I'm really sorry about this after the finale. Lord, I am crushed. But the angst must continue...at all costs.
Enjoy!
This time Barry didn't stop until they'd reached the city limits, a cliff near the water that was covered in measly, near-dead grass. He threw Eliza down and she rolled, stopping just short of the edge.
"What have you done to me?" shouted some combination of the two Barrys, both fighting for dominance, eyes now hot with some combination of lightning and tears. Every emotion, it seemed, now enveloped him, deafening him, muffling all thought; he could no longer tell if the V9 was working in his bloodstream or not, if this was a high or withdrawal.
"Please," Eliza begged again, nursing an elbow but not daring to rise from the ground. Barry could see whitecaps in the distance, on the water he'd once torn across. "I'm sorry."
"You're not sorry."
"You're not well."
She created us, came the familiar voice. She created me. Now you it's your responsibility to end this.
"Just let me go, and I'll try to help you get better," Eliza continued. "We can both…we can help each other be better."
"Funny," Barry said. "This little voice in my head is telling me to kill you. Is that what it told you, that night? To kill me?"
Desperation, icy-cold, rushed through him.
"You're supposed to help people," Eliza said.
"How am I supposed to do that, now that I've tasted what real power is?" Barry said, voice cracking. "How am I supposed to do that when—when I'm so slow—when I know that I'm weak and that I can be so fast and so strong, so strong—"
"This is making you weak! Listen to yourself, please!"
Do it, get rid of her.
He looked at her, looked at her horrified, bloody face, tried frenziedly to pinpoint the familiar surge of rage—
He found terror.
In that miniscule second of control, he forced himself to flee, forced himself back to the only place he knew might help. He was running on empty, crashing, his body unwilling to retain its integrity, so his entrance to the lab was clumsy. He went straight for the medical bay where Caitlin and Cisco had manufactured the V9. Caitlin had formulas and equipment and everything he might have needed, but he was too clumsy.
He would never be able to make the V9 in time.
Frustrated, quaking, he slammed a rack of test tubes to the ground. They shattered at his feet. He ripped the mask from his head, feeling constricted, watching as a shower of sweat from his hair splattered the work station. The sound of shattering, too, pierced his eardrums and ignited a pain so fierce he thought he must be bleeding from the inside out.
That was when he heard them.
No, thought the slow Barry Allen. The rational one. Not them. Get away from them.
No, answered the powerful Barry Allen, who at once knew exactly what he needed to do.
Deliberately, he turned around to face them—Caitlin and Cisco.
"You're here late," Caitlin began, crossing her arms. "Any particular reason?"
They know. They know everything.
Barry gave the tiniest shake of the head, to try and dispel the warring voices in his mind, to no avail. "I need something."
"Where's Eliza?" Cisco asked. He had something in his hand, partially hidden behind his back. Barry tried to focus on it, but found his vision was blurry.
Don't tell them.
"I need a favor."
You need a favor? That's the best you could come up with?
"Shut up."
"Barry?" Caitlin took a slow, cautious step forward.
Talking to yourself. Not good, Flash.
"You need to make more V9." Barry held his ground, beginning to vibrate. "You two are the only ones who know how, yes?"
In the middle of the floor, Caitlin halted.
"Barry—"
"I need it now," he said. He could feel his voice drop, though he suddenly felt detached, like he was witnessing a hallucination. He struggled to regain his grip, but it slipped away from him, and he dipped below the surface of white-hot necessity. "Make it now."
"Where's Eliza?" Cisco repeated, more firmly this time.
They're not going to agree. You know what you have to do.
When he didn't respond, Caitlin's lips grew thin. Cisco now was the one to step forward, coming into line with her and then stepping slightly in front of her, as if he too knew what was going on in Barry's head.
"It's already all over the news, you know. All over social media. The Flash going rogue. Footage of you beating Eliza to a pulp in the middle of the street. A powerless Eliza who is begging you to show mercy."
"She doesn't deserve mercy after what she did." The words were out of Barry's mouth before he could stop them. In fact, he couldn't stop anything. Couldn't stop the vibrating that was so intense now it snapped electricity off of his skin. Couldn't stop the influx of ire building beneath that dynamic exterior. "V9. Now."
"I'm so sorry," Caitlin said. "I'm sorry that we didn't see what was happening to you sooner. You're not in your right mind. And if you think that we're going to enable this, that we're going to make more V9 for you…"
Barry narrowed his eyes. "Then what?"
Caitlin's lip twitched, her face hardening in determination. "Then you're a damn fool."
