If You Can't Be With the One You Love

The Drawstring

Barry feels his hand move and vibrate amongst the frequency of the matter around him. It nears the mans chest and the closer it gets the tighter Barry's chest becomes. Every nanosecond that passes, an ounce of his sanity leaves. Ever millimeter that his hand travels, he feels his humanity feel further and further away. The tip of his finger penetrates through the skin above his heart. He feels his hand slowly rip through arteries, muscles, tendons, the cracking of the rib cage— until he feels the membrane of the heart.

He can feel it beating, pumping. But as his fingers crush through the chambers, he feels it stop. He hears the man's breathing catch. Suddenly Baery's entire arm rested in the man's chest. As his body stopped moving, so did Barry. He stood there for a second in shock before slowly pulling his arm out. The man fell to the ground and he watched as the life left his eyes and the blood stopped moving through his body.

Only seconds had passed but to Barry, it felt like hours. The red fabric of his suit had been stained by the man's blood. He ripped off the fabric only to find that the blood had seeped to his own skin. He held his arm and fell to the ground.

There was a gaping hole in chest, blood surrounding the gash. He brought his attention back to his own blood-stained hand. He tried to rub the blood off but he couldn't. He rubbed with his clean hand, he tried to wipe it off on cleaner parts of his suit but it was so thick and so colored it wouldn't leave. It tarnished the bright paleness of his skin as if it was the scarlet letter— except this stand for adultery, it stood for murder.

He looked back down at Hernandez, who's face had become a ghostly white as it laid there lifeless. The sight was now engraved into his mind, sending a ring of terror throughout his body. The stillness of his limbs, the eerie flatness of his chest as his lungs no longer contracted.

What have I done? This thought initially remains only in his mind as he continues to glare upon the dead body, scanning it up and down as he hopelessly searches for any sign of life. As the finality of the kill settles in his mind, he slowly begins to lose his grip on reality just as Hernandez had lost his grip on life.

His limbs begin to feel numb as his heart only thumps harder and harder. Suddenly he feels as if they air around his is suffocating him. He doubts the existence of oxygen as he feels himself fall to the ground. His head is spinning as is his mind. The ability to breathe was becoming a foreign concept. He brings his hands over his ears as he tries to calm the loud ringing blaring throughout his mind.

"What have I done?!" Barry screams in agony. He feels himself go deeper into eccentricity as he begins to rock back in fourth, repeating the phrase over and over again until it becomes a mantra in his mind. He knew exactly what he did— and this is the irony of it all. He got satisfaction out of what he did. But it wasn't until he looked into the eyes of Hernandez and watched as the life slowly left from them, because he had shoved his hand through his chest— that he understood the gravity of what he did. And it pained him. That wasn't who he was.

He continues to rock back and fourth, staring into the abyss. He believes that he was truly losing his mind until he felt the warmness of another's hand resting upon his back. He heard a voice that seemed to have brought him back to this cold world that he had detached himself from. It stilled his hammering heart. It didn't just steal it— it took it into it's grasp and calmed it with one touch of the finger.

From that grasp, he felt himself lean into a sturdy figure, allowing himself to melt into his chest. He wraps his arms around his shoulders, enclosing him in his embrace as if he was a safety blanket. He was.

Barry rests his head into his chest, feeling the sobs release from their bondage. Tears were flowing like a steady river but the leather on Oliver's suit absorbed them just as Oliver absorbed Barry's body into his. Oliver caresses his head, resting his own chin atop of it. He feels the tears begin to set in his eye lids as Barry cries out to him.