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Metal creaking.
Glass tinkling.
The smell of fresh tire marks on asphalt hanging thick in the air.
A ringing in his ears, his palms burning.
Cold metal on his legs.
Something digging into the side of his neck.
Barry took in each of these sensations slowly, his brain moving at a snail's pace. He opened his eyes slowly, dazed. A grunt escaped his lips, half a question, half an exclamation.
His stinging hands lay in front of him in a sea of broken glass, blood running sluggishly from small cuts and scrapes.
He tries to pick up his head and finds it heavy, almost impossibly so.
Was it always this heavy? he found himself wondering.
Before him the world laid on its side as if the earth had laid down for a nap. But that couldn't be right. And it smelled like burning - why did it smell like burning?
Something ran across his forehead and Barry flinched at the tickle.
His head ached, now that he thought about it. And his chest, and his hands, and his hips, and especially his legs. But it was all weird. Numb.
There was something pressing against his shoulder. He turned his heavy head to look and suddenly he could hear.
Sirens, shouting, creaking.
God how had he not heard it before? It was deafening.
He groaned, bringing bloody hands to his head deftly.
Besides him, through the wailing of the unknown, Barry heard somebody else groan.
Again he moved his sluggish head and this time he found someone dangling limp next to him.
Joe?
Immediately the noises grew more shrill. Immediately Barry felt his heart begin to race. The weight on his shoulder turned into Joe's limp arm.
Barry reached up- over? It was so hard to tell.
His hands were shaking. Were they shaking before? The sky had disappeared from his vision and had taken his breath with its blue.
"Joe," Barry rasped, shaking his shoulder. "Joe," he tried again.
Outside their bubble, footsteps crunched on glass. He could hear people yelling in at him but couldn't make out the words.
Barry watched Joe's nose bleed, his temples and forehead too. He still hadn't roused and Barry's heart raced faster, more blood leaking from his hands onto his body below.
"Joe. Joe?" He tapped his face frantically, twisting in his seat to free himself, find some way out. But each movement drew out the sharp pain hiding under the cover of numbness in his legs.
He felt sick to his stomach.
The air grew heavy with a metallic smell and the shouts of the outside came louder. Barry gagged.
He needed to save Joe - get him to a hospital - do anything besides nothing.
His legs cried in pain but Barry wouldn't let it stop him.
"Joe!" He jerked his legs frantically but metal kept them clamped in place.
"Joe!" Tears welled in his eyes and stung the cuts on his cheeks. His shouts grew more desperate as his legs twisted harder in the vice grip of the crumpled hood.
Deflated airbags fluttered in the wind. Shattered glass tinkled as it shifted and settled. Somewhere in the car, something dripped onto the hot engine, hissing faintly.
The mangled metal groaned and creaked its protest.
Barry heard none of it.
More blood ran down his face. Joe's stayed slack. He couldn't breathe.
"Joe!"
He remembers the paramedics, their hands seemingly endless, crowding him, pulling him, holding him still.
He remembers Joe disappearing from the car, taken away by the gaping maw of gloved hands that poured in from where the windshield once stood.
The sun blinded him when he too was pulled from the car, and try as he might, the hands overwhelmed him before he could so much as flinch.
The last thing he remembers is the ambulance. How he begged for Joe - to know anything about his condition. The distressed looks of the paramedics were stark in his mind and, thinking back on it, he can't remember if he cried out any words besides 'Joe'.
There were cold hands everywhere. They almost masked the feeling of a cold liquid injected into the meat of his thigh.
The quiet rumbling of an engine and the gentle sway of the road slowly filtered into Barry's mind as he came to his senses once again.
He was no longer swaddled by the thick stench of disinfectant and the air was warm. He relished in the feeling for a moment, his mind carrying him back to the days when Joe would take him for night drives to soothe his racing thoughts and lull him to sleep.
It was nice...
...
...
Barry sat straight up and opened his eyes, looking around wildly yet seeing nothing, his thoughts suddenly racing.
He had been in an ambulance. Was he still in an ambulance?
His stomach churned violently. Machines lined the walls. Hands flew to his body once more but this time he resisted them, tried to push them away.
"Barry!" A voice called. His head whipped around to find the voice.
"Caitlin?" She was standing next to his gurney, hands held up placatingly. Slowly the space around him came into focus, the machines on the walls turning into satellite equipment and drone parts. The STAR Labs van.
Caitlin began talking again and Barry struggled to focus on her voice.
"Barry you've been in a car accident. Do you remember what happened?" Her voice was that of a doctor's but her face was drawn with worry. A memory of Joe lying motionless in the driver's seat of the car flashes through Barry's mind and a split second of bitter bile in the back of his throat is all the warning he gets before he's hurling in his lap.
His vision starts to go dark around the edges as the smell of his regurgitated lunch stings his nostrils. Faintly he hears Caitlin yell drive faster, Cisco.
Before consciousness can completely escape him Barry feels his hand close around what he thinks is Caitlin's wrist.
"Joe?" He's begging. "Cait," he mumbles, "Joe..."
"Barry stay with me," she commands instead. He feels himself slipping. "Barry!"
This time Barry wakes up slowly. His brain is slow to catch up with his senses but he allows himself time to acclimate before he opens his eyes.
He can hear monitors beeping, the quiet hum of generators, Cisco singing quietly. He cracks his eyes open and groans in Cisco's general direction.
"Joe."
He hears Cisco jump out of his skin as the soft lights of the STAR Labs med bay greet him. His legs hurt. His ribs too.
"Man, don't scare me like that!" Cisco yelps. He sets something down on the ground then sits down in the chair next to Barry's gurney.
"Where's Joe?" Barry asks again. He tries to keep his mind from spinning out of control, a breath caught in his throat. His head hurts. It doesn't stop racing.
"In the hospital," Cisco says. "He's pretty banged up, but he'll be ok." Barry closes his eyes and lets out a deep breath. Joe is ok. Joe is ok. He can still see the blood and glass on the backs of his eyelids. It's something he's sure he won't be forgetting anytime soon.
Cisco scoots closer.
"How are you doing?" Barry opens his eyes again and turns his head to face him.
"Ouch," he wheezes. He blinks hard. "Really ouch." Cisco lets out a dry chuckle.
"Yeah, that's about what I expected." He rubs the back of his neck uncertainly. A few beats of silence pass. Barry glances down at the gadget Cisco set on the floor.
"What are you working on?" he asks. Cisco perks up a bit at the question, seemingly pulled from his thoughts.
"Oh, it's nothing." He waves his hand dismissively. Barry blinks and the void of hands reaching through the windshield dances through his mind. He shudders.
"Tell me about it," he prompts, his voice teetering on pleading. "I could use a distraction." Cisco's eyes soften and he reaches back for the object, holding it up for Barry to see.
"It’s a gadget I've been working on for a while," he begins, turning it around in his hands. "Initially I wanted to make some sort of meta-proof forcefield so you could just run up on metas and drop it on them. That way you could ask questions first, fight later, you know?" Barry nods along, allowing the steady rhythm of Cisco's voice to ease his nerves. He listens earnestly, and as time passes he finds himself offering solutions and ideas to solve his tech problems. Time slips quietly along without notice and before he knows it, Barry can think clearly. His head barely hurts, his heart doesn't race, and his mind settles.
Every time he starts to think of the car, the way the engine sizzled as fluid leaked on it, of Joe - he reminds himself that Joe is ok. He's being looked after in the hospital and he's going to be ok. Besides, he had healing to do himself. Barry knew if he tried to sneak away to the hospital to see Joe before Caitlin cleared him she might just kill him.
So for now he’ll rest up. Cisco could talk till the cows came home and Barry was happy to have the company. The faster he gets better the faster he can get back to protecting the city he loves. The people he loves. A faint smile tugs at the corners of his mouth as Cisco makes a joke and he lets out a content sigh.
Everything would be okay.