![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reaction to 2x20 "Rupture", significant spoilers for same. I expect next week's episode will overwrite most of this, but I wanted some fallout from the end of "Rupture" to tide me over. Team Flash's three dads have a horrible, grief-fueled fight in the aftermath.
Title: Grim Necessity
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Henry Allen, E-2 Harrison Wells, Joe West, Cisco Ramon, bit of Iris and strong mention of Barry, Caitlin and Zoom. Henry & Joe & Harry, Henry & Barry, Joe & Barry, Harry & Barry
Summary: In the immediate aftermath of "Rupture", Henry and Harry tears strips off each other in their mutual shock and horror. Joe intervenes, and Cisco offers hope, but at the end of the day some things are still true and there is bugger all any of them can do about it
Wordcount: 2721
Warnings/Notes: SPOILERS, episode tag, shock, anger, grief, hope, rage, confrontations, emotional fallout, despair, fatherhood, superheroes, choices, pain
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Grim Necessity
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Henry Allen, E-2 Harrison Wells, Joe West, Cisco Ramon, bit of Iris and strong mention of Barry, Caitlin and Zoom. Henry & Joe & Harry, Henry & Barry, Joe & Barry, Harry & Barry
Summary: In the immediate aftermath of "Rupture", Henry and Harry tears strips off each other in their mutual shock and horror. Joe intervenes, and Cisco offers hope, but at the end of the day some things are still true and there is bugger all any of them can do about it
Wordcount: 2721
Warnings/Notes: SPOILERS, episode tag, shock, anger, grief, hope, rage, confrontations, emotional fallout, despair, fatherhood, superheroes, choices, pain
Disclaimer: Not mine
Grim Necessity
"He isn't dead," Wells mumbled. Almost absently, his face blank and stunned as he looked at where Barry ... where Barry ought to be. "He's not dead, he's just ... he's gone. Somewhere. I'll find him. I just need to-- I'll figure it out, I just--"
"You killed my son," Henry snarled, cutting the man off before he really would have to smash his arrogant face in. "You son of a bitch, do you not even realise what you've done?! This was your plan, you pushed him into this, and now he's--"
"He's not dead!" Wells snapped, sharp and jagged as he shoved himself off the railing and paced frenetically a few feet away. He spun around, turned back to them, shoving both hands agitatedly though his hair. "I don't know what happened. It was exact, it was the same circumstances down to the last atom. I don't know what happened. But I know he isn't dead. Something changed, something was different, but Barry Allen is not dead. I will prove it, I will bring him back. I just need two minutes. Two minutes, please, let me think."
Henry reared back, spun away himself. He wiped one shaking hand against his mouth, trying to think, trying to breathe, trying not to murder the man where he stood. He looked at the faces gathered around them. He looked at Joe, hollow-eyed and mute, his arm wrapped around his grieving daughter. He looked at Cisco, still standing dazed and horrified at the foot of the stairs. The boy moved, as Henry watched him. Cisco drifted slowly forward and knelt down beside Barry's ... Barry's suit. The remains of it. The last ... the last thing ...
Henry let out a half moan, biting down on his hand and turning violently back away. Wells flinched, his arms pressed in against his middle, his fingers biting into the opposite elbow. The bastard closed his eyes. He didn't look at Cisco either. Joe was the only one of them with the courage, or the hollowness, to keep looking.
So it was Joe who moved first. Joe who shifted, slowly and carefully, as Cisco made a sharp, cut-off little noise, looked down at the kid with a desperate, hesitant sort of a hope in his eyes. "Cisco?" the detective asked, Iris stirring in his arms. "Did you see something? Did you see ...?"
"Barry," Cisco breathed, his hands knotted into white-knuckled fists around the remains of Barry's suit. "Barry, he's ... I don't know, I can't tell, but he's not ... I can feel him. See him. He's not ... I don't think he's dead. He's far away, but he's not ..."
"Oh god, thank you," Wells breathed in his turn, the violent tension of him almost collapsing in on itself. "Oh god. All right. I knew ... I knew. Okay. He's not dead. We just ... we find him, and we get him back, and then ..."
