For a long moment, there was silence. Nobody moved.
Nora was the first to come back to life, and moved instinctively in front of Barry and Iris, who were staring with wide eyes at the man on the table. Henry felt numb. His eyes first darted to everyone else in the room, to confirm that everyone else had seen what had just happened, and that he was not crazy.
Joe was the first to make a move. Cursing himself for not bringing a gun, he moved carefully over to the man on the table. He stopped about halfway there and made a small shooing motion, indicating that everyone needed to get behind him. Nora complied, taking Barry and Iris with her. Henry, on the other hand, did the exact opposite, and padded up next to Joe, afraid that any loud noises might cause the man to disappear.
Joe was no longer Joe, Iris's dad. He was Officer West, someone with no time for any kind of nonsense. He turned to tell Henry to back off, but Henry had already set his jaw and had made his intent clear: he wasn't going to be pushed out of an incident that took place in his own home.
Methodically, one step at a time, both men gently moved toward the man, minds racing, eyes looking for different things.
Henry tried as best as he could to look for signs of injury without touching him. The man's chest was rising and falling evenly, and his color was good-so no lack of blood flow. No superficial injuries were present, muscle tone was good. There was something familiar about him, but he brushed it off without another thought. He worked in the emergency ward of the hospital, with new people flooding in and out everyday. It would be weird if he didn't look familiar at all.
Joe, on the other hand was analyzing him with a cop's gaze. Young caucasian male, probably in his early twenties. No visual tattoos or easy identifiers were present. Judging from his build, he worked out, but didn't get into fights-he lacked the necessary knuckle scars for that. With a bit of squinting, the black sweatshirt he was wearing was emblazoned with the name Star Labs. The name didn't ring a bell.
"Star Labs?" he quietly asked Henry.
The good doctor shrugged. "Never heard of them."
Neither of them were quite sure what to do. It was remarkable that they were able to think as rationally as they were-a guy had fallen out of a miniature cloud of lightning onto the table. At the same time, both men know that the minute they started to think about what had taken place, they would probably collapse to the floor and start spouting gibberish.
"Well," said Joe, trying desperately to act normal, "What do we do with him?"
Henry just shook his head, befuddled. Calling the police wasn't an option, even Joe recognized that.
Nora finally spoke up from behind them. "Move him to the upstair bedroom. When he wakes up, then we can decide what to do."
Glad to have a semi-plan to follow, Joe grabbed the unknown man under his arms and Henry grabbed his legs. They lifted him off the table slowly, and gently tilted the body to let some of the food that he fell directly onto fall off onto the floor. With a bit of maneuvering, the got him up the stair and laid him down on the guest bed. The minute he lost Joe's support of his upper body, his head lolled to the side onto the pillow.
Henry couldn't get out of the room fast enough, while Joe cast one last curious look at the figure on the bed before exiting the room and practically running after Henry down the stairs.
Nora was already cleaning up the dining room, trying to act normal for the sake of Barry and Iris whose gazes were trained on the guest bedroom like little bloodhounds.
Henry gently placed his arms on Nora's shoulders. "Nora. Honey. I have no idea what we are doing, but do you think that you, Barry and Iris could get out of the house until this is all sorted out? We don't know who this guy is, but I could never live with myself if he hurt you or the kids."
Nora gently shook her head, her loose red curls gently bouncing. "Where would we go? Let's keep this contained, here. In this house." With that, she looked over Henry's shoulder to Joe. "Why don't you and your daughter stay here? I would feel much better if the three of us took turns watching the... boy upstairs, and I'm sure Barry and Iris won't object to a sleepover."
At the word sleepover, Barry and Iris, silent up until this point, started buzzing excitedly. Possible alien AND a sleepover? This was the best dinner party ever!
Joe started to object, but Henry turned around and said, "I really would feel better if a cop was in the house while this entire, ah, situation gets sorted out." With that statement, he tried to smile shakily. "Somehow, that entire statement sounded normal. Unlike everything else tonight."
Clearly feeling outvoted, Joe slowly nodded his assent. "I'm going to go get my gun and a few clothes for Iris. Until I get back...do you mind watching him?" he asked, gesturing toward the poker near the fire.
Henry nodded, picking up the poker and heading back upstairs towards the guest bedroom.
