Chapter Text
Four days after Barry Allen’s eleventh birthday, a sound woke him up in the middle of the night. The water from his fish tank was floating.
He’d gone downstairs to investigate the sound. There he’d encountered the subject of every nightmare he’d had since. Red and yellow lightning was racing around his mother, leaving her trapped and crying on the floor. Barry had screamed out to her, and that had drawn her attention.
She’d told him to run. But he couldn’t, and then the red lightning formed a man in a yellow suit with glowing red eyes. He reached out for Barry, and the other lightning had thrown him aside. Barry’s dad had run in and told Barry to run. The landline was hanging off it’s hook, probably recording the whole thing.
And then the yellow lightning scooped Barry up and left him outside, in the dark, alone. Barry had cried out for his parents, and tried to get home, but in the dark everything looked the same.
A police car had stopped sharply and Officer Joe West, Barry’s best friend’s dad, had jumped out.
“Barry,” Joe said. He crouched down and Barry threw his arms around him. “Barry, what are you doing out here?”
“The lightning took me, the man wants to hurt my mom, Joe, he’s going to hurt her-”
By the time Joe got him back home, the man in the lightning was long gone. Joe had gone in, and Barry tried to follow, but Joe's new partner Officer Singh stopped him.
It seemed like forever before the ambulance got there. Barry couldn’t breathe.
And then Joe brought his dad out and Barry threw his arms around his dad’s neck, and his dad picked him up and held him close.
Barry babbled, he couldn’t remember what he said, even as he was saying it, and then Joe had driven them to the hospital. His ma had been hurt, his dad told him, but she was going to be okay. He was going to go and stay with Joe and Iris for the night, and they’d work the rest out later.
A week later Barry was in the back of their car, with all his stuff in boxes, and his parents had told him they were going to go and stay with Aunt Ruth. Barry had said a tearful farewell to Iris, but Joe couldn’t find the man in the lightning anywhere. It was too dangerous, his parents had told him. Barry later learnt that people were suspicious; no one believed his story about a man in the lightning, and people were even questioning if it had been his dad the whole time. But interest in the Allen case dropped off, and Barry left Central a long time before they were all but forgotten.
And then he went back. He hadn’t planned on it, but he’d been getting ready for graduation when a letter had dropped through the door, inviting him for an interview for a position in the crime lab. His parents had worried, but it had been thirteen years since that night and no one had heard of a man in lightning.
So, Barry went back to Central City. He started his job, Officer Singh who waited outside with him was now Captain Singh and Barry’s boss, he met Patty and Julian, the other two forensic assistants for the city, and he ended up renting a small place with a friend from college, one Francisco Ramon.
Cisco was a good friend. They got on like a house on fire, and they had a lot in common. Life was pretty good. He did debate seeing if he could get in touch with Iris again, but it had been a long time and it might be a bit odd.
Then he got struck by lightning.
When Barry finally woke up, he could run faster than sound, and he wasn’t the only one who’d developed powers. Cisco and Barry looked at each other and decided there was only one thing for it.
They’d have to become superheroes.
Cisco made their suits. He’d worked at S.T.A.R. Labs before the accelerator blew, he adapted a fireman’s suit he’d been working on. So they came up with suits, and names (Flash and Vibe; Linda Park over at Central City Picture News had happily printed them after Barry had run into her in costume once), and decided to go and stop crime.
They weren’t the only ones in the city who had developed powers. There were quite a few criminals who now had powers (plus Captain Cold and Golden Glider), but they’d met the Streak and Light quite quickly too (the newspapers had dubbed her Doctor Light, after someone else, despite her protests that she wasn't actually a doctor). It wasn’t long after that they met Kid Flash and Jesse Quick, who introduced themselves as Wally West and Jesse Wells, and ended up helping them quite a bit. Then Sara at Waverider heard Barry and Cisco, put two and two together, and told them to try and be more subtle. But it also turned out everyone at Waverider had a history of involving themselves in trouble (and that Ray the cook with the gluten allergy was Ray Palmer, presumed dead CEO of Palmer Tech, who knew), and they even knew a doctor. Tommy Merlyn had left Star City after his father had flattened half of it, and was currently working at Central City General, but he was planning on moving back in a few months. And he had plans to propose to long-term girlfriend, Laurel Lance, who was the newly promoted assistant district attorney, the Black Canary, and Sara's big sister. Luckily for them, Barry was fast enough to get them to Star in no time (Tommy did not think it was lucky).
Of course, Barry couldn’t exactly tell Iris most of that. He stuck to forensics and the farm instead. And Iris in turn told him how she’d got into journalism.
