16

Father and Son Reunion


Barry walked into the CCPD, blinking rapidly at the clamor and spectacle that greeted him. He looked to Joe, who shrugged, and the two inched toward the crowd that gathered around the lobby of the CCPD. Quietly, murmuring apologies, they pushed their way forward to see Mayor Bellows standing at a podium, answering questions and smiling the day away.

Barry's eyebrows twitched upwards as he watched. "Didn't know Mayor Bellows was doing the rounds," he commented.

Joe chuckled to himself. "Must be that time of year again." Barry started to say something ese, then stopped when Joe motioned for him to be quiet. Barry nodded, listening quietly. There were more than enough cameras and microphones around, he didn't want any of his comments accidentally getting caught on tape that he'd have to explain later. Or else be explained to him by Captain Singh in a loud, disapproving voice later.

"You know some of you may not realize," Mayor Bellows said in a loud, jovial tone as he looked around the precinct. He chuckled to himself before continuing. "But before I was a mayor, I was cop in this very precinct." He gestured grandly with his arms. "And it was because of these men and women that every family in Central City can sleep well at night."

Mayor Bellows paused and allowed the flurry of camera shutters and flashes to come, grinning all the while. Joe then leaned over to murmur in Barry's ear, "Mayor Bellows is on his re-election campaign," he said. "If I knew he'd be here today, I would've steered clear."

Barry laughed, a little too loudly. All eyes turned his way and he quickly clamped a hand over his mouth, eyes growing wide. He glanced at Joe and took a step away, while Joe glared back at him. The two faced forward once more, but all eyes and cameras continued to point their way, this time due to Mayor Bellows waving his arm out toward the two.

"Detective Joe West," Mayor Bellows cried, his eyes still shining. "Keep up the good work. What do you say, Joe?"

Barry snickered to himself, watching the color drain from Joe's face as he was put on the spot. Not just because he wasn't paying close attention to what was being said, but also due to being put in the spotlight. Anytime he was made to make a speech, Barry remembered, Joe looked like he was about to keel over seconds before he was to go on stage. He remembered being younger, watching his father figure staring in the mirror as he practiced his speeches, stumbling and stuttering over every second word.

"Uh…" Joe blinked rapidly. He looked to Barry, who elbowed him in the side in response, still smiling as he looked into the darkness of the camera lens in front of him. As he looked at the grim faces in front of them, microphones held in their faces. Finally, Joe cleared his throat and held up a thumbs up. "I'll do that."

Once the words escaped Joe's lips, all eyes and the cameras turned back toward Mayor Bellows. Mayor Bellows stared at the two for a moment then said, "And that's why he's not a politician," to the laughter of the media crew.

"I hate that," Joe murmured, lowering his head. He turned on his heel and headed towards his office. Barry quickly nodded to the group around him and fell in step with Joe. "I hate when people put me on the spot like that."

"Isn't that the point of being part of the police?" Barry reminded him, the side of his mouth turned up. "That you're put in tough situations you have to work through in a moment's notice?" Joe grumbled to himself, bobbing his head back and forth at Barry's words. "So guns don't scare you but public speaking does?"

"Can it, Barry."

Barry laughed once more, unable to ignore the irony of the situation. The same man who took him in when he had nothing, after losing his parents, the same man who was the best cop he'd ever seen, was the one who did his best not to let fear get in the way of anything…didn't like to have a lot of attention on him.

"Have you ever thought about running against him?" Barry asked. Joe looked at him with a raised eyebrow, prompting Barry to toss his head back towards Mayor Bellows.

"Please," Joe snorted. The two stopped by the receptionist desk, waiting as Jordan flittered through the pages that sat in front of her. She seemed oblivious to the men standing in front of her as she continued to murmur, rifling through her pages. Joe gently cleared his throat.

"I'll be with you in a minute," Jordan said distractedly.

Joe cleared his throat even louder. Jordan finally looked up, her blue eyes widened in horror and she quickly shuttered the papers together into a haphazard, messy pile. "Oh, Detective West. I'm sorry. I, uh, thought you might've been another part of media. They've been hounding me for badges all morning and I've already lost one." She tucked her hair behind her ears, smiling sheepishly. "I probably shouldn't have told you that, but…it's been a long day."

"It's still the morning," Barry reminded her.

