Chapter Text
He’s still firmly hugging Iris to him, until he senses her body trembling with sobs.
He pulls away to fully inspect her, hands on her shoulders.
“Iris, come on. You were the one who was supposed to make me cry, remember?” he jokes, tucking her hair behind her ear to soothe her.
She only weeps harder, her face crumpling as she leans into his touch. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I really didn’t think I was going to lose it.”
“Guess it’s a good thing we did this to practice for The Big Day, yeah?” he muses. “I imagine you don’t want to ruin your makeup or your dress tomorrow, in front of everyone, too...”
“I probably look like such a mess right now,” she laughs through her sobs, dabbing at her now pink eyes.
“Just a little bit, which means I really did a good job,” he teases, smirking.
She throws a playful punch, still hiccuping despite her giggles, before her eyes abruptly scrunch closed as tears continue to flow down her face.
“Iris,” he starts, suddenly concerned. “What’s wrong?”
Her chest heaves frantically.
“I just…really love you,” she sniffs, her voice small, a simple attestation for her striking, tearful affect. “And I can’t believe this is happening. I guess it’s finally hitting me. Months of wedding planning and dress fittings and Linda pestering, but only now do I realize that we’re getting married.”
She beams at him: her rosy cheeks and watery gaze couldn’t diminish that radiant smile in the slightest. Nothing could.
The weight of her words settles over him. While he had loved her for as long as he could remember, he too had never imagined he would be so lucky as to wed her. With great effort, he blinks away his own tears, so as not to elicit further emotion from her. If he even attempted to explain to her how he also can’t grasp that from tomorrow onward, they were to be husband and wife, he knows he’ll fall apart.
“Yeah, we are,” he breathes, and that’s as much as he can vocalize.
She swallows audibly, wiping her tears with the back of her hand before pulling the square of notepaper from her purse again. She peeks at him timidly.
“I know it’s so lame, reading from a paper…” she mumbles, embarrassed, even though she had bragged about handwriting her vows earlier.
He feels himself glow, overwhelmed with love for her, and love for the rare instances this shy, hesitant side of Iris emerged. It’s such a contrast to the superiority and cheek she displayed before he professed his vows that he can’t suppress a shameless smile.
She unfolds the sheet with care, her wrists shaking slightly. He watches her keenly, reaches out a hand to lace his fingers in hers again, determined to ease her tension. When she looks up at him in response to the contact, he offers a supportive nod. She reciprocates with a more assured squeeze before beginning.
"I remember the night you first came to live with us,” she reads. “It's etched into my memory. I remember it so vividly, as if it happened yesterday. My dad came home at 3 AM, with his arm around you. I was happy to see you of course, as I always am, but I was also worried, afraid, confused. All my dad told me was that you were going to stay with us for a while.
“I had no idea at the time that a while really meant weeks, months, and then eventually years.”
She glances at him momentarily, but it’s enough for him to catch her uncertainty. He knows how to read her, and he can tell she’s conflicted about touching on the subject of his mother’s death.
He also knows he trusts her more than anyone, even more than he trusts himself. After all, it was her unwavering faith in him that powered him, when his own confidence in himself wasn’t enough.
He needs her to understand that, to recognize that he knows she would never hurt him. So he rests a hand on her cheek, coercing her to hold his gaze, trying to convey the words to her with his eyes: It’s okay.
She seems to appreciate his message, as she places her hand over his, then shifts her head slightly to kiss his palm before continuing.
“I know that was one of the worst moments of your life,” she whispers, still cradling his hand to her face. “And maybe it’s selfish or even a little twisted of me to say this, but in some ways, I consider that one of the best moments of my life.
“Not for the reason you think. God knows I still cry when I think about how broken you were that night, how wounded you looked, how hopeless you felt.” As a testament to her genuine empathy, more tears spill from her eyes and cascade over her pained expression, which he promptly smooths away with his thumb. He doesn’t even need to see them to believe her.
"Because it was the night you came to us, to me.” She manages a smile in defiance of her weeping.
“Because it was the beginning of the strongest friendship, a friendship that I’ve never shared with anyone else, one that I know I couldn’t experience with anyone other than you.
“And I'm here today to tell you I'm so glad that friendship became something else. I’ve been able to love you as my best friend, my longtime companion, my partner, my significant other…”
“Now I have the chance to love you as my husband.”
