Chapter Text
Sometimes terrible things happen to us when we're children.
Things that can define who we become, whether we want them to or not.
Some of us become stronger.
The people who took me in helped me heal and move past everything that happened.
They're responsible for who I've become today.
----Earth-1 Barry Allen.
Years later, Iris would forget how she first heard the news. Where she was. What she was doing. She couldn’t even remember if her mother had been home that time or was doing one of her many tours across the world.
What she did remember, was sitting at the top of the steps, waiting for Barry to come home. Wally had wanted to wait, too, but he had fallen asleep and Iris had walked him to his bed.
She remembered being scared.
The door opened and she got to her feet.
Her father was still in uniform, and he looked more tired than Iris could remember, even more tired than he had last Christmas when her mom called at the last minute to say she couldn’t make it home after all.
Barry looked – blank. Completely, utterly blank. No expression of pain or fear or sorrow on his face. Barry’s face, which was always so open, who could never hide what he felt because he had never learnt, never needed to learn, how to do so – was now utterly, completely empty.
It had frightened Iris and, as it tended to do in her, even as far back as when she was a child, that fear had made her protective instincts rise up sharply.
She had stretched out her hand without hesitation. “Come on, Barry.”
Barry had blinked tired eyes up at her. “Iris, he didn’t do it,” he said quietly, his voice flatter and wearier than she ever remembered it being, not even all the times that Tony had cornered him and hurt him. “My dad didn’t hurt my mom.”
He sounded, not just exhausted, but hopeless, as if he didn’t expect her to believe him.
“I believe you, Barry,” she said firmly, truthfully.
She had believed him. Now, of course, she knew better.
And for the first time since he stepped into her house, expression creeped into his face. The tiredness in his eyes, that had made him look older than he was that morning, seeped out and now they shone bright with unshed tears.
Tears of hope.
He took her hand and she squeezed his tightly.
Side by side, they walked up the steps, her father watching them from below.
A few months later, Francine West filed for divorce. A brief custody battle ended with the children being time-shared between Central City and London where Francine had relocated. School periods with their mother; and the holidays with their father. Francine had made a mild offer to keep Barry Allen with her children but the terms of his foster-ship required him to remain in the country.
The day that Iris was supposed to leave with her mother and brother to their new home across the Atlantic, she ran away with Barry. It took a full day, and a search party and Francine had to furiously reschedule flights and cancel tour bookings – before they were found, on a bus half-way out of the state.
“Iris,” her father said, his voice thick with sorrow.
The two children were crying. “Why can’t Barry come with us?” Iris demanded, clinging on to her friend.
Joe shrugged helplessly, looking from one miserable child to another.
Francine tapped her heels impatiently from where she waited by her sleek car – on Joe’s insistence. “You spoil her,” she had snapped. “All of them. You give them too much leeway. London will be good for Iris.”
Joe had been too tired to argue.
He worried about his children. Despite their own differences, he knew that Francine wanted to be a good mother, and with her successful career, she could definitely afford a better life for them than he ever could. But he didn’t believe that she could ever be there for them emotionally. And there was Barry, too. Their family – Iris especially – had been the last stabilizing influence on the boy’s life. And now that was going to be ripped from him, too.
Joe hadn’t wanted to tear their family apart with a drawn-out custody battle. But the next years, he would constantly wonder and worry if he shouldn’t have fought harder.
“Please don’t forget me!” Barry cried as he watched Iris enter the backseat of her mother’s car where Wally was already waiting. “Please!”
“I won’t!” Iris swore. “I promise! I’ll call. I’ll write. I won’t forget you.”
He stood beside Joe, watching with his chest heaving until the car disappeared down the road. Then the heavy-hearted man, and the last child left to him entered their quiet, empty house.
Francine was going to be in Australia during Christmas and it was such a great opportunity for the children. Surely, Joe didn’t expect them to miss it?
He had asked Iris and Wally and Wally had been enthusiastic about seeing kangaroos. Iris had been more reserved – she had become increasingly reserved over the months – but she hadn’t been particularly keen on returning to Central City.
After the phone call, Joe had turned to see Barry standing behind him, his hands deep in his pockets.
“They’re not coming, are they?” he asked, his voice expressionless.
Joe shrugged helplessly. “There’s still Winter break. Iris’s boarding house gets a week’s holiday then.”
Barry shrugged. “She’ll find something better to do.”
