Episode 35 - Flash Fanfiction - Game On!

Chapter 7

"What do you want from me?" Barry groaned, from on the floor, as Paco stood over him. "What do I do in the future? Just tell me so I can fix it."

"I wish it were that simple, uncle Barry... Really I do... if it were... I'd tell you, and we could both settle this like men and that would be the end of it! But it isn't that easy. But I will say this... it's because of you that everyone around us dies... It's because of you, that our families die. Everyone you have ever loved... That I have ever loved... dies." The man was filled with so much raw emotion as he spoke, he had clearly hit a nerve with Barry.

Barry looked over at Caitlin, then at Astrid and Cisco. Paco had clearly read his mind, "Yes, Barry... they're the first to go... then Iris. She dies in your arms. My mother had a purpose... but she died to protect you from your own stupid mistake!"

"So what? Are you saying that I, in my own grief, sent you back in time to stop me?"

"No... but there was nothing that you could do to hold me back... Has your speed regenerated yet? I will not fight you while you're sitting weakly on the floor."

Barry shook his head. It hadn't. "What's the point? You said that you wanted to remove me from existence... Now, would be the best time to do so. You're stalling."

"I'm not stalling!" Paco yelled, throwing another blast at him, which threw him back into the desk and only slowed down his regeneration all the more.

"You're lying. You have the same tell as your mother." Barry coughed out splutters of blood. "You don't want to kill me. I know you don't."

"No, you're right... I don't want to kill you. But, if it wasn't for you... we wouldn't be alone. Do you realize that your children don't even want to know you?"

"My- My children?" Barry gasped.

"Yeah... you have children... but not with aunty Caity."

"With Iris..." Barry realized.

"Yeah..."

"You slipped up... you told me a secret of the future." Barry said.

"It wasn't a slip-up... why do you think I told Caitlin what I said?"

"That you ship us?" Barry asked.

"Exactly! Regardless, even if I did slip up and say something that I shouldn't... I could always compel you to forget."

"Like you will do with you your parents and Caitlin after you kill me."

"Yeah... and everyone else around you. They will forget that you even existed... Just as you would want them to..."

Barry felt his speed regenerate, he managed to put up a wall in his mind to block out his thoughts and sped across the cortex to find Cisco's neuro blocker gear. He attached them to his ears before Paco had the chance to make his next attack.

"If you want to fight me... Let's do this away from STAR Labs." Barry said he had recovered fully.

"Yeah... or my mother will flip over the mess." Paco replied.

"You're also underestimating one thing..." Barry said before he left, "...that if your father can vibe an entirely alternate universe before Flashpoint... the pair of them together could remember that their own son killed their best friend."

"Well, at least they would both be alive to remember!" Paco snapped back.

Barry put on his Flash suit and fled out of STAR Labs, making his way towards Ferris Airfield. Paco willed a vision to come, showing him where Barry was and breached out of the cortex to meet him there.

Harry returned back to the cortex, where he found Cisco and Caitlin both unconscious on the floor and Astrid unconscious on the bed.

"Why don't they ever listen to me?" he snapped. He picked up a vial of a foul smelling chemical from Caitlin's medical bay and held the opening under Cisco's nose.

"Seriously, you jerk... that smells like old socks!" Cisco snapped. "Wait, what happened?"

Harry assisted him to his feet and said, "Ramon, wake up Sutherland. Allen's missing!" He held the chemical under Caitlin's nose to wake her up too.