"And then?" Henry snarled, the relief slicing through him, ripping and tearing the numbness and firing the helpless fury into sharp relief instead. He turned, strode furiously towards the man. Wells flinched in the face of him. His chin went up, his shoulders back, a man wide-eyed and waiting to be hit. Henry thought about it. He had his fist already raised in the air before he changed it to a finger at the last second, stabbed the man full in the chest with it instead of slamming him across the face. "And then what? You haven't got enough out of him? You haven't done enough trying to get him killed?"
Wells stared at him, a half-terror in his face, a guilt and a grief and wild-eyed, shaking horror. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out of it. He just stood there, flap-jawed and useless in front of Barry's almost-resting-place. Henry wanted to kill him. He'd never wanted to kill anyone so badly in his life. Not even that fucking bastard who murdered his wife. The one that looked just ... looked just like ...
"... Henry," Joe said quietly behind him. "Come on, man. Ease back a bit. Man knows what he did wrong. This ain't helping anybody."
Henry laughed. He kept looking at Wells. Not Joe. He didn't look back at Joe. He looked right into Wells' eyes, the guilt still living there. And the righteousness. The conviction, even still. The 'and then'. Wells looked at him, wild-eyed and heartbroken, but his chin was up. Raised and ready. Like a man who thought he was right. Like a man who'd just killed Henry's son, and still thought. That he. Was right.
"... Does he?" Henry asked, shaking his head in slow incredulous disbelief. "Does he know he was wrong? Look at him, Joe. Is that the face of a man who thinks he was wrong?"
Wells looked away. Licked his lips, turned his head out to the side. Looked at Henry out of the corner of his eye, his chest heaving with ragged, determined breaths. Henry watched him set his jaw. He watched the man armour himself up in righteousness.
"It had to be done," Wells said, and but for the fact that Henry'd been expecting it, he'd have floored the man right there. He surged forward in spite of himself, a rolling, furious step, and Wells stepped sharply backwards instantly. Swayed back, out of reach, but looked Henry right in the face, his eyes wild and desperate and sure. Still sure. "I know you don't believe me, I know right now you don't care, but it had-- It had to be done. It had to."
"Do you never, ever quit?" Henry asked him. Softly, very softly, his hands shaking at his sides. His heart pounded in his chest. He could feel the others watching them, could see Cisco off to one side, Barry's suit in his hands, his expression fearful and grief-stricken and horrified. Watching them. Watching them fight. Henry didn't care. He had to ... He couldn't let this ride. Not this. Never. "Do you never stop using them? Do you even give a shit?!"
"Of course I do," Wells shouted, his voice cracking in the middle of it, rocking forward half a step himself before wheeling away again. Pawing his hands across his face. Turning back to Henry, a wild, genuine grief in his face. "Of course I care. Of course I didn't want ... I don't want this! I don't want to do this, I don't want to watch Barry Allen die. Again. Over and over again, do you think I want this!? I want this to stop, I want to make it stop, but Barry is the only one with a chance to--"
"YOU JUST KILLED HIM!" Henry roared, striding over and grabbing the man in both hands, grabbing him by the arms and slinging him back into the nearest wall. Cisco squeaked. Joe let Iris go, moved down off the platform after them. Henry didn't care. All his focus, all his attention was on the man held shaking and terrified and defiant in his hands. "You just killed him. If he's alive it's no damned thanks to you. And all you can think about is how you still need to use him? All you care about is what he can do? If we get him back, if he's even in one piece!"
He shoved the man back against the wall, punctuated the words with short, jerking slams of his hands. Wells didn't say anything. Didn't speak, didn't protest, didn't even wince. He just took it, his hands locked around Henry's arms, his expression fierce and desperate and sure even as Henry did his best to shake it off of him. He took it for a whole half a minute, before Joe arrived and Joe wrapped his arm around Henry from behind and Joe hauled all three of them the hell away from the wall. Wells stared at him, that fixed, immutable expression on his face, while Joe grappled with Henry's arms and hissed firmly in his ear.
"I know what you're feeling, man!" he said rapidly. "Henry! Henry. I know what you're feeling. But Barry's alive, okay? Cisco said it. He's alive, and we're gonna get him back. Wells is gonna help with that. Okay? He is gonna help, so you need to let him go. This ain't helping anybody!"