"I know," Jordan agreed. Ten she noticed who she was speaking to and her eyes widened in surprise and excitement. "You're Barry Allen!" She reached out her hands and grabbed Barry's between hers, shaking it with gusto. "I'm so glad to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you from Joe and Captain Singh and all the other guys here."

"Good things I hope," Barry replied, instantly remembering how everyone used to call him Baby Face at almost every turn. "Sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Oh, right. I've heard so much about you, it's like I already know you. Sorry, um, I'm Jordan." She kept shaking his hand, then finally dropped it. So suddenly that Barry's hand dropped against the desktop before he could bring it back to safety. Jordan winced, jumped, clasping her hands over her mouth. "Sorry!"

"That's alright," Barry reassured her.

"We'll see you later, Jordan," Joe said, motioning for Barry to follow him.

"Detective? Didn't you come up here for something?" Barry looked back and forth between Joe and Jordan as Joe looked at her with narrowed eyes. Jordan swallowed hard, curling her fingers on her desk. "Um, well, you only come up here for messages, notes from Captain Singh. There's been no notes left from the Captain." She cleared her throat and continued to flip through the pages before her. "But there's a note for you from—"

"—That's alright, Jordan, I'll pick it up later," Joe said pointedly. He looked to Barry for a second. The second that Barry could've stretched for a minute to understand what it meant, but didn't otherwise. He saw the look, and knew something was up. So much so that he couldn't help but watch Joe as they headed towards his lab.

"What?" Joe finally asked, voice gruff with impatience.

"Nothing," Barry replied. "Just that there's something…" he hummed, waving his hands in the air. "Different about you."

"Different? What different? I'm not different."

"Okay, Joe. Okay." Barry held up his hands defensively, made sure to back away from Joe as he slipped through the door of his lab. He ignored the pile of cases that he still needed to go through. He hadn't been lying that he'd been putting it off due to how long some of them took, some of them being cases he never wanted to revisit.

There was still one case he couldn't quite get over. There were too many people who'd lost their parents; their mother, or father, or both due to horrific crimes. He couldn't forget how it was a similar case he'd been working on, with a mother that had been murdered, shortly around the time he'd met Cadence and Brady for the first time. When Roy Bivolo had whammied him to see his own mother everywhere, as he worked through his own sadness around her death.

He walked over to the large evidence board pushed to the side of his office and pulled on the string attached to a rolled-up sheet. It slid down, completely empty. Barry nodded at Joe's question, "You took the photos down from your mom's case?", shrugged. "Her case was solved, this is a new one we have to start." But he didn't mention anything about how hard it was for him to take everything down.

To take down the newspaper clippings, the photographs, all the anecdotal evidence he had linked together by strings of red that connected the pieces together. It was like a part of him had been taken down, brushed away into nothing. It was equally cathartic and painful.

"So we've got a new case to go after," Barry said. He pulled down the sheet, fastened it in place, and tapped the middle of the sheet. "What we know so far, is that there's a man who's a new meta. A meta we've created when I was taken out of the Speed Force."

"And this meta is someone who knows more about us than we know about him," Joe replied. "Which…honestly, isn't so weird considering the people we've come across lately."

Barry nodded in agreement. He continued to tap his fingers against the sheet. Almost nervously. "I was thinking, how many other people could we have exposed to the dark matter we sent out. The place I came out was at an intersection where there could have been hundreds of people around."

"And all of those people could've become a meta," Joe agreed. "Or at least had the potential to become one."

Barry nodded. He took in a deep breath, placed a hand on his hips. Admitted the one part he wasn't sure of but had a feeling was true. "Those that were the closest to the Particle Accelerator explosion, became a metahuman," he remarked. He started to count off on his fingers. "Me, Cisco, Caitlin, Hartley, Ronnie…all the others that might've survived the Particle Accelerator explosion, they could've been metas, too. That dark matter wave went across Central City, shot me in the chest, amped up Cade's powers, amped up the Assassination Bureau's powers, turned Brady and Leah into metas…and countless others that we've dealt with over the past few years."

"Right."

"But the portal I opened, in comparison to the Particle Accelerator, was tiny. And pin holed." Joe lifted an eyebrow, listening quietly. Barry quickly clarified. "'Only a certain amount of people would've been flooded by the dark matter to have become metas."

