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Iris bursts into the hospital wing of the STAR Labs, her heart at her throat and a cold that has nothing to do with the warm weather outside invades her, making her shake in the most unpleasant way. Barry is beaten up, greenish purple bruises all over everywhere she can see of the ivory skin. He has a nasty cut by his perfectly shaped eyebrow and there’s blood coming out of his mouth and nose and all Iris can think of is the horrid nine months without him, of how she can’t handle that again, of how she can’t loose him, not now, not ever.
Henry is tending over Barry’s inert body and someone is holding Iris in place, gripping her still while she tries to free herself, get closer, make sure he’s breathing, that his heart is beating. It’s only when she hears;
“He’ll be ok, Iris. He’ll be just fine.”
That she realises that it is Cisco the one keeping her away from Barry and when Henry cuts Barry’s left boot open to reveal something that looks a lot like bone on his shin Iris is invaded by a surge of nausea and she has to look away. She turns to Cisco, burring her face on his shoulder and she can’t control her tears anymore.
She doesn’t really know how long it takes to Henry to come out of the room and tell them Barry is stable, that he’ll heal, eventually.
“Shouldn’t we take him to the hospital?”, Iris asks.
She doesn’t want to hurt Henry, suggesting that he is not capable of being a good doctor but Barry doesn’t have accelerate healing anymore and he still unconscious and it looks too much like it did when he was in a coma and she just can’t take any risks.
Besides, he doesn’t have his powers at the moment, it’s not like anyone at the hospital would notice anything.
It’s Wells who answers though;
“We take him to the hospital and suddenly there’s a lot of questions about how he got into this state.”
Henry is watching her intently and that’s what keeps Iris from the nasty answer she wants to spit out, but Henry reassures her;
“I would never risk his life, Iris. He’ll be ok.”
She trusts Henry, but Iris is not sure she trusts that. She leaves the rest of them, Wells, and her dad, and Barry’s dad, and Cisco, discussing the meta-human that did this to Barry and how they are gonna catch him and how long is gonna take for Barry to recover.
She pulls a chair right by his bed-side and holds his hand in both of hers;
“You can’t do this to me, Barry! Please! You can’t leave me alone again.”
When Henry comes back from his shower to check on Barry again he finds Iris on the hospital bed with him. She somehow managed to fit by Barry’s side, the one without the IV, her nose on the crook of his neck and her hand on his chest, probably feeling the beating of his heart, just to be sure. They are both asleep, induced or otherwise, and Henry can’t bring himself to wake her up even though she’ll probably be all stiff the next day.
He’s half way through to check on Barry’s vitals when he stops, surprised to see his eyebrow cut has healed. His metabolism is not accelerated, he’s not burning through any of the drugs he was given, his vitals are normal, non meta-human normal, but it’s as if the cut was never there somehow.
The leg injured is not quite there yet but it’s definitively healing faster than it should and he wonders if somehow Barry is getting his powers back.
There’s a beep indicating one of the tests he’s running is done and Iris wakes up in a jump to it, visibly unsettled, so Henry assures her;
“It’s ok, everything is fine.”
She nods at him and her eyes and nose all puff from the crying from earlier but he has to admit Barry has some reason when he says she always looks beautiful.
Henry watches as Iris brushes Barry’s hair off his forehead delicately, like he could break under her touch, and then her fingers trace his eyebrow, where there was a cut just a couple of hours earlier and she asks;
“He has healed?”
“I’m trying to figure that out myself.”
She watches him analysing samples and checking on dosages and double checking his vitals but doesn’t offer any comments,just sits on the bed, petting Barry’s hair, that is until Henry sits on the chair closer to the door. He feels her eyes on him for a while and then she tells him;
“You should go rest. I can watch Barry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah”, she nods softly and settles down at the chair by his bed again, the same way she was when he first left them.
Barry shifts and twists to the emptier bed a little and Henry thinks he can’t possibly have noticed her gone until Barry mumbles, disproving his father;
“Iris.”
And she holds his hand in hers, saying;
“I’m here, Bar.”
And he mumbles another Iris before calming down again.
