Chapter Text
Most people couldn’t fathom a world in which metahumans roamed free.
They read about it in textbooks at school, of course.
Usually learned about it in cautionary or spooky tales told by parents and friends before even entering primary school.
But, those stories on paper or otherwise, always seemed surreal, out of reach.
They were true, though.
There was a time, before the Great War, when metahumans were free to roam the streets unimpeded.
They were free to run around, to go to school and work.
To raise families and contribute to science and literature and the arts for years.
No one could have predicted that total devastation was lurking right beneath the surface.
But, to those looking back in hindsight, how metahumans came to be in the first place would become a huge red flag for what they were capable of doing later on.
About 100 years ago, at the dawn of a scientific revolution, a young physicist promised an invention that would revolutionize everything that the world knew about our world and the planets around us.
He'd created a satellite that could supposedly bridge communication to another world.
Not, just one world either.
An entire multiverse.
The invention was met with eager donations and a captivated populace.
But, the night of the launch, the device failed on a catastrophic level.
And the scientist who had promised citizens new horizons to explore and wonders beyond imagination had instead brought destruction and chaos.
He was in the control center in the capital when something went horribly wrong. The satellite exploded and everyone in the control center, including the scientist, the president, and every domestic and foreign dignitary in attendance all perished.
There was no explanation for what went wrong.
There was just an earthquake that spanned across America, a blinding white light and then darkness.
But, it wasn't any form of darkness the world had ever seen.
The dark matter from the great explosion saturated the sky overhead and submerged the country in a choking blackness for exactly ten months.
No one knew why this happened or why the sun seemed to disappear from the Western hemisphere for almost a year, but the citizens who survived the explosion were able to band together and carry on in the darkness.
And when light returned to the country suddenly one morning, people also awoke with strange abilities.
With powers.
Suddenly, people could do the impossible.
They were ordinary people who just woke up one morning with extraordinary abilities.
They were young and old. Men and women.
And they fascinated their fellow citizens.
Some could catch on fire without burning up. Some could perform tricks in the sky with the elements of wind and rain.
Some could read minds and heal the sick and bend time with a thought.
Of course, some used they powers for evil and crime, but no more than regular people.
They were extraordinary, but they weren’t all intimidating or dangerous.
Life between these metahumans and the rest of the population wasn’t utopian by any means, but it was peaceful. It was fair.
And then the war came.
Two metahumans-Aquaman and Wonder Woman as they liked to call themselves- found themselves in a colossal feud, the origins of which were lost in history.
But, the results wreaked havoc across the earth; from Japan, through Europe, and all the way to California.
The fighting was so extensive, the damage was so great, that the entirety of the Eastern Hemisphere was either leveled to rubble or plunged underwater within months.
With neither one of them gaining an advantage over the other, they each called on friends and like-minded individuals to take sides.
Metahumans joined the fight.
Not many, but enough to hinder any human efforts to stop the war easily.
However, by the time the two sides found their way to the Americas and irreversibly damaged the vast majority of the mainland, their numbers had dwindled enough from their own casualties for a surviving human military faction to overpower them and end the war.
Aquaman and Wonder Woman were publically executed for all they'd done and their metahuman soldiers stood trial.
Their top ranking officers were also executed and the rest were put in maximum security prisons that were created to house them safely.
The plan was to hold the prisoners until a clear procedure of trial and punishment could be established, but almost immediately, the drought and subsequent hunger and disease that washed over the country as a result of the war quickly took priority.
Tens of millions of American citizens died either from famine or disease created from both metahuman biological warfare and from common, but communicable illnesses that ravaged the war-torn country.
It took months and claimed countless lives, but eventually the disease found its way out of the general population.
By the time survivors emerged strong enough to rebuild and piece together what little they could, the original military faction that captured the metahuman soldiers had dismantled and given way for a new faction to rise.
This group started small, but quickly grew its branches into the efforts for rebuilding infrastructure stability, economic growth, and fair law-making.
And their message was clear.
Every single thing that had gone wrong in their country-in the world-was totally the fault of metahumans existing.
They argued that even before the war, metahumans took everything they could from regular, law-abiding citizens and were responsible for the dwindling economy in many cities.
The faction, The Department of Metahuman Uprising Prevention And Resistance Force or simply the RF, promised prosperity and a new world order; if only they could find a way to save humans from their metahuman predators.
They argued that it didn't matter if every metahuman was an active threat or not. Due to the mutations in their DNA, metahumans were violent and savage by nature and it was only a matter of time before they would hurt someone, even their friends and family.
So the RF proposed that the prison cells originally built to hold metahuman war criminals be broken down, expanded, and used to hold all metahumans.
They proposed, and their followers agreed, that metas-with their bloodlust and violence and destruction-shouldn't be allowed to live among regular, upstanding citizens.
And so every metahuman in every city, whether they were young or old, male or female, was rounded up, documented and forced into the redesigned prison fortresses.
The gated land was isolated away from the human public. The land was expansive enough to accommodate the ever rising metahuman population, but the living quarters provided minimum necessities and comfort.
Families were assigned to bungalow-type dwellings.
The RF just called them encampments, but the encampment in Central City, the new Capital, became known ironically as “Iron Heights Meadows.”
Of course, governmental upkeep of the living conditions within the meta compounds wasn't necessarily top-priority and as such, poor drinking water, limited electricity and weak infrastructure for anything not directly related to keeping metas confined were all commonplace.
Order was kept by military captains and lieutenants throughout generations to ensure the metas never revolted or became strong enough to try to overpower humans again.
The military was the backbone of everyone’s existence.
They oversaw education, law-making, law-enforcement, healthcare, and commerce.
Due to residual effects from the war and disease, most citizens did live in less-than-ideal housing and economic situations, but they gladly accepted them in exhange for the security and protection the RF created.
Though, military officials and their families did enjoy the luxuries ordinary civilians only dreamed about.
Iris West was born into a military family.
She spent most of her life in a world of comfort and stability that she didn’t take for granted.
Though she was raised in the rigid, sometimes cold shadow of decades-old laws and social structures, Iris was a bit of an anomaly in the community.
She always stuck out, even as a child; choosing to wear extremely bright colors, using her small frame to wander into dangerous places a child had no business being, and often speaking to anyone and everyone with an off-putting frankness that wasn't too common in their town.
Iris West was always easy to spot out in a crowd, her brightly-colored tops or fuchsia headbands were an odd and isolating sight in seas of army greens and grays and black, but it was her style.
Important dinners with other military families and state meetings between leaders were often interrupted by Iris, in the midst of some grand imaginary adventure, running into rooms or shrieking down hallways.
She wasn't a bad child by any means.
She didn't go out of her way to be disruptive or disrespectful, anyone could see that, but it didn't make her any less of a nuisance to most.
Eventually Iris did mellow out enough.
Right around the time she met the intelligent, mild-mannered nephew of the town's apothecary.
Over time, she stopped wearing oddly-colored accessories and she stopped wandering around town, exploring places she had no authorization or permission to explore.
What completely stopped Iris trying to see how many premature gray hairs she could give her father, however, was the devastating accident that took the lives of her mother and her baby brother.
Iris was about eleven years old when the West family home somehow went up in a blaze of fire.
Her mother and little brother were trapped in the flames immediately.
They never had a chance.
Iris was in the fire too, but she miraculously survived after jumping out of her bedroom window.
After that, Iris didn’t smile as much as she used to. She laughed a little less and stayed closer to home.
But, with the guidance of her father, Iris West grew into an amazing young woman-kind and beautiful and intelligent.
Which is why her secret elopement to apothecary’s nephew at 18 caused ripples of shock and scandal throughout the community.
The news surrounding the marriage was quite the buzz for a very long time.
Though the couple was still going strong nine years later with a family of their own, brief glances and quick whispers still seemed to follow them on days when the gossip mill was low.
But, Barry Allen and Iris West took it in stride, making sure they remained pillars of their community, helping their fellow citizens and supporting their government any way they could.
And they made sure everyone knew that they raised their children to be the same way.
So that nothing they did was ever questioned too much or scrutinized too hard.
So that no one ever suspected the incredible secret that Barry and Iris had kept hidden for over 18 years.