"Like that man we're looking for."

"That," Barry agreed. He paused. "And a bus full of people."

"So…you're saying there was enough dark matter that a bus load of people could've been turned into metahumans?" Joe's voice was filled with an equal amount of confusion, wonder, and sarcasm.

Barry chewed his lip. "I'm saying there was enough dark matter that a bus load of people did turn into metahumans," he said. Joe's jaw dropped, a low "uhhh" escaping his lip as he tried to take in the revelation. "I remember…when I came out of the Speed Force and ran all the way to Ivy city, I remember chasing Savitar. But I remembered exactly where I came out and where I went. When I came out, there was a bus that stopped just in front of the portal so not to be sucked inside. It got the full blast of the dark matter wave."

Silence.

"Okay…" Joe said slowly. He brought up a hand to rub his forehead. "So there was a bus full of people that became metas. But…there are thousands of people that ride the bus on a daily basis. How are we going to figure out who was on the bus at the time, or who was driving it?"

"Easy." Barry leaned to the side, allowed the Speed Force to fill him and raced to Central City's Department of Transportation, moved an employee out of the away, commandeered his computer, went through the records, found the information he was looking for, and raced back to the CCPD all within a second. Joe waited for Barry to speak. "Yeah…" Barry hesitated, grimacing. "That's the interesting part. He's dead." Joe's eyebrows rose. "Drowned." They rose even further. "In his own bathtub."

Joe sucked in a deep breath and turned on his heel, starting to pace the floor of the lab. He looked over the beakers that lined the shelves and racks of Barry's lab and, finally, said, "That's not suspicious. We go looking for someone to get any information and they wind up dead." He shook his head. "It's not the first time it's happened, but it doesn't make it any less suspicious. Meta or not."

"I think it's all connected," Barry admitted. He folded his arms over his chest, holding himself together for the tidal wave of information that was coming to light. "The Samuroid, me coming out of the Speed Fforce at that specific spot, the bus being at the exact right place to be hit by dark matter."

"It was planned?"

"Yeah, by someone really smart."

Joe looked a little disgruntled. "We're pretty smart."

"I think so," Barry agreed. But smart enough to figure this out? When it already took us this long to figure out how all of this was connected. Barry pressed his lips together. There were more than enough things they had to deal with at the time, but they could figure out who or what would become a meta. Then again, now that he thought of it, he hadn't seen a Meta Spider around in a long time, as far as he knew, they were still in STAR Labs' basement. But as far as he knew, Meta Spiders worked on their own accord and someone had set everything of his re-appearance up.

As if they knew what was going to happen…

It wasn't the first time something like that had happened, but back then, the person who had been behind everything, who had known everything that was going to happen before it happen, who was able to tailor and switch things around to fulfill his own personal agenda…was Harrison Wells. Or, rather, Eobard Thawne, who had mind-melded with Harrison long before any of them knew what mind-melding was. Or that he was someone who would betray their team.

It seemed so long ago that they'd figure out his real identity. And while Barry had grown to become used to and trust Harrison Wells as himself, there was always a tiny part of him that worried Harrison had taken on so much of Eobard Thawne that he would come to betray them once more. So far he'd been wrong but…

If that were the case, you wouldn't trust Cade either, Barry reminded himself. Let alone marry her. He didn't have cold feet for the wedding, per se. But there were things that he questioned. She hadn't killed him, had broken away from the Assassination Bureau, but had then turned around and forced Killer Frost to take the cure that would forcibly turn her back to Caitlin after having switched places with Burnout to trick Savitar into thinking he'd killed her when it was actually her Earth-2 Doppelganger that had taken the fatal blow.

"We'll need to look closer into the bus driver's death," Joe said, breaking into Barry's thoughts. Barry blinked rapidly, working to figure out what Joe was talking about in the seconds it took for him to get lost in his thoughts. Joe had stopped pacing and was now nodding, agreeing with Barry's statements. Barry couldn't help but smile. Even if Joe didn't understand everything Barry was saying, or knew much about metahumans, his faith in Barry and Barry's lead was still unparalleled. "May get a lead."

"I'll have Iris pull up the autopsy report from the coroner's office," Barry agreed.