All the stress of having his broken son in front of him, of having to be a doctor again after so many years, is making him incredibly tired so he decides to take Iris on her offer, telling her;
“His blood test doesn’t show any signs of infection and his temperature and heart rate seem to be under control, if anything goes off just call me, I’ll be in Harry’s room.”
Iris nods again, a soft smile on her lips and he wonders if the gut feeling he’s getting that Barry’s fast healing has something to do with her being there has any grounds for truth.
Well, stranger things have happened.
Barry wakes up to Iris holding his hand, on a chair by his bed, still asleep. He tries to search in his memory how did he ended up at STAR Labs’ hospital wing but his everything is foggy and all it can come up with is a lot of pain.
Not that he’s feeling any pain now, a bit stiff since this isn’t the most comfortable bed but he feels fine otherwise, nothing that would justify the IV, which he considers taking off, but before his opposite hand, the one he freed from Iris’ grip, can reach it he hears;
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Iris. Nothing, I just —”
“You’re just such a child!”, she grabs his hand back and it’s a fair trade, he thinks, if he can’t take the prickling thing off his arm then at least he’s touching Iris. She lets out a cute yawn and he smiles at it, she has always looked like a lazy cat when she had just woken up, and then she asks;
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine. What happened?”
Her forehead frowns in worry;
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember Claw trying to hit me and a lot of pain.”
“Well, he managed to hit you pretty hard.”
“How am I —”
“Healed? We don’t know yet.”
“So Claw escaped then?”
“Yeah, I mean, I don’t know exactly what happened, to be completely honest I wasn’t paying much attention on the discussion, I was a little distracted by your bloody state, but yeah, he’s escaped.”
He slips away from her glance, all the guilt building up inside him.
Iris seems to notice it, reassuring him;
“Barry, it’s not your fault.”
“I just feel so useless.”
She cradles his face, guiding his gaze back to her and says;
“I know, I get that, but you can’t keep doing that, Barry. You can’t run towards stuff like that and pretend like you still have your powers —”
He focuses on the wall above her head. He knows it’s self pity, he knows he shouldn’t indulge in it but he can’t help, and the words scape his lips even though he knows they make him sound like a spoiled child;
“Cause I’m clearly no help without them.”
“That is not what I mean —”
And there’s a bit of hurt on her voice, so he faces her once again, justifying;
“I know, I — I just miss being the Flash.”
“You’re still the Flash, Barry. And we’ll figure it out, you’ll get your powers back, I know you will, but you have to be alive for it.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Iris shakes her head like that wasn’t a good enough answer.
“You have to promise me. Cause I can’t loose you, Barry. You can’t leave me alone ever again, nine months is enough, it’s too much, I can’t deal with that stuff again —”
She barely has the time to finish the last sentence before Wells barges in, Barry’s dad following him. He takes the IV off Barry’s arm and pulls Barry to his feet and saying;
“Ok, experiment time”, he makes a cut on Barry’s arm.
It bleeds profusely for while but Wells stops Barry from pressing the cut, ignoring Iris’ indignant noises and Henry’s “this is really unnecessary” protests behind him.
Barry is not healing though, and he doesn’t get it, if he was knocked out yesterday and feels fine now how come he can’t heal from a little cut?
That is until Harry pulls Iris to him, placing her hand on Barry’s arm and the bleeding diminishes to a stop in a minute or so, the skin tender but no longer opened.
Barry watches Iris’ confused face as she looks between the cut, Barry, Henry and Wells and mutters;
“What? How is that… what’s happening?”
“Henry had a theory that you are the one healing Allen so I put it to a test.”
“What?”, Barry asks, his brain searching for a reasonable explanation to it; “So Iris is a meta-human? She has healing powers or something?”
Harry rolls his eyes at Barry, like he just reach the most preposterous conclusion, but as if to prove a point Harry cuts his own skin open with the same knife he used on Barry and all Barry can think is this can’t be sanitary but Iris doesn’t do anything for the cut, that keeps on bleeding as Harry says;
“Apparently Miss West is the key to your powers, Allen.”