Not My Birthright

He's a quick learner, the kind of kid who notices details that other people miss, even from a young age. As such, the vibrant red tattoo nestled against the ridge of his collarbone catches his fascination early. It's the first color he learns and, according to his smiling mother, the first question he asks: one stubby finger pressed against the mark and his little brow furrowed, saying 'mama' in the same thoughtful, puzzled tone that he'll one day ask all of life's big questions in. His mother scoops him up with a laugh and tells him a story about soul mates and destiny and love. It's a story she'll repeat time and again as he grows up, but he'll never get to hear it as many times as he'd like.

When he's a little older and understands a little better, Barry traces the deep red tattoo studiously, careful fingers smoothing over each of the twelve lines that are as much a part of his skin and his life and his identity as anything else about him (his mother's green eyes, his father's dark hair, his fascination with the way the world works around him.) "How do they work?" he asks his father, time and time again. His dad is a doctor and Barry's sure that he knows absolutely everything.

Everything but this it seems.

When he's six and deemed old enough to mostly understand, his father takes him to their tree house and sits him down for a 'grown up' conversation. Barry's chest hops with excitement, his fingers tapping nervous energy against his knees while Henry explains about soul mates and destiny and love, not unlike his mother has done a dozen times before. And just like he's always done, Barry can't help wanting to know more, to understand, to puzzle and detail out all the pieces of the picture that emblazoned a dopamine symbol against his skin. "But how do they work dad?"

And finally the answer isn't 'I'll explain when you're older'. Not that "I don't know Barry buddy, they just do," is any more satisfying but then his dad starts talking about how he met his mom and Barry's more than a little fascinated. He tells a story about a beautiful young woman in his philosophy class and how he already knew she was his soul mate long before he saw the golden starburst on her side that matched the one on the outside of his left calf.

Barry listens to his father story raptly and in that moment he falls completely in love with someone he doesn't even know: he just knows that he must love them, they must be perfect, because his parents are the best and they're the best together and somewhere out there is his soul mate too. It's a blind and unerring faith that complicates the next 17 years of his life in ways that he cannot begin to imagine (but the worst is yet to come).

Ten months later, a flash of yellow steals into his house in the middle of the night. Crying for help, he finds himself flung into the street and then lightning kills his mother and no matter how many times he tells Officer West what he saw, his father still goes to jail for her death.

It's hard, so very hard, to live without them: without his mother's sunny smiles, his father tousling his hair and call him slugger. He misses their voices and their stories and the warm press of their love all around him. Joe is kind and careful, Iris is bright and outgoing, but they're not his family and it's just not the same. For months he nurses a secret wish: that the lightning hadn't thrown him out, that it had taken him too but every time he thinks that, he finds his fingers lingering over the crest of his clavicle, tracing the mark beneath his shirt while guilt claws his heart. He misses his parents like a constant, gut-wrenching ache, but there's still someone out there who needs him, and it feels selfish to wish he were gone too: what would his soul mate do then?

He lets the little red mark be his driving force, a place to center himself when he misses his parents too much. He reminds himself of the stories they told, the smiles they wore, their twin golden starbursts and their faith that someday he would love someone the same way that they loved each other (and him).

It works out pretty well for a while but he misses his parents more then ever when he realizes he's fallen in love with someone who isn't his soul mate and he doesn't know what to do about it.

He's fifteen and Iris is the most beautiful girl he's ever seen.

She's clever and funny and extroverted in a way that just draws people in. He doesn't understand how she does it, how she manages to be so effortlessly friendly and inviting, but she makes everyone around her feel special and important. She's also brave and kind and, most importantly, she understands and accepts him for who he is (and she believes him, unquestioningly, when he insists that his father is innocent and it's maybe that faith that starts it all in the first place).

But she's not his soul mate and he doesn't know how that's supposed to work. (He had thought maybe she was, for a little while, that maybe his parent's death was some kind of horrible contrivance so that he could know her, and it actually comes as a little relief to learn she isn't. He sees the plum marking when they're fourteen and she wears Joe down enough to let her get a bikini-it's hard to miss the tattoo on the small of her back or the warring relief and regret that crash in his chest).

He's still in love with her though, a feeling that grows and burns and tears at him for years until he finally leaves for college, one year ahead of his age, but still a little too far behind where he could be.

It's easier to forget away at school, where he can separate himself from his past and his feelings and just throw himself into his studies (or so he tells himself, not thinking about the fact that he's chosen to study forensic science with the hopes of one day clearing his father's name).

He goes to classes, gets a job working as a research assistant and he makes friends who don't know about yellow lightning and dead parents, about the adoptive father who cosigned his mountain of student loans or the adoptive sister he's kind of in love with. He even dates now and then, aided by his roommate but he doesn't find anyone that shares his red lines and if he can't have his soul mate, then he wants Iris and anyone else seems pointless.

He doesn't feel like there can be any in betweens: if he's going to betray the kind of perfect love his parents had, there's only one person he's willing to do that for, and she doesn't love him so it doesn't matter.

Four years pass by in a whirlwind: he studies, he works, he visits home on holidays and texts and Skype's Iris and Joe and whenever he's back in Central City, he visits his father. Their visits are hard. They tear open wounds that never do more than scab over and every time he leaves Barry can't help but notice the way his father's fingers always smooth over a particular spot on his left leg: even covered in orange and the color dull with the loss of his Nora, Henry Allen remains drawn to the physical mark her love has left.

He's twenty-one and he's never met anyone with a mark even close to his: no other chemical symbols, no one in quite his shade of startling crimson. He wants to keep the faith, but it wanes with the influx of his loneliness and his desperation to clear his father's name. When he gets the offer for the job with the Central City PD, he decides the best way to move forward is to try and forget.

Barry starts wearing button downs and sweaters. They're more professional but still functional for crime scenes and, most importantly, their collars and layers hide the reminder of his absent love.

Somehow, it gets easier and harder. He loves his work (loves the access to his family case file), is glad to be back in Central City and, even if it's not quite what he wants, can't help but enjoy being around Iris again as she finishes her last year of school. Joe tells him he's welcome to his bedroom, that he's always welcome home, but Barry knows well enough that will only make things worse, so he finds an apartment near by and resolves himself to the exquisite misery of loving someone he's not meant to have.

It's too easy to torture himself though-to interpret from smiles and teasing a meaning that isn't there, to imagine her gaze lingers along his collarbone, that her thoughtful furrow is meant for his crimson and her plum and not the article he's been helping her research for the last two weeks. It's just so easy, so natural and he swears that she must see it too, as she brings him another coffee and scribbles down a few more notes between customers. He laughs at how hard she's working and her eyes roll, all smiles, snipping good naturally about him learning to explain it to her in English.

The night of the particle accelerator event is particular torture as she wheedles him out of work (her dad always a pushover, as powerless against her charm as he is, for such very divergent reasons) and leans against his arm, looking lovely and curious and burning to prove herself up to her professor's challenge. She's all the things he loves best about her, all at once, and so he basks in it and doesn't think about anything else (not soul mates, not destiny, certainly not stupid red lines against his skin or the perfect promise his parents lost in one fell swoop).

It costs him her laptop and his dignity and the predictable track of his future, because he's barely back at the lab when the impossible strikes twice and all he knows is a great shock of pain, a blinding light and then darkness.

He wakes up nine months later, stiff and strange, feeling like he's coming out of an unplanned nap. The light is bright against his eyelids, and even through the skin it burns, but he can't help feeling like he needs to wake up all the same. Somewhere in the distance he hears Poker Face playing, and voices he doesn't recognize, and out of nowhere comes an urgency he doesn't understanding, drawing him up with a gasp.

"Where am I?" he breathes, ragged, barely registering the tug of tubes and wires along his skin before brown eyes invade his vision, bringing with them more bright lights and a soft but steady hand along his arm and shoulder-he has no idea where he is, who they are or what's happening, but his hand comes up unconsciously to uncover the mark even as he fumbles out of bed.

He's so out of it he doesn't notice the way the brown eyes, or the woman behind them, flinches at the gesture, letting the sample cup fall and leaving her companion to reassure calm him.

(He does notice the way he burns, exquisite and terrifying, when her hands press along his skin, checking his muscle tone-he doesn't understand it, but then he doesn't understand much at the moment).

And so ends Barry's introductory chapter, where we have a little more canon events intertwined. The last part (which is rather a bit longer) will weave in a little canon again but diverge and continue to concentrate mainly on the relationship between them. Feedback is always appreciated & last part should be out Friday night or so.

Take Care & Best Wishes!