Joe nodded. He looked to Barry, noticed Barry's smile, looked away, then did a double take. Barry continued to smile back at him. This time an even wider smile than he'd give seconds before. Joe's eyebrows furrowed in suspicion. His own eyes took a trip, looking Barry up and down before asking, "What?" through nearly gritted teeth.

"I don't know," Barry replied slowly. He continued to study Joe. Face screwing up as much as Joe's did, nearly mimicking his expression completely. "There's just something about you…you're glowing." That was it. Something about Joe had been different lately, but Barry couldn't quite put his finger on it. "Like, you've got a warmth about you. Like a Lite-Brite!" He almost laughed out loud—but didn't, knowing it'd make Joe even more annoyed—suddenly remembering 'Glow Stick' as one of the names that Cisco had suggested to Cadence for her superhero name.

A horrible name, but it wasn't the worst on the list that Cisco had come up with at the time.

Joe, however, didn't see any humor in the situation as his bewildered expression twisted into one that was nearly a snarl. Barry's smile dropped and he took a step back, watching Joe. Joe lifted a hand and pointed a finger towards Barry. "There's no warmth, no glow, and I ain't no damn Lite-Brite."

Barry held up his hands. "Okay! Okay."

"And anyway, we're wasting time." Joe pointed behind him. "We have to get to STAR Labs." He turned and started to leave the room, seeming to hear Barry's low murmur of "Glowing and irritable," under his breath that made Barry react nervously; racing forward to grab Joe's shoulder.

Joe immediately shook him off. "I already have a queasy stomach, I don't think your super speed is going to help it at all. We'll take my care." Barry held up his hands and followed Joe down to his squad car. He watched with curiosity as Joe waved off Jordan, who called across the lobby to give Joe a message from DA Cecile Horton. He stayed silent as they got into the car and rove to STAR Labs. At least, as long as it took for Joe to bark, "Stop doing that!"

Barry jumped and sat up straight in the passenger seat, extending his legs the best he could in the footwell. "What? Stop doing what?"

"Stop tapping your finger like that!"

"I'm not tapping my fingers!"

"You're super-speed tapping your fingers, it's making the car shake." Joe glanced at Barry to make sure he stopped what he was doing. He let out a long, heavy sigh when they pulled up to a stoplight. "I'm sorry, Bare. It's just…all of this has me on edge." Barry stayed silent, waiting for Joe to speak. Partially out of respect for the man, and partially because he was afraid of being barked at again. He was in his twenties but the idea of Joe being mad at him was still something that affected him more than heliked to admit. "First the Speed Force takes you and we have to live in a world without the Flash for six months…" he shook his head. "I don't know about you, but even though Team Flash did a good job of keeping things going, I almost couldn't. The idea of you having to leave…" He took in a deep breath, voice slightly breaking as he said, "You left without saying goodbye."

Barry's heart sank to his feet. He knew that. Knew how much it had to have hurt. His heart hurt as he raced out to the city streets and walked into the Speed Force without alerting his team what he was doing. But there had been no point in doing so, he had no time, had to get the city to safety as quickly as possible. If he stopped to say goodbye, other people would've died or been injured as badly.

"It hurt," Joe continued. "It really hurt. But I understood why you had to do it." He looked over at Barry with a small smile. "It was hard to move on. There was a Barry shaped hole in my life that couldn't be filled by anyone else. So when you came back out of the Speed Force, I'd hoped there was a little bit of normalcy before things went to hell in a handbasket again." The light turned green and he started forward once more. "Though I really didn't miss your tapping."

"I don't tap," Barry said through a grin.

"You really don't notice it because you do it with your superspeed," Joe denied. He shook his head. "And you didn't even know you did it before you had your powers. It would drive Iris and I crazy when, on long drives, the sound of you tapping your fingers could be heard over all the music."

"I guess I never realized I did it."

"You wouldn't have…I didn't realize how much I missed it until you did it again. Reminds me that you're actually here."

"Yeah, not unless we can figure out who it is that's trying to kill me."

"Aren't you used to that by now?"

"Not when it's someone who knows me so well." Barry lifted his head from his upraised fist, finally allowing himself to look Joe in the eye. Joe looked back at him. Something passed over his face that spurned Barry forward. "You're thinking what I'm thinking, aren't you?"

"That depends…" Joe said slowly. "What are you thinking?"

