and tried to motion him over with his eyes. Eddie seemed to get the message and knelt by his girlfriend to offer a little comfort. Her tears melted bits of the ice as they fell, but it was too little too late.
Barry's breathing became even more labored. "I'm sorry, Iris." He said with his normal voice.
"No!" Iris yelled. Barry could tell Eddie didn't recognize his voice, he hadn't really expected him to. He and Iris had known each other forever, and Eddie hadn't known him very well or very long.
Iris's sobs grew. "No!"
Eddie finally understood, and became motionless. He had suggested getting help from the Flash. This was his fault.
"No one's fault." Barry spoke with difficulty. He directed the words at both of them.
Iris grabbed at his hand even though it was still covered in metahuman ice.
She turned to Eddie. "Leave. I need to be alone with him."
Eddie drew in a shaky breath. He knew he would lose Iris to Barry, but he never thought and definitely never hoped that it would be on his death bed. The look in Barry's eyes told him to continue to be there for her. Ever the loyal friend, Barry wanted someone to be there for her when he couldn't be. He would do that even if Iris was now realizing that how she felt about Eddie wasn't really love.
She needed a friend, and Barry swore to himself that he would take care of her as a friend just as Barry had. Still he gave her alone time with the man that had truly held her heart and always would. Her heart would be buried with him.
"Iris, I'm so sorry." Barry said.
"No apologies. I will not waste my last moments with my best friend listening to him apologize like he always spent too much time doing." She shook her head and tears fell from her face.
Iris leaned down to give him their first and last kiss.
"Goodbye. I love you, Iris." Barry exhaled one last time, and he was gone.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, No, NO, NO, NO!" Hervoicecontinuallyrose. "Don't leave me. Please, Barry. Come back to me. I need you. I love you."
That was how her father found his kids. Iris was draped over his body. Her tears had long since ran out.
It was a cold day, but Iris was too numb from pain and loss to feel it as she sat at her best friend's grave. She shouldn't be going through this. They were only twenty five. He wasn't supposed to leave her. Now they would never get the future he had seen. The one where things were no longer awkward between them, and they were still best friends. She wanted it. They almost had it, but it was ripped from them.
Maybe that future would have been better than he had described since she had basically broken up with Eddie in favor of him. The timing had never been on their side, and now it never would be. She had lost her chance. She had lost her everything.
Iris felt someone sit down beside her and didn't bother to look and see who it was.
"Go away, Eddie. I know you're trying to help me, but this is something I need to do alone." She felt a hand brush against her face wiping away a tear. Iris hadn't been able to cry very much since that night, and that was another stab wound to her heart. What kind of person couldn't cry when the most important person in their life died?
"I know, Baby Girl, I know. I miss him too." Her father wrapped his arm around her. She leaned into his embrace.
She just stared at the gravestone.
"I love you too, Bear."
Bartholomew "Barry" Allen
A Light That Shone Through the Darkest Night
A Hero