Her grin after reciting the word husband is so brilliant, so broad it almost gives no indication that she had been lachrymose just minutes ago. He still hasn’t found a scientific basis for how it always compels him to smile back.
“Barry, you are the closest thing to me. Your happiness is my bliss. Your pain is my heartache.”
She’s firm in her declaration: “Because my soul is connected to yours.”
“I remember once I told you, on this very roof, that I didn’t believe in soul mates.”
She laughs softly to herself, marveling that he too recalled that same night on the rooftop years ago in his vows, as though it were further proof that they belonged together.
“I haven’t forgotten your reaction. Looking back at it now, it makes so much sense. You were shocked, maybe even a little crushed that I didn’t think we were. But Bear, I knew we were, I just didn’t know how. I doubted the idea of soulmates because I already had you, not realizing that you were and are my soulmate.
“And as time went by, you only made me believe more and more.”
She pauses before an apprehensive, slight inhalation.
“Since I mentioned an awful memory for you, it’s only fair that I disclose one my worst memories. You wouldn’t remember it, because you were in a coma.”
She’s misty-eyed again.
“Barry…those were the worst days-months I’ve ever encountered. I thought I had lost you forever. I turned into the darkest version of myself. Because I lost the light in my life that was you.
“When you woke up, when I saw you walk into Jitters, looking like you came out of a dream, as if you hadn’t died, as if your heart hadn’t stopped-”
Her voice breaks and she’s quivering. It’s all he can do to take her in his arms, wrap himself around her, and rest his chin over the crown of her head.
“Iris,” he murmurs into her hair. “You feel that? It’s still beating.”
He feels her fingertips pierce into his back.
They clutch each other for a silent minute, during which he’s only aware of the sound of his own heart pounding through his core, as well as the rhythm of her pulse against his chest. She eventually stirs beneath him.
“I need to finish, dammit,” she chuckles, sniffling.
“Yeah, I know this round isn’t over yet, but I’m pretty sure I’ve won the whole ‘Who Can Keep It Together’ game,” he jests, wanting to make her laugh.
She does, to his relief, and appears to be in better spirits, at least enough to carry on.
“When you woke up, when I saw you walk into Jitters, looking like you came out of a dream, as if you hadn’t died, as if your heart hadn’t stopped,” she repeats. “I knew in that moment, that there was no way I could ever be separated from you again. I realized that as long as I was alive, I needed you to be too. I leaped into your arms and held you close, so that no one or nothing could ever take you from me again.
She draws a breath in. “This is me leaping into your arms again, casting myself into a marriage to you, a lifetime with you.”
She extends her hand to grasp his once more. “And I never want to let go.”
“You know me better than anyone else in this world, and you somehow still manage to love me. There is a part of me today, here, right now that can’t believe that I'm the one who gets to marry you.
“You are the most selfless, generous, pure-hearted person I have ever known,” she attests. “For someone who has had every reason to shutdown, to turn people away, to be angry at the world, you instead have your light.
“I want to wake up to that light everyday. I want it to be the last thing I see before I close my eyes each night.
“Remember the infamous news byline? Iris West-Allen?
“When I first read it, I was upset,” she admits. “Because I knew I loved you, and I didn’t need some stupid newspaper from the future to tell me that.
“It wasn’t fair for us to get together just because it was written in another timeline. It wasn’t fair to our extraordinary love story. And it sure as hell wasn’t fair to you.
“No way was I going to let you believe for even a second that I settled for you because that’s what fate wanted.
Her raven eyes meet his. “It's what I wanted. I want you. I choose you. I don’t love you because I was destined to: I'm destined for you because I love you.
“All my life, I’ve never been anywhere without feeling like I should be some place else, like I hadn’t found where I belonged. But when I’m with you, steadfast and solid, I know I’m in the right place. The only place where I know for sure who I am. Wherever I belong, Barry Allen...it's with you.”
This time, he’s crying, the tears he’s withheld throughout the entirety of their exchange falling freely. He lets them, and now she’s one to take his face in her hands, dropping her vows in the process. The paper flutters gracefully in the breeze until it rests between them at their feet.
“Iris,” he sighs. “That was….” His voice trails off, too moved to find an appropriate description.
She doesn’t say a word, only searches his face.
He brings his forehead down to hers.
“You have to keep it together tomorrow, okay?” he coaxes. “Because if you don’t, I won’t.”
She presses into his touch, closing her eyes with a smile that makes his breath catch one more time. “Deal.”