What is strength of will without the pain of perservance?
Barry Allen wasn't ready to die that faithful night he confronted the monster known as Zoom in front of his entire team and the rest of the Central City, but that didn't mean he wasn't willi...
Author's Notes: Sorry for the rather short chapter this time around, I just wanted to build a little bit more of suspense ;)
"Hey, hey, hey, Barry, what's wrong?" Iris worriedly asked, her slightly distracted attention swiftly shifting onto Barry's rapidly beating heart as she quickly kneeled her jeaned legs down on the concrete ground in front of her practically motionlessly moving friend.
After a few seconds without a response, Iris' gaze finally caught onto the speedster's anxiously shaking hands and without another thought, she gently locked her fingers back in his, letting her warm palm slowly calm his mind's silently throbbing pain.
"Don't worry, Barry, I'm here. I got you," Iris whispered, softly, her eyes carefully watching his heart's every beat as the hero slowly regained what one could only assume was consciousness.
I didn't mean to scare him like that, I was just trying to help...
"If you're not up to doing this, it's okay. We can go back home," Iris spoke, her tone gently breaking the smallest of cracks through whatever internal barrier that had suddenly formed inside the speedster at the statue's sight.
"No, it's not okay, Iris! Nothing about this is okay!" Barry snapped, his eyes finally meeting his friend's as fragile tears slipped down his cheeks.
"Look, I really appreciate everything you've done for me, today, honestly, but I don't deserve any of it, okay! I don't deserve to have friends, to have a family so great that they'll literally put their entire lives aside just to stay by me every minute of every day so if I need anything, they can immediately give it to me! I don't deserve to have someone as perfect as you are following me around all day just trying to cheer me up because you can tell I need it! And I most certainly don't deserve to have some stupid statue in the middle of the city reminding everyone that they're supposed hero? Yeah, he's not even good enough to keep himself safe, much less them!" Barry shouted, pain seeping into his every syllable as more tears burned fiercely in his broken blue eyes.
"Barry, you know that's not true-" Iris began, though her whisper of a voice was almost immediately cut off by her best friend's interjection.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"But that's the thing, you keep saying that I know it's not true, but what if I don't feel that way? What if, what if I'm honestly just useless?" Barry questioned, his frustrated voice dropping several octaves as the last few words left his mouth, sending an oddly cold air of tension passing over the entirety of Iris' body.
And in that moment, Iris wanted nothing more than to just wrap her arms around him, to tell him that there was no world in which he would ever be anything less than his perfectly sweet, smart, adorkable self that managed to always be there for everyone in his life while balancing all that commitment with protecting their entire city from people like The Reverse-Flash, too. That his heart was and would always be larger than anyone she'd ever met. And that he never needed powers in order to show that.
How can he even say that? Of course, he matters to all of us. To Henry. To Dad. To me. And nothing that ever happens to him, even if he can't run again, could ever change that. Because I need him and he needs me. And I will never let any amount of pain he's forced to go through change that.
But just as Iris was about to try and comfort Barry's worries, her voice was abruptly cut off by the booming sound of gunfire resounding throughout the previously still air which was quickly pumping through the woman's lungs.
