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Barry's world is blinding pain, from the moment he hits the ground with Zoom on top of him, the impact echoing across nerves already seared raw by his own bolt of lightning. But he can't give up, can't let Zoom win, so he fights back anyways. Tries to hit the other speedster, who dodges faster than even he can see. Which is saying something, because even fighting the Reverse-Flash, he could at least kind of track his movements, even if he hadn't had a hope of keeping up with all of them.
Claws tear into him, across his back, down his arm, and he falls, unable to even cry out in pain. Zoom looms over him, the physical embodiment of terror lit up by blinding blue, clutching the speed-dampener dart in one hand. He pauses, just for a moment, eyes focused not on Barry's face, but lower. Barry doesn't even have the strength to look to see where Zoom's malevolent gaze has fallen.
"Well, well, well, that's what makes you so important to him," are the oddly soft, amused words that pierce the threat of unconsciousness. Barry frowns, but the words don't even make sense.
He doesn't have time to make sense of them either, because the next thing he really notices is when Zoom declares himself the fastest man alive -and he's not in any shape to argue that one-, and then-
Agony. Like knives dug into his chest. Worse than the times he's had a needle stabbed between his ribs to suck excess air out of the space between his lungs and ribcage. Sparks shoot across his vision, and he almost blacks out. He can feel himself slowing down and it feels like dying.
Zoom is laughing, raucously, the noise grating and only adding to his pain. And that's the last thing he remembers.
Barry's condition is stable.
Barry's condition is stable and it's enough to make Harrison tug at his hair in frustration because it should be improving. But it's not. His speed-dampening serum worked, after all, and Barry got a double dose of it, so he doesn't even have the faintest idea when it might wear off. Not that he'd have much of an idea for a single dose, but he'd like to hope that after two hours, it would have been metabolised enough to stop working so well.
He can't even be in the room with him, and not because of his own tangled emotions. No. It's Barry's team, his friends and family, who stare at him in the most accusing of ways if he so much as breathes too visibly in their general vicinity. He can't handle that kind of tension, could barely tolerate it when it was not his fault.
And now that it is his fault, his eager insistence that Barry could take down Zoom, pushing pushing pushing and never once saying a word against a plan that was, in retrospect, foolhardy?
No.
He can't sit there and endure the blame from everyone else, not even to make sure Barry doesn't take a turn for the worse.
So he locks himself away down in Cisco's workroom and hides away from the security cameras to tug the thin patch of latex he's carefully painted over his soulmark up, and stares at the dulled yellow, willing it to brighten back to life. He's not sure what he'll do if Barry Allen dies because of him. Dies with his last thoughts being fear and loneliness.
All Harrison knows, and he knows it with the kind of clarity that is all at once startling and terrifying, is that if Barry Allen dies tonight, he'll stop at nothing to get his revenge.
He'll rescue his daughter and then he will make both their worlds burn if he must, if that's what it takes to stop Zoom for good.
He's woken up, gone back to sleep, and woken up again, and he still can't feel his legs. It's… frustrating, to say the least. He's exhausted, physically and mentally, but can't get back to sleep because the speed-dampener has finally passed through his system and his metabolism has gone back up to the point where there's no amount of painkiller that will touch the agony that stops disconcertingly in the middle of his back without risking killing him.
Barry ends up sending Cisco and Caitlin away, because he just can't deal with having anyone around right now. It's stupid, he knows, he knows. His friends' presence should be nothing but reassuring. But he's just too overwrought, too tired, too sore. He was snappish enough telling them to leave, who knew how bad he would have been if he had let them stay?
He failed. He's a failure. Dragged around Central City to show everyone that their Flash, their hero? Can't save them this time. Is too weak, too slow.
His gaze falls to the mark on his arm, that short two letter word that looks like someone's taken a Sharpie to his skin. Apparently, at some point, he met his soulmate. And failed them too, because it's black, dead black, an opportunity found and allowed to pass by.
He can't help but think of Wells' words, how he shouldn't think of a stranger as a potential enemy. Shouldn't condemn them in his mind. But he had, had paid no attention to it every time someone new said, "Hi," and now?
He's a failed hero, potentially crippled for the rest of his life. Not even a good enough person to give a stranger a chance, and now they're gone without either of them ever knowing…
A knock startles him out of his self-pity, for just a moment, and Barry looks up.
It's Wells. Looking drawn and haggard in a worse way than before, like he hasn't slept at all since the fight with Zoom.
He wants to snap at him to go away, leave him alone, but there's something about how he tiredly leans against the doorframe that makes Barry spare a little pity for him.
"Hey," Barry says, turning his arm down so the soulmark is pressed against the sheets.
Wells nods in acknowledgement. "Can I come in?"
There's a small part of him, the part that longs for the simple days when their Dr Wells was Dr Wells, before the truth of Eobard Thawne was revealed, before he knew he was bonded to his mother's killer, that clamours to say yes. Take comfort in the illusion that it's just him and his soulmate, and that this too will pass and he'll end up stronger, better than before. Because with his speed and Dr Wells' keen mind, what enemy could keep him down for long?
He gives in, because he's hurt and tired and scared and weak.
"Yeah. Yeah, come in." Barry swallows, or tries to, but his spit is thick in his otherwise dry mouth and it doesn't go down easy.
Wells ambles in, hands hidden in his pockets, and he stops by Barry's side to just look at him, expression absolutely inscrutable. At first glance, his face seems blank, but there's a tension in his jaw, a slight furrow in his brow, tightness in his eyes. Barry can almost read concern in it, concern mixed with frustration, uncertainty… and the sharp edge of anger.
"I'd ask how you're feeling, but I suspect that's a stupid question," Wells offers, at last.
"…Yeah," Barry agrees with a cough to clear his throat. It's difficult to breathe. "Still can't…"
He gestures helplessly down at his legs. Still can't feel them.
Wells hums, a short sound made rough by the sharp exhalation that accompanies it. He picks something up off the bedside table and hands it to Barry, who takes it without looking.
A cup. Water.
Barry sips slowly at it, somewhat grateful that Wells noticed without him having to ask.
"You'll heal," Wells says, with a certainty Barry wished he felt. "You'll heal and you'll get your speed back and then…"
He trails off, the tense anger hidden behind that uncertain concern visible in the glint of his eyes, how his lips tug back sharply over his teeth in something closer to a predatory snarl than a smile. As quick as the mask slipped, Wells has it back in place, breathing slowly with a visible rise and fall of his shoulders.
"Zoom won't know what hit him."
Barry shivers, because that momentary flash of the rage hidden behind all of Wells' composure was, quite honestly, frightening. Not that he doesn't understand the source of it now, a little. Because Cisco had let it slip, the last time he woke up, how Zoom had kidnapped this man's daughter. And Barry understood more than he'd like to about the desire to do anything to save someone you loved, and the fury that bubbled up when there was nothing to be done.
"At least one of us thinks so," he finally says, pushing the dark thoughts away. "I… I couldn't even…"
Barry gestures helplessly with the hand not holding the cup. His right hand. He doesn't care any more if anyone sees the mark there on his forearm, because it's black with the weight of his failures.
"May I see?" Wells gestures to his wrist.
"Yeah, sure," Barry sighs, unwarranted sadness colouring his voice. It's not like he deserves to be upset over this, has the right to. He's the one who was convinced that the universe had nothing good in store for him, and now he just needs to lay in the bed he made. "Go ahead. It's not like it matters. They're dead. I probably failed them too."
Wells clicks his tongue against his teeth as he takes Barry's wrist in hand with surprising gentleness. "I confess, I always wondered how one knew if they had a mark like this…"
"Couldn't tell you," he laughs morosely.
"…It's not black."
He looks at Wells like the man had officially lost his mind. "Uh, yes. It is. Even Caitlin said so. And hers is black too, so I think she'd know."
She had told him, in that apologetic tone that meant she didn't want to tell him, in a tone that said she kind of understood. Even if she really didn't, because she'd wanted her soulmate, and Barry felt like an ass accepting any sympathy on that count from her.
"And I think I wear enough black to know the colour when I see it, and this? Isn't black." Wells says it with absolute certainty, like he knows it's impossible for it to be a dead mark. Which is ridiculous, because the man doesn't even have a mark of his own. So how can he claim to know anything about soulmarks?
Barry opens his mouth to argue, but Wells cuts him off with a terse, "Look." And he looks, because Wells has pressed his arm next to the mark, the black of his sweater resting right next to the ascender of the I, and-
He's right.
It's not black.
It's the deep, velvet colour of the sky at night, at the darkest hour. The shade of a new moon evening, with only stars to light the way. Not midnight blue or shadowed indigo or even that peculiar purplish colour of blueberries, though there are echoes of all three in the softness of it. It's a colour that Barry doesn't have a name for, one dark and rich, endless and profound.
He isn't aware he's staring until Wells slides his hand down, cupping it over Barry's skin to hide the mark, and then he finally tears his eyes away to look at the man, mouth slightly open in shock.
Wells gives him a thin-lipped smile. "There, you see? You haven't failed everyone. And you still have a chance, if you want it."
Barry laughs, quietly and desperately, because he doesn't even know where to begin. But it's reassuring to know that at least, at least he didn't let his soulmate die. "Probably still too late for that, but… Yeah. Yeah."
He gets a slight cant of the head in reply. "Perhaps."
And then Wells straightens up, withdraws his hand and shoves it back into his pocket. "Can I get you anything? Food? More water? A movie?"
Barry thinks about it for a moment, eyes Wells pensively as he does so, even when the man starts to shift his weight under his gaze. Finally, he nods.
He sat with Barry until the boy fell asleep, lulled back into slumber by a full stomach and the soft voices of a movie turned down just low enough that the actors could still be heard, without any sudden changes in the action or music startling them. He makes a mental note to finish this one later, he doesn't recall there being a film version of The Princess Bride on his earth. Which is an utter shame, because the book was excellent, and the movie has been equally so thus far.
Harrison turns off the laptop, closing it and setting it carefully aside on the bedside table, which he moves so Barry can reach without straining himself when he wakes up.
Then he tucks the sheets up a little higher around his chest, presses his palm gently to Barry's forehead like he could will health back into his broken frame. His chest aches, making it hard for him to breathe. He cannot understand how, in such a short time, he's grown so fond of this child he never wanted to meet, and yet here he was.
Prickly, callous, contemptuous… and hopelessly sentimental.
It really didn't help that Barry was barely older than his own daughter, and the scene reminded him far too much of when Jesse had been just thirteen and stuck in the hospital because her appendix had almost burst. If it hadn't been for the fact that the cure for appendicitis was removing the useless organ, instead of a course of antibiotics, he'd probably have worried himself to death by now, panicked on a monthly basis.
He'd been worried sick then, hadn't strayed from her bedside, not even for work. And now his heart tightened in much the same way as he stared down at his young soulmate.
Young, there was the key word. Too young.
Harrison closed his eyes, sighed, and turned away.
At least, and if he were inclined to religion he'd probably thank God for small miracles, at least Barry hadn't probed into why he'd been so certain his soulmark couldn't be black.
After all, black was the mark of a dead soulmate, and even if he felt inside like his soul had broken and fallen under the weight of his sins, died from the consequences of them… he wasn't physically dead, not yet.
Though Harrison could not with honesty say he'd truly expected his soul to be so dark.