"That whomever orchestrated all of this…it may be someone who's watched us closely, knows everything about me and my powers to ensured that I came out of the Speed Force." He shrugged. "I don't know why, if they want to get rid of me, they'd take me out. But they keep testing me with the Samuroid. Testing my powers and only wants me. Whomever is making the Samuroids knows everything about me. As if they'd been working beside me all along."

Joe took in a deep breath.

Barry pursed his lips.

Waited.

"You think it's Harrison Wells?" Joe asked.

"Maybe," Barry said slowly. "I don't think it's Dr. Wells, I think it may be the Reverse-Flash. I think it may be Eobard Thawne." Joe made a low sound that proved he wasn't following Barry's train of thought. "When we knew the Reverse-Flash as the Reverse-Flash, before he revealed his identity to us, he would knock Cade aside whenever he attacked. As if he didn't want her to get hurt. We didn't know at that at the time. I just thought the Reverse-Flash was more concerned with getting rid of me and didn't want to bother her. But then we found out the Reverse-Flash was Dr. Wells, or, more importantly, Eobard Thawne and Dr. Wells."

"Because of the mind-meld," Joe agreed.

"Right. But we didn't know that then. But we know more about it now. I experienced a mind-meld with the Earth-2 Doppelganger of myself and when I did, it was like everything form his life downloaded into my brain. And mine into his. I saw his life, with his parents alive, with him sad and alone, with him not being close to you or Iris. But he saw my life with mom dead and dad in Iron Heights. We're connected since then, every now and then we feel what each other feels and see what each other sees, sometimes its hard to remember if a memory I have is my memory or his."

"Okay…"

"Then we find out the longer you mind-meld, the better chance you have to eventually take over the other's body. We saw that with Dr. Wells and Eobard. Think of how much time they'd mind-melded; Harrison turned into a completely different person, mostly taken over by Eobard and tried to kill me…because he hated me. How do we know that, even though they split, that Dr. Wells doesn't still have traces of Eobard within him that still hated me, and wanted to kill me."

Joe stayed silent.

"You were thinking it, too, weren't you?" Barry pressed.

"Not to the same extent you were but…the thought crossed my mind." Joe shook his head, staring forward as they drove. "I don't know, bare. Since their split, Dr. Wells, every iteration of him, has been an all of ours. I can't quiet imagine he'd come after you now, when so much has already gone on. Don't you think he'd think we'd suspect him first?"

Barry shrugged. "I'm not sure. We can never be sure with Eobard Thawne."

"You got that right." Another long stretch of silence. "If that's the case, then wouldn't there have been any residual affects from your mind-melding with Earth-2 Barry?" He continued before Barry could defend himself. "Not that we'd know the difference anyway." He laughed as Barry rolled his eyes. "Are you sure that's the only thing on your mind?"

"You mean other than getting married and wondering how long it's going to be until Brady stops hating me? No, there's not much going on," Barry replied sarcastically. He sighed heavily. "I just don't know what to do, Joe." Joe slowly started laughing to himself. "I don't think it's that funny."

"Hey, I did tell you that I'd laugh once your future kids caused you as much problems as you did to me." Joe pulled on the steering wheel, taking them into the STAR Labs parking lot, far from the prying eyes of anyone who may want to see what was going on inside the laboratory. "It's normal to be nervous, Bare. I was nervous when you were going to stay with us. You'd just been through a horrible trauma, we didn't know how long your dad was going to be in prison, or if he even did that to your mom."

"Yeah, but Brady had both of his parents and a place to live. And good friends. He has a good life…"

"That doesn't mean things aren't going to be as hard for him," Joe reminded Barry. He turned off the car, leaning against the steering wheel. "He's going through a lot of changes. Not just through his powers, but because of only just finding out who his father is, trying to have a relationship with that father, getting used to his mom potentially getting married, or even being killed every time she left the house, going out into the field…He's only eleven, Barry, the same age when you were when you first came to live with me. Do you think you could've handled all that when you were his age?"

No. But Barry didn't think Brady could handle everything he'd been through either.

Once again, Joe had the power to read Barry's mind as he added, "Trauma isn't a contest, Barry. People react to different things differently. And, you might have to think that there may be a reason why he's so angry with you."

"How am I supposed to figure that out?"

"Just ask him. I've always found that having open and honest conversations with you and Iris has always been best. It might work here, too." Joe pushed open the door to the car and climbed out. Barry followed suit and the two went into STAR Labs, arriving at the Cortex in time for Iris to clap her hands together and wave them in the air. "What're you so happy about, baby?"

"Oh, nothing, just my investigative skills coming out with a win!" Iris brushed off her shoulders, doing a little dance as her father and best friend came closer.

"At least you know how to be modest," Barry said.

Iris blindly reached behind her and smacked Barry on the arm. Then she ran her finger across the screen of the tablet in front of her, screen sharing it to the screen that hung on the wall. A report came up. "Okay, so I've got the Coroner's report for the death of the bus driver. But it doesn't seem like there's any signs of fowl play. Just a regular drowning in a bath tub."

"Seems like regular bad luck to me," Joe remarked.

"I know. Just sitting back, enjoying a soothing bath at the end of a long day, next thing you know…" Iris shook her head. "They logged his personal affects." She started to swipe through the pictures that had been included with the report, speaking aloud what item they saw on each image. "Credit cards, cash, receipts…"

Barry blinked. Something caught his eye. But he wasn't quite sure…Nevertheless, his heart sank. Even more than it had with Joe's declaration of how upset he was when Barry had left. No, this was a feeling of warning. "Go back," Barry said quickly. Iris quickly swiped backwards on the screen, pausing to look over her shoulder as Barry stared at the screen.

Stared at the image that came upon the screen; of a business card with a sloppily written IOU signed by the one and only, "Ralph Dibny," Barry murmured, voice not coming up any higher than a harsh whisper, filled with a rage that he hadn't felt burning in his stomach for years.

"I'll be damned," Joe said. He looked to Barry, who tried to keep his composure despite his shaking hands.

"Who?" Iris turned to look up at her father and best friend. Her eyes shot back and froth between them, waiting for a response. Barry kept his lips together, afraid of what would come out if he allowed himself to even try to explain what'd happened.

"He used to be a cop," Joe explained.

"A dirty cop," Barry burst out before he could stop himself. He walked closer to the screen, all thoughts of Dr. Wells, Eobard Thawne, Brady, and Samuroids disappearing from his mind. All that space only to be filled up with one of the people he disliked the most in the world. He grimaced as the picture of the IOU changed to a picture of Ralph Dibny, dressed in his officer uniform from years ago with a large Jim Carrey-esque smile on his face. "He got kicked off the force."

"For what?" Iris asked. She studied the picture. "I can't imagine anyone as handsome as him doing anything wrong. Not in that square-jawed Oliver queen kind of way."

Barry clocked in on Iris's tone and turned to look at his best friend. She tore her eyes away from the picture, smiling innocently. He quirked an eyebrow. "For real?" He asked, voice filled with disdain. Not just because she thought Ralph Dibny was handsome, but because she'd even entertain the thought of it. "The IOU is dated the same day I came out of the Speed Force," he realized, focusing on the information in front of him once more.

"You think Dibny was on the bus that day?" Joe asked. "That he may be a meta?"

"What bus?" Iris asked. "Why would he be a meta?"

"It's a long story," Barry declared. "I'll tell you later. But right now, I have to pay Ralph a visit." He turned on his heel and raced from the Cortex before Joe or Iris could stop him. It wouldn't take him too long for find Ralph, there were only a few places that disgraced former policeman could go, anyway.

And if any of them were like Ralph, Barry had a really good idea of where he'd go.

But, it wasn't until he was halfway out of STAR Labs, that Barry realized Joe had never truly told him what was wrong and why the DA was looking for him.


A/N: You know, I never really understood why they had Barry and Joe go from STAR Labs to the CCPD and then back to STAR Labs within three scenes...and I don't know why I did it here but oh well! Lol! I haven't had a scene with a lot of Barry and Joe interaction in a while. And there was a lot of things they covered, Barry's fears of being a dad, Barry's relationship with Joe, and both of their suspicions with Harrison potentially being the one to have trick them and…well…something else I'd been hinting at since just before and when Friction ended.

Also, I haven't forgotten about Ryder or Maya, they're pretty big in this story, just have to bring em' in once more!

And look at that, the first look at Ralph! :)

Cheers,

-Riles