The snap within Barry might as well have been audible. His ears filled with a rushing sound, his lungs seized with uncontrollable distress. He wasn't fast enough, but he was still fast. His hands were wrapped in the material of her shirt, knuckles white. They were yanking her up, throwing her backward.
The clang of her hitting a metal table was too loud. It broke through the haze for an instant. He turned to her, watched her groan from a heap on the floor, prepared himself to run at her—to help or to continue his attack, he couldn't be sure—
Then a familiar whirr sounded behind him, a high-pitched whine.
"Stop right there."
Barry turned slowly back around to face Cisco. The device he had been hiding behind his back now stared Barry in the face.
"A cold gun?" Barry sneered. "You brought out a cold gun?"
"Take a step back right now," Cisco said. Some distant part of Barry recognized this look on Cisco's face: the same dangerous look he'd had when he'd leveled the fake cold gun at Leonard Snart, the same terrified yet determined look he'd had leveling the tranq gun at Zoom. "I will shoot you."
"I believe that you'll pull the trigger," Barry said. "What I don't believe is that you'll hit me."
Cisco didn't flinch. "One more chance. Come back to us, Barry."
The silenced, slow Barry started to scream. His muscles vibrated faster.
"No, I'm giving you one more chance. The V9. Now."
It was too easy. He saw Cisco's finger tighten around the trigger, saw the gathering blue of cold at the barrel of the gun. The blast of ice came at him and he dodged. A cold, feral laugh burst out of him, but in his moment of delirium, Cisco fired again. This time the stream grazed his arm, setting him alight with zinging pain. The sensation pulled him back to focus, and now he was alight, a body of electricity, his blood so hot it could scald.
He zipped forward, too fast for mere humans, and the cold gun was out of Cisco's hands and clattering across the cortex in a second. The engineer made a move as if to duck away, but Barry was on him in a second, the beast awakened—one hand went to the man's jacket, rushing him back and pinning him against a wall.
The man no longer had a name; he was a stranger, an obstacle, an unwilling adversary in Barry's plan. He didn't understand, this stranger, how fiercely the desperation burned in Barry's throat, how strongly the fact pounded in his head that there were no longer limits. Barry would make him understand, make him understand that this was serious, that this was far past a silly game, that he was willing to do anything—
The face dematerialized and rematerialized as Zoom, the one that couldn't be beaten, not without extra speed, the one he needed speed for. A monster with a thousand faces, haunting him around every corner, in every dream: the same monster with the voice that snapped at Barry's heels like a whip.
He doesn't understand how much you need this. Make him understand.
"Barry Allen, stop!"
The shrillness of the cry behind him, and perhaps the use of his full name, gave him pause. The red clouding his vision dissipated slightly, and along with it the image of Zoom. Unfocused, he took in the face of the man in front of him, a face dripping with acidic terror. Eyes wide.
"Please, Barry."
Cisco Ramon.
More red unclouded, and Barry realized, with a whoosh in the pit of his stomach, that his free hand, positioned inches above Cisco's chest, was vibrating fast enough to blur. Fast enough to kill.
The world and all of its pieces came crashing back at once. The horror of realization banished the voice that had taken him over, the one that demanded strength, and in its place was a weakness that shook him to his core. Petrified, he released the hand pinning Cisco to the wall and watched the man slump to the floor. The man no longer looked at him, his eyes glassy with fright and tears.
Caitlin said something else behind him, still on the floor, but he didn't hear. A ringing filled his ears again, but it was different this time. This time he knew it wasn't from the V9, or V9 withdrawal, or anything to do with the artificial speed demon it had created. This time it was from the world collapsing around him, from Barry Allen emerging out of the rubble of an explosion.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. He didn't know if either one of his friends heard the words. As soon as he said them, he took off.
He was running, running through the city, running through the maze of buildings and streets he had once found so familiar. They felt distant, now that he had betrayed their occupants. He needed to put as much space as possible between himself and the city, between himself and Cisco and Caitlin, who had looked at him with betrayal that he knew now he deserved. He ran, fueled by fear and shame and an urgency to escape.
He was only stopped when something heavy and metal latched itself around his leg. He lurched, his leg held back by whatever now encircled it, and he hit the pavement hard. The speed was siphoned out in a second, as was everything else, leaving only dark.
Continue to cry with me. Forever. I swear I didn't purposely time this to coincide with finale. It just happened.
Thanks for reading! Please consider leaving a comment on your way out. Believe it or not, we're almost to the end! We still have some things to sort out first, though.
Till next time,
Penn