Chapter 8, Six Weeks
Iris surveyed Barry's apartment. It wasn't like the cozy two bedroom place she shared with her best friend, Linda. Barry's place was spacious with hardwood floors, recessed studio lights, bay windows, two bedrooms and a nice long hall. Light and air flowed through it making it an easy, cheerful place to be in.
It was beautiful She'd helped Barry with some of the decorating, creating a whole pin board of ideas when working on her thesis got to be too much, helping him select plants, art and rugs. Iris felt as comfortable here as she felt in her own place, even now.
Now she surveyed the space considering the chores that needed to be done.
There was a stack of mail, about a week's worth, sitting on the table next to the door; his answering machine flashed seven messages -only Barry Allen had a home phone and an answering machine in 2015 and his plants needed watering. She kept her eyes away from the mantle and the far living room wall. Both were decorated with pictures of them, pictures of a life that was over.
After the wake, Linda had brought her here. Drunk and exhausted Iris had collapsed into Barry's bed, falling asleep in seconds. She'd woken to a dry mouth, headache, a glass of water and two aspirins on the bedside table. She'd gulped down the water, taken the aspirins and listened to the sound of Linda getting ready for work.
When the other woman had knocked on the bedroom door, Iris had feigned sleep until she left.
Linda was already doing plenty by staying here at Barry's, with her. She didn't want to distract the fledgling journalist from work as well, the other woman hadn't even completed a full year at CCPN. Iris didn't want her best friend worrying or distracted at work, not at her dream job.
Iris picked up the stack of mail. Electric bill, gas bill, phone bill, junk, junk, she froze at the next:
A large, thick, creamy colored envelope addressed with a fancy curling script and wedding bells, addressed to Allen and West. The return address brought a lump to her throat: Canon Photographers. Her hands started to shake, and she dropped the envelope into the wastebasket.
She knew there were appointments that would have to be canceled, but she couldn't deal with that now.
Instead, she hit the play button his answering machine.
"Hi, this message is for Mr. Barry Allen, I'm calling from the Garfield Conservatory. You contacted us about hosting your wedding on May 12th, 2016-" Iris hit the fast forward button as tears sprang to her eyes. She sighed with relief when the next message was about a dental appointment; she could call and cancel that. She wrote down the number, and the third message started. Another wedding photographer, the message was short, finished before she could hit fast forward. The fourth was also about the wedding, as was the fifth and the sixth and even the seventh.
Iris found herself rooted to the spot, listening as friendly, chipper people offered to help arrange a future that no longer existed. Listened as she started to tremble, as her grief surged, heart breaking with this fresh reminder of future charred beyond recognition in a matter of hours. Each message calling up the agony sitting just below the surface of a skin stretched too thin. Pulling at her until it poured forth in a keening wail.
They had both been eager to plan the wedding. The date, that was easy, May 12th the date of their prom, their first kiss, the day she'd confessed she still loved him seven years later and he said he'd still felt the same. The day they'd come back to this very same apartment and made love for the first time, the day he proposed. The perfect date for a spring wedding.
"Oh God." Why had they waited so long? Why had she ever thought it was ok to delay until after college? She could have switched schools, canceled her gap year, finished grad school faster. Why had she ever waited? Why had she ever believed she had time?
"Oh, Barry."
She sobbed his name and sank to floor, one word expressing so much grief,
Francine came by with lunch and found Iris asleep on the floor exhausted by her misery. She let her mother coax her into eating a meal she barely tasted and then bed. The last thing she heard as she drifted into sleep was her mother's voice, heavy with sadness as she made the first of many phone calls.
The next, two weeks passed in a haze of grief. She spent more time alone in Barry's apartment than any of her family and friends wanted. She couldn't work. The thought of her meta-human blog her ill. She couldn't imagine putting together a pitch, contacting magazine publishers or looking for story ideas. Her mind couldn't fathom it. After a week she tried going to Jitters for work, but Barry's ghost was there waiting for her.
She could see him, sitting at his favorite table, savoring the warmth of the late afternoon sun on a fall day as it warmed his lean frame, a Flash and apple turnover sitting on the table before him. The same Barry she had always known, long and lean with the same dark hair and green eyes, but a man rather than a boy, handsome and charming, her man.
Barry's ghost was everywhere in Jitters. She couldn't just curl up with her memories and let them hurt her if she was there to work. Iris never made it past the front door.