Henry shook his head. His lips pressed together, his hands shaking as they loosened on Wells' arms. Slid down, gripped the man's shirt desperately. He could feel the tears in his throat. Below the anger, thick and clenched and knotting in his throat. He shook his head.
"He's my son," he whispered. Holding onto Wells, trying to make the man see. "Okay? He's not the Flash, he's not your weapon, he's my son. You can't do this. You can't just kill him, just ... just wipe him away, and then talk about using him again. You can't do that. I can't let you. You understand? You understand that?"
Wells closed his eyes. Dropped his head, his hands quivering around Henry's arms. He shook his head too, a helpless, desperate side-to-side. He wasn't going to agree. Henry could see it even before the man spoke. Wells wasn't going to agree.
"I'm sorry," the man said, rapid and quiet and tired. "I'm so sorry. I know you don't believe me. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It was supposed to work, it wasn't supposed to be this way. I'll fix it. I will find him, I will fix it. But I can't ... It had to be done. We had to ... Zoom is not going to stop. You saw him. He came in here, he mocked ... That's what he does." He looked up, bone white, that thin, savage desperation in his face. "He didn't kill them in Jitters because Caitlin asked him not to. He didn't kill Barry then because Barry was helpless and because Caitlin asked him not to. That isn't going to last. She's alone, she has nothing to work with, and sooner or later he is not going to care anymore. He's going to kill her. He's going to kill all of us. He is going to take this city and break it, just like he did mine. I've been there. I've seen it. He is going to torture us and he is going to kill us and it isn't going to matter whose son or daughter we are. You think if Barry didn't have his speed that Zoom was just going to leave him alone? We're all going to die. One way or another. We are all going to die, unless we stop him first."
Henry let him go. He took a step back, shaking his head, feeling Joe move automatically with him. Feeling Joe step out to the side, one hand still on Henry's arm, as Henry backed all the way up and left Wells standing there on his own. Shaking and fearsome and on his own.
"... So you're just going to do this," Henry said softly. "When you find him. No matter what condition he's in. You already almost killed him, more than once, and you're just going to keep doing it. You're just going to use him until he kills Zoom or Zoom kills him. You're going to use him until he's dead and he's not coming back."
Wells opened his mouth, worked it soundlessly and helplessly for a second. His hands opened and closed uselessly in the air. When he shook his head, when he managed to answer, it was as thin and helpless and useless as everything else.
"I don't want to," Wells said, tiredly and exhaustedly, like it made any difference at all. He tipped his head back, his eyes blind and savage in their grief. "I don't want to. Barry saved my daughter's life. I don't want to kill him, I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to put him out there and watch Zoom hurt him over and over again. Okay, I do not ... want that. But I have tried everything I can think of to stop Zoom. Everything. He's going to kill us. My daughter has claw marks in her skin, where he dug his hand in and electrocuted her. I can't stop that. He has Caitlin, he thinks ... he thinks he loves her, god knows what she has seen at his hands, and I can't stop that either. I can't stop any of it. This city, everyone in it. Everyone in this room. The only one, the only one, who has even had a chance, was the Flash. Your son. I had to do this. It went wrong. I will ... I swear to you I will fix it, I will try, but it had-- I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It had to be done."
"... Barry chose this," Joe said quietly. Henry looked over at him, turned his head sharply and in betrayal, and Joe shook his head, his grief stark and staring. "I wish he hadn't had to, Henry. I wish to god he hadn't. But he did, and I know why he did. It's not about his speed. Never has been, not at the bottom of it. All he wants is to keep people safe, to be able to keep people safe. I've watched him go through so much shit. I've watched him be hurt in ways a man should never have to watch his son be hurt. I don't wanna watch that again, not ever. But ... but Wells isn't wrong. That's why Barry chose what he did. It's not gonna stop, Henry. That thing out there ... he's gonna come for us. For our children, for all our children. All Barry wants in the world is to keep that from happening. If there was another way, you know I'd take it. In a heartbeat, I'd take it. But we couldn't see any. None of us. If we had, we wouldn't be here. None of us wants this to happen. I just ... I don't know if there's another way. He doesn't want to watch anyone die. Barry. He doesn't want anyone else to die."
Henry closