A quiet devastation reigns on Infantino Street.
Barry kneels on the pavement, shaking so hard he's afraid he might drop Iris, but his hands are gentle and sure even when the rest of him is not. A monster begs for release as he howls in tormented silence, unable to make a sound. Leaning over her, crushed under the weight of the world without Iris West, he keens.
They're fourteen when they walk through the woods, her plunging fearlessly into the darkness of overhanging branches ahead, he trailing after, and he stares at her as much as the trees, for she is more beautiful than any of the scenery.
"Iris—Iris," he gasps, suffocating. "Iris, please—"
They're sixteen when he first wants to kiss her, sitting beside her on a bench at the beach, sunset warming their soles, and she rests a hand over his, and he intertwines their fingers and holds on.
Tracy is there and Barry makes a broken sound, please-help, desperate like an animal with an unfixable injury, oh-God-please-help–
They're seven when Tony punches him in the face hard enough to give him his first shiner and he sobs in the locker room until Iris finds him and sits with him until he can speak.
"Barry—I'm—" Tracy flounders for something to say.
They're thirty-one in some other world, waking with laughter in their chests, a kiss and a hand on each hip, and love like permanent summer in the air between them.
"I'm so sorry."
They're thirteen when she takes him to the zoo and shows him the lions and he thinks she is like them, a lioness, a queen, a magnificent, unshakable deity.
He sobs until he has to bury his face against her belly and it's cooling, oh, God, oh, God, oh—
They're twenty-two and he's holding up his CCPD badge and beaming, laughing and all-but crying, Iris I did it on his tongue and Iris' hands pressed to his bowed shoulders.
Tracy doesn't try to move him. The comm line is absolutely silent. Grief drains out of him until Barry goes as still and quiet as her.
They're nineteen and her teeth catch around an eraser as she pores over a college textbook for Philosophy and when-will-they-ever crosses Barry's mind but he would happily sit with her on the chair-big-enough-for-two for all eternity if he could.
Lay him to rest, too, he entreats, fading like gray, sinking closer to the Earth. Let him fade away.
They're seventeen when Iris brings home a boyfriend whose name Barry forgot and whose face Barry could not go to sleep without thinking about because for the first time he thought I'm not her forever.
He kneels low, Iris in his arms, and refuses to let go. The Earth could shatter and he would not flinch; a god could march down from its quarters and demand surrender and he would never relent. Or maybe it would rise up – he can't imagine a hell more complete than this.
He tries to stand. He does not succeed.
They're thirty-five in some other world and she has his head in her lap and her tears on his face as he holds onto her, wherever-he-can-reach, anchored to the floor of the Earth one-last-time before he closes his eyes forever.
Tracy calls someone. She's crying. Barry doesn't ask who she turns to; he cannot make out any of the words she says.
They're ninety in some other world and she's radiant by the window, watching sunset, and he joins her in a chair that creaks a little, and he looks sixty years younger, but his hand is as firm as hers when he reaches out to cradle it between them.
Sometime Later, some indeterminate proof-the-world-is-still-turning later, Julian and HR arrive. They're running as fast as they can across the field. Julian is already crying, tear tracks on his face.
They're fifty-two in some other world and their tornado twins are off chasing their namesake and he is sitting on the porch with his forever-and-always watching the slow-building summer storm like an old friend walking toward them.
Barry's hands are numb from how hard he's holding onto her. He thinks, You're hurting her and forces his hands to unclench.
They're twenty-five and he's sitting at Jitters with her listening to her talk about The Flash with bright eyes and wonder, enchanted with a superhero she knows more intimately than she could ever dream until-he-unmasks and he aches and aches and aches to tell her.
He does not drop her. Neither Tracy nor Julian nor HR try to take her away.
They're forty-eight in some other world when he doesn't come home and she finds him with a flashlight on her phone in an alley, badly beaten from a reconnaissance-gone-wrong, and drags an arm that is too heavy for her over her shoulders, and somehow carries him home.
His ears are ringing too loudly for him to hear any of them. The world speeds up, and then slows down.
They're sixty-one in some other world and Paw Paw is there to welcome their first grandchild.
He wishes he could live in this slowed down state, most-days, but with time frozen his only distraction is the back-breaking soul-crushing weight in his arms. He finds himself pinned with Promethean intent to his burden, unable to move forward, let go, or even stand still.
They're twenty-six when they share their first kiss and Barry will never forget how it felt to cradle her face between his hands on a sandy shore when they both tasted a little like sea-salt and a lot like love in the last-hours of a once-perfect day.
He stands. They give him room. Iris sags in his grip, and he readjusts it, and cradles her closer to his own warmth to keep her keep-her-keep-her-just-a-little-longer—
They're one-hundred-and-three in some other world and he dances like lightning in the field while she watches, smiling beatifically towards him when he looks, living a life of divine revelation.
Joe's heavy crunching footsteps precede him. Barry feels any strength he may have fooled himself into having wane.
They're eleven when Joe joins them in the living room on-a-different-night and Iris sits on Joe's lap and Barry sits beside them with Joe's arm slung around his shoulders and a beaten-up copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban unspooling before them in Joe's deep, soothing tone.
Joe's footsteps halt. Barry turns to him, gift-in-arms, and—
They're thirty-three in some other world and Barry nuzzles Iris' pregnant belly affectionately as she tangles a hand in his hair, and keeps him.
His throat closes up and he cannot make a sound even approaching apology. Joe's expression states none are needed because the reason to apologize has expired like an abbreviated last-breath.
He's four-hundred-and-eighty-two and she's just shy of twenty-nine when they meet in some other world and he is old and slow and she is young and light and catches him in her orbit, showing her his life, and together they are star-crossed lovers caught in a time-traveling affair.
Joe steps forward and like a fellow soldier slides his arms underneath her. They're standing close and one must surrender, and it feels like the last thing Barry will ever do, to-let-go, and so he holds onto the fraction-of-a-second between for as long as he can.
He's two-hundred-and-one and she's approaching forty-three in some other world and they-have-a-happy-life-together, like two flowers in a field, needing only the most fleeting of contacts to recognize home, and cherish its kinship, her chin on his shoulder, his hands on her hip, swaying, swaying.
Iris slides from Barry's grip into her father's. Without her, Barry's arms feel catastrophically heavier. He slides towards the center of the Earth, overcome.
They're nineteen when she cuddles up to him in the back of Joe's car post-fireworks just-like-always but he's in a nostalgic mood and enjoys it more than he should because she is not his.
Julian puts a grounding hand on his shoulder and it is not enough.
They're ten years old when he takes her to the swings and he goes high and she goes higher like she can touch the stars.
Darkness closes in the edges of Barry's vision and somehow he holds that moment, too, that blink between realities, and a final vision sweeps over him:
They're twenty-eight and lying in bed together, and it's late but they stare at each other with solemn patience, and her hand traces constellations down his side, musing, one-last-trek, a trail and world and sense of being they have inhabited together for two years lingering in the air between them, I-hope-we-get-to-be-again.
And then the world falls apart.
. o .
Coda: one week later.
Chin tucked over her head, Barry lies in their bed and cradles a sleeping Iris Ann West, twenty-eight-years-old, and exhales deeply, because he doesn't have to run:
They're twenty-eight years old and he is exactly where he wants to be.