She'd never known that a life could be completely consumed by pain. She'd scoffed at the idea of dying from heartbreak, but when you woke sick and crying every morning spent the day holding back tears, went to bed the same and woke to do it all again, well it didn't seem so impossible.
She wore his favorite pullover, slept in sheets rapidly losing the mingling of their two scents, and tried not to cry. Linda spent the nights there with her, being a true best friend and Wally came to visit during the day when he could, Joe came by in the evenings.
At the end of two weeks, Henry came and packed up Barry's things. Iris wanted to help, but she couldn't. It had been Barry's apartment, but their home as a couple.
They'd first made love in his apartment. She could still recall his lips, his touch, the flush of heat through her body as his hands moved over her skin, the unexpected, but not unpleasant stretch of him inside and the way her pleasure had rung through the halls unmatched by anything she'd experience before enriched -not by any special expertise, but by the depth of feeling they had for each other.
On Saturday mornings they cuddled on his couch and plotted their future together. In the evenings after a long day at Jitters, she'd be at the kitchen table writing pitches for articles. When she felt too tired, too drained to write Barry was there to keep her company or bring her a cup of coffee to keep her going. "The world news Iris West's voice." He'd said that to her after a series of especially painful rejections.
They'd spent a weekend in his kitchen making ravioli from scratch, pasta and all. It hadn't been perfect, but it had been made with love.
She could sit at his dining room table, close her eyes and see his warm smile, eyes crinkling at the corners with happiness. There had been times when she'd teased him about the crow's feet destined to grow around those eyes, but she loved that smile.
She couldn't help Henry pull it all apart.
So instead Henry sent several boxes of Barry's thing to the apartment she shared with Linda.
Francine came by daily, made sure she ate and showered and she did eat and shower because she didn't want her mother to fuss. She watched What Dreams May Come and cried. She watched The Constant Gardener and felt a cathartic longing when Justin Quayle was finally executed by the same men who'd murdered his wife. She watched Singing in the Rain hoping to feel Barry's presence and was angry when she didn't.
Iris fought with her mother that day.
She uploaded every picture of Barry from her phone to her computer, sent them to the drug store to be printed with duplicate copies. She backed up every picture she had of him or the two of them together to an external hard drive. She had four voicemails from him, Iris recorded them into one long message and played them on loop until she fell asleep at night. She did all this while wearing his favorite shirt and wrapped in his too big bathrobe though his scent had long since faded from them.
When she went to the drug store to pick up her pictures, Iris dressed in all black –not that it meant anything anymore- and glared at everyone who spoke to her or looked at her.
The cashier at the drugstore, a cheerful young woman with a pleasant smile, commented that the guy in her pictures was cute and asked if Barry was her fiance.
"He's dead," Iris growled before snatching her pictures and felt some satisfaction at the devastation on her face. She tried to take off her engagement ring, put it on a chain when she got home, but couldn't.
She spent a lot of time asleep and chalked it up to depression.
She spoke to her family and friends, but they all seemed so unbothered Iris kept her misery to herself. She talked to Henry and sometimes her mother. Henry, because he was about as miserable as she was and she couldn't bring him down any further. She talked to her mother because well, her mother was a therapist and had been depressed for years herself.
She received a card from Malcolm after two weeks telling her to hang in there, and he called her once a week just to see how she was. He didn't try to pressure her into doing anything or being anyway. He just checked on her, it was nice. She didn't mind talking to him about Barry. He and Barry had been casual acquaintances. She couldn't hurt him with her memories, unlike Wally who thought of Barry like a brother or Joe who'd been delighted when they'd learned that Barry would officially become a part of their family.
A 30,000 check came from the life insurance company. Francine paid her bills out of it.
Cisco appeared on her doorstep. His hair lank, face gaunt, circles under his eyes -heavy and black, mouth a tight miserable line. Guilt surged, he'd meant what he'd said when he called Barry best friend. He'd found some of Barry's things at the lab and decided to bring them over.
She invited him to have a seat, talk to her about Barry. Listened to him talk about The Flash and enjoyed it, memories that weren't hers, memories that didn't hurt.
"He was my good friend," Cisco finished.
"Best friend," she corrected gently and was surprised to see him smile. "Caitlin really was just trying to help wasn't she?"
Iris looked away as she asked that.
"Yeah. Barry would be in a lot of pain sometimes, broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, lacerations. He wasn't in any danger, but it was hard to watch-"
"-I remember."
And she did, Barry unexpectedly insisting that they stay in some nights, or cuddling up to him only to have him wince away and blame any injury on clumsiness. She'd almost started to worry and then it mysteriously it stopped.
Guilt washed over her.
"I owe Caitlin an apology."
"She'll understand."
She wrote Caitlin a long email apologizing for taking her anger out on the other woman.
Caitlin wrote back: 'My fiance died in the particle accelerator accident. I know how hard it is, I know how you feel.'
The guilt she'd been feeling surged at that response. Caitlin had known Barry for two years, been his main doctor during the coma, she would never hurt Barry. Cisco and Caitlin really did just want to help. The guilt was a pleasant distraction from her grief and Iris started planning something she could do to thank the two scientists.
At the end of that first month, Iris looked at herself in the mirror and saw her chin and cheekbones standing out at sharp angles, her color ashen, and hair that looked like straw. She'd been sleeping too much, not eating enough, not exercising and not getting enough sunlight.
She considered doing a face mask, deep conditioning her hair, taking a walk. She looked like she was falling apart. No wonder her mother came to see her every day.
Iris told herself to shower, dress, do that face mask and a miserable angry part of demanded to know why and then proceeded to tear through every answer that she had. Reminding her that there was no point, that nothing felt good or right anymore. Barry was dead and there was nothing she could do about it. Making herself look perfect wouldn't bring Barry back, just like it hadn't helped her mother when she was a kid. Barry would always be dead and she would always be miserable.
By the time that miserable angry part of her was done Iris was crying as if she'd only just found out. She put on Barry's favorite top, wrapped herself in his robe, plugged in her earbuds crawled into bed and put on her recording of his voice.
She tried it again in two weeks and actually managed to eat breakfast, which she threw-up. The same thing happened the next day and the day after that. The third day she threw up her lunch too. When she heaved up the breakfast bar Linda coaxed her into eating on the fourth morning the other woman looked at her with a worried frown.
"Iris, I don't know how else to say this so I'm just going to spit it out. Are you pregnant?"
"What?"
"You've been throwing up, you're tired all the time and you look terrible."
"Gee thanks. I'm just nauseated from not eating right."
"You haven't been in our stash." The two friends shared a collection of sanitary napkins, tampons, and panty liners, Linda was right she hadn't been in it. Barry had been gone for more than a month and she hadn't had a period.
"I'm stressed, stress changes your period."
Linda took a deep breath.
"Let me see your phone."
It took them several minutes to find her mobile. She'd let the battery run down and misplaced the charger. Linda went into the living room and plugged it in there setting it down on the coffee table.
"Linda I'm sure it's nothing. I don't want you to be late for work." Iris sat down on the couch, and Linda sat down beside her.
"I already told them I was coming in late today."
"Alright," Iris said with a sigh.
"I know how unhappy you are. I see it, but if you are pregnant you have to face it sooner or later and sooner is always better than late with pregnancy"
"Except I'm not. We were always careful; we always used condoms."
"You know condoms aren't 100% and I know you aren't on the pill."
"Well, we didn't just use condoms. I tracked my period; we didn't, you know, have intercourse if I could get pregnant."
"Never, not even once?"
"No, we-"
-Except for May 12th, the day Barry proposed had fallen into that fertile period. She'd wanted him so badly. They'd used condoms, but as Linda had pointed out, they weren't 100%.
"Oh my God. Oh my God." Iris pressed her fingers to her lips.
"What is it?"
"My period was already a few days late, before- before everything. I-I just forgot about it."
Linda put an arm around her shoulders, and they both stared at her phone waiting. When that first sliver of red showed in the battery, Linda snatched up the phone powering it on, and Iris gripped her friend's arm.
It had been a month and a half since Barry...and she had already been late. That was two and half-months. Stress didn't do that.
She thought back over the past six weeks, the morning nausea, the constant state of exhaustion, her breast- she touched them gently now over her shirt- they were tender...Iris felt a strange crawling sensation in the back of her head, and her shoulders began to rise, meeting the heavy sense of dread settling over her.
Her phone finished booting, and she watched Linda's thumb come down on the little flower icon for the period tracker.
"76 days late."
Iris felt her eyes go wide and then she started to cry. Linda's arms came around her around her.
"It will be ok. We're going to take care of you."
At that moment Iris West felt many things, but none of them was ok.
A/N- Alright so we're finally getting to the meat of part one. I'm super excited about the remaining take a moment to comment and subscribe if you like this fic so you don't miss an update.