“And my mother came back,” Iris said.
“Your mother?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t remember, she left when I was a four, it turns out she had a baby during that time, and now I have a little brother, Wally West.”
“Oh,” Barry said. Wally West. He had not mentioned that one. “That must be odd.”
“A little,” Iris said. “But it was about ten years ago now, and Wally’s great. You’d probably like him, he’s studying engineering at C.C.U.”
Yes, she was definitely talking about the same Wally West Barry had been friends with for about a year now.
“That’s really cool,” Barry said. “I did debate C.C.U., they have a good forensics course, and both my parents went there, but they got a bit nervous about me coming back to Central City, so I went to Sun instead.”
“That makes sense,” Iris said. “It’s a shame, we probably would have run into each other a lot sooner, but I get it. If you went to Sun, how did you end up doing a placement in Keystone?”
“It’s the one I was offered. My tutor said it happens sometimes when there’s no closer spaces, he had someone else do a placement in Opal City once. And then I got offered a job here, they must have passed it on. It is good to be home.”
“It’s good to see you. I bet Nora and Henry didn’t take that well.”
“I think they got over their nerves because I was specifically approached, or maybe just because Cisco said we'd look for a place together. How did Joe take you becoming a reporter?”
“He said it was better than a cop, right up until I walked straight into the office of the guy organising the drag races across the city, got threatened, then got him arrested.” Iris grinned and Barry laughed. “I may also have been shot at a few times, investigative journalism is great.”
“You’ve been shot?”
“Shot at, it turns out a large number of criminals in this city are really bad shots. Don’t you start worrying about me too, Barry Allen.”
“I’m going to worry if you mention being shot at. But I’m glad you found something you enjoy. How is Joe? Is he still a cop? I kind of thought I would have run into him by now, but I guess Patty and Julian must be covering his cases.”
“He’s a detective, but he has been on paternity leave recently.”
“Paternity leave?”
“You know the D.A.”
“D.A. Horton, yeah, she’s great.”
“Dad’s been seeing Cecile for a few years now, they had a baby about a year ago.”
“A baby?”
“Yeah, look.” Iris pulled out her phone and clicked on a picture of Iris, a girl Barry didn’t know, and Kid Flash in the middle holding a baby. “That’s my brother, Wally, that’s Joanie, Cecile’s daughter, and that’s my little half sister, Jenna.”
“She’s so cute,” Barry said. “Oh, wow, congratulations. I guess it’s a bit late for those. But she is adorable, Iris.”
“I know. A complete surprise, but definitely a welcome one. What about Nora and Henry, how are they?”
“Yeah, they’re good. Dad’s still a doctor, Ma helps Aunt Ruth with the farm. I’m still an only child, but there’s my cousins. I’ll have to tell them I ran into you, they’ll be glad.”
“Tell them I say hi.”
“I will. I’m sorry I stopped writing.”
“Me too. I guess things are easier these days, with Facebook and the like.”
“I guess so. Listen to us, these days, like we’re old and not talking about sixteen years ago.”
“Technology has come a long way. I didn’t realise just how much I missed you, Barry Allen.”
“I missed you too,” Barry said.
“I did want to ask you about something though. Do you know anything about the multiverse theory?”
“Yeah, it’s, um, hang on.” Barry dug around in his bag and pulled out a notepad and pen. He opened it to a blank page and drew a circle.
“So, this is our Earth, and this-” He drew another circle. “This is another Earth, let’s call it Earth-2 where Captain Singh sent Patty to talk to you instead of me. They’re identical in every aspect, right up until that point, it’s basically saying if you have a choice and chose one option, there’s another Earth where you chose the other, and because the universe has existed for billions of years, and there are an infinite number of ways is could have gone, there’s an infinite number of versions of the universe.”
“So there are infinite versions of us?”
“Exactly, but there’s also an infinite number of Earths where we don’t exist at all. So there’s the Earth where Patty came to talk to you instead of me, and an Earth where my parents didn’t move and we never lost touch, there’s an Earth where no one visited my house that night, but there’s also an Earth where my parents didn’t stay in Central after they graduated, and Earths where they never met, Earths where your parents never met, or where our grandparents never met, and so on and so on.”
“Huh. It’s an interesting theory.”
“It is. Is that for a story?”
“Oh, it’s something someone mentioned, it was probably Wally, I was just wondering if you knew.”
Barry’s phone buzzed. Cisco.
“That’s work,” Barry said. “I should-”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Iris said. She hugged him. “It’s been so good to see you, Barry, we definitely have to do this again.”
“I will absolutely call you,” Barry said. “See you soon, Iris.”