Joe winced. The daughter he remembered, the one he raised, was a kind, affectionate person. He hadn’t been surprised that she had immersed herself in her new life, made new friends. But he felt, for Barry’s sake, a stab of disappointment that she had so easily broken all her promises to remember her old best friend. The frequent calls had ended after the first month and when he had asked Barry, the boy reluctantly told him that apart from the occasional group email, his friend rarely wrote him.
Barry’s mouth twisted in an increasingly familiar bitter smirk and trudged to his room.
The house was very quiet.
The summer couldn’t have come soon enough and Joe was almost bubbling with excitement as he waited in the airport. He had driven all the way, despite Francine’s protests. She had tried to pull another one – another tour, another ‘great opportunity for the kids’ but Joe had put his foot down.
He hadn’t seen his kids in a year!
He glanced beside him at the boy who stood beside him. The detective wasn't sure if the boy had completely worked through the resentment that had festered in him those first few weeks of his new life with the Wests. Until he saw Barry by the front door, scuffing his feet against the carpet, he hadn’t been sure the boy would come. Dressed in jeans, tee and leather jacket – and how did little Barry get so tall overnight? – he was the picture of aloofness. As the summer approached, he acted completely disinterested in the possible arrival of his old friend.
But Joe was a detective, and he didn’t miss seeing the tension in the boy’s jaw, the sharp way his eyes kept flitting over the passengers that were walking through the arrival area. The boy was struggling between hope and disappointment and it hurt Joe to watch.
A small crowd parted, and they were there. Francine, looking elegant and beautiful in a cream sundress and even now, after everything, Joe felt a pang watching her approach. Wally, still small and shy-looking but his sweet face creasing into a face-splitting grin as he spotted his father and broke into a run.
“Dad! Bear!”
“Wally!”
He ran into Joe’s arms in a running jump and Joe clung to his boy, hugging him gratefully. He had barely got a good fill, before Wally wiggled out and hugged Barry, too. “Bear!”
Something remarkable and rare – a smile – threatened to break across his face. “Walls!” Then the smile wavered, and vanished, as Francine reached them, and he caught sight of the girl standing behind her mother.
At first, Joe didn’t see any change in his Iris. She seemed to have barely grown, her feet still kicking his knees when he lifted her into a quiet hug. Then he put her down, and looked at her and noticed that her curls had been replaced by a sleeker, flatter style that made her look older.
That’s how she looked. Older. She might not have grown taller like Barry but her face was narrower, her tomboyish outfits of dungarees and shorts replaced by a short mini-dress Joe didn’t entirely approve of. Her eyes were still lively, but with a reserve that tightened Joe’s heart.
“Hi, baby girl,” he said softly.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, smiling – and there was his girl. Her eyes might be more shadowed than he remembered, but the kindness and sweetness still shone through.
“H…hi, I-Iris,” said a small voice to Joe’s right.
Father and daughter turned to look at Barry. He was staring at her with his heart on his face, every trace of aloofness wiped clean, and it was so painfully obvious that Joe’s heart hurt for the boy.
He looked down at Iris, who for a moment, just stared at her once-best friend and Joe said a mental prayer for the sake of the young boy that had become a second son to him.
Please be kind, Iris, please be kind.
Iris smiled sweetly. “Hi, Barry. You’re taller now.”
The boy flushed so thoroughly, his face glowed. He straightened up. “Yeah. S… so are you.”
“Not really,” she retorted.
It didn’t seem possible, but Barry blushed even harder. “Well… not much but…”
He was saved by, of all people, Francine as she turned to Joe sharply. “Hello, Joe. Thanks for meeting us. You didn’t need to. The hotel could easily have arranged a limo service-”
Joe started. “The what?” he asked quietly.
Francine rolled her eyes. “Hotel? You can’t expect us – expect me – to live in your house, can you, Joe?”
“But the kids are staying with me.”
“The hotel has a pool.”
Joe felt his temper rising. She would do this, won’t she? Pull this stunt on him.
“I haven’t seen my kids all year,” he said, trying to keep his voice down but knowing there was no way he could shield the three pairs of curious ears from this conversation. “I want them with me. Those were the terms.”
Francine rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic, Joe. You can stay, too. Barry, even,” she added almost as an afterthought.
The boy flinched. Joe felt his ire rise, more for the boy’s sake than his own. “No, Francine.”