Joe turned back to Iris. "Until I'm back, little lady, the Allens are in charge."
Iris nodded, the solemn little gesture completely at odds with her bright smile.
Joe left, closing the door behind him. Within a minute, everyone heard Joe's tires screeching out of the driveway, clearly trying to hurry.
It wasn't like when he woke up out of his coma, thought Barry. When he did that, he had a moment of fuzziness, then suddenly everything was crystal clear. This time, awareness returned agonizingly slowly. His mind seemed fully awake, but as hard as he tried, he couldn't sense anything but darkness. Slowly, he started feeling the beginnings of a monster headache. Then a metallic taste filled his mouth, not unlike the time he got beaten into a pulp by Girder. A warm light started pulling on the edges of his vision, but eventually, he gained control over his eyelids enough to open them.
He felt like Wesley from The Princess Bride, when he had just been revived by Miracle Max and could look around but needed Montoya to move his neck around for him.
Slowly, he started looking around. Then, he started trying to comprehend what was around him.
This was his childhood home.
This was impossible.
Cursing his inability to move, he could have sworn he heard someone shouting, "He's awake!" and a shuffle of feet.
The door to the room burst open, and for the second time in so many seconds, he knew he was seeing the impossible. His father, looking years younger, and out of prison. His mother, alive. His father was nervously carrying a poker from the fire with a guarded expression and his mother started to approach him with what looked like a canteen of soup. With every step she took closer to him, his dad jumped just a little.
He felt tears fill his eyes, and all he wanted to do was a mixture of joyful shouting and crying. He didn't care how or why. Somehow, he had his parents back. It crossed his mind briefly that this could be a dream, but he immediately brushed it off. He had been working on time travel, and here he was, back in the past.
It was sad how fast he immediately went for the time-travel explanation before any others.
He wanted to ask what was wrong, but then his reasoning skills started to kick in. If he had really traveled back in time, then his parents had no idea who he was. He was a stranger to them. They had never even seen a speedster before, or had any idea the kind of weird that Central City could produce.
His mother gently propped up his head on the pillow and began spooning what tasted like Grandma Allen's special tomato soup into his mouth. The aroma itself awakened an entire array of childhood memories, and he wanted to let loose a fresh stream of tears the minute the familiar spices and flavors touched his tongue. The sheer domestic gesture was...Barry didn't even know how to describe his feelings. Joe had been great, more than he could have asked for, but since he was eleven, Iris had been the sole female influence in his life.
This was the first time in umpteen years that someone had fed him soup like this.
Finally, the tears started falling. He knew he must have looked a sight, an unknown twenty something who had been up all night, unable to do much more than swallow, crying his eyes out.
Henry made a jerky move forward, concerned with his wife's safety. He placed his hand on her shoulder gently. "Not too much, he might throw it all back up."
Nora nodded and rose off the bed, taking the soup with her. She gave him a small smile and left the room.
His father trained a suspicious gaze on him, a look that Barry had long come to associated with the phrase, "Who started the fight?"
Just then, Joe burst into the room. "The police department called. They want every cop on the street, on or off duty. There's been a robbery and it's the strangest thing-everyone in the store went crazy, attacking one another. Thier brain scans show irregularities in whatever causes them stop themselves from doing whatever random destructive thing that pop into their heads. Everyone reports seeing red right before they went psycho." He shook his head, clearly ready to find whoever had crafted this day for him and shove them into the sewer.
The soup had acted like a warm bullet coursing through his body, waking up his throat enough to push a few words of warning out, his sore throat disguising his panic and disbelief about the entire situation. "Roy G Bivolo."
As one both men turned to look at him, Joe just then realizing he was awake.
He made another attempt at speaking normally. "The robbers' name is Roy G Bivolo."
A/N. I confess. The entire reason I wrote this fic was too get that scene with his mother feeding him soup. Thank you for all the reviews! To answer one of the reviews, yes, Barry did fall face first into the food, because that's just his luck. And the armadillo will probably make several appearance-if not in this fic, in another one. Its an ongoing gag between me and Mumble, my partner in crime who shares this account with me.
-2whitie
Oh gosh, more armadillos... xD And I'm fixing to write a full chapter story just for the sake of one moment of it, too, so you're completely forgiven. ;)
-Mumble