The quarrel, seconds from turning nasty, was dissipated by Iris’s quiet voice. “I want to stay with Daddy, Mom. We can come visit you at the hotel every afternoon.”
Francine looked ready to push it further, but she checked herself.
The summer was off to a glorious start.
The summer ended with a harrowing finish.
The party invite from Patty Spivot had boded no good. Iris had never liked the snobbish wannabe Queen Bee, and had spurned all her previous attempts to be friends. She knew that if not for her famous mother, Patty would never have looked twice in her direction. And now, a year in Europe had made Iris even more glamorous and attention-grabby and Patty wanted to bask in it.
Iris would rather have spent time with Barry but her old friend had… changed… over the past year. There were times when he acted like old Barry – simple, sweet, nerdish and uncomplicated. Then there were times when she could barely recognize him – his friends – his attitude towards her, bordering from aloof to downright hostile.
“You’re at the age where you tether,” she would later remember her father’s words, said over many terse dinners. “You and Barry. You’re clay in the potter’s hands. This is the time when you take your shapes, and once you set, it will be hard to change without breaking.” She remembered how his eyes would turn grave, and turn – more often than not – in Barry’s direction. “The potter’s hands take many forms – life, our parents – but the most important one is our own decisions.”
More often than not, Barry would push back his chair and walk out of the kitchen. To Iris’s shock, her father didn’t stop him.
“Do you hate my Dad?” she asked him the first and last time, she had confronted him right after.
Barry had turned sullen eyes to her.
Iris felt her stomach churn. “Do you think it’s his fault that your Dad was convicted?”
The trial had still been on when Iris had left, but she had followed it in London. She knew Henry had been found guilty. She had tried to call Barry to talk but after many failed attempts and time zone issues, she had only got her father who informed her sadly that Barry wasn’t in the mood to come to the phone.
“He didn’t believe me,” Barry muttered. “So what? No one else did.” He glared at her.
This was the time she was supposed to say, “I do. I believe you, Barry.”
Just like she had said to him, almost two years ago.
But a lot had changed in two years.
She said nothing.
His eyes seemed to burn holes into her face. “When are you going?”
She recoiled at the furious spite in the question. “What?”
He rolled his eyes. “Did London make you stupid? Going back to London and your fancy boarding school with your fancy friends and your fancy accent?”
“What the heck is wrong with you?!”
He turned to his desk, to the gadget he was fiddling with. He was always fiddling with something.
“Get out.”
“Barry!”
“Are you deaf? I said–”
She slammed the door after her.
Iris hadn’t particularly wanted to go to Patty’s party. But it was either that or spend the evening with a sullen Barry. Wally was having a sleepover at one of his old friend’s – he had slipped into his old life as easily as a sugar cube in water.
Iris had definitely not wanted to go to the party with Barry. But her father had insisted. If she didn’t take Barry along, she couldn’t go. Perhaps he had seen the rift between the two friends and was trying to fix it.
He shouldn’t have.
It cost him his life.
Who knew that Spin the Bottle could have such deadly consequences?
It took years of therapy before Iris could eventually come to terms with her feelings of guilt. She hadn’t caused her father’s accident. Hadn’t even really been part of the plot to humiliate Barry at the party – the plot that had sent the boy running into the darkness, and missing for days. Which, in turn, sent Joe West searching for the boy and encountering that drunken driver on the slippery road.
Barry was still missing at the time that Joe’s body was being lowered into the ground. But years later, Iris would swear that she caught a glimpse of him at the funeral.
She was afraid he was going to try to approach her, try to talk to her. Tell her…
What?
“I’m sorry”?
“This is your fault, you know…”?
She was so grateful that the shadow she glimpsed through the crowd that had gathered to lower her father’s body into the ground, never materialized. Who knew what she would have told him?
“You killed my father.”
“I hate you.”
The summer ended and Barry was still missing.
He was found eventually. Remanded into foster care. Escaped. Ferreted a bitter existence for himself before he eventually ended up in the care of one Harrison Wells, who was really Eobard Thawne, a man from the future.
Of course, Iris didn't know any of this.
It would be many, many years before Iris West saw Barry Allen again and when she did, he was completely unrecognisable.
I'm one of the lucky ones.
Not everyone gets that kind of support.
Without it, I don't know where I could have ended up.
Or what I could have become.
----Earth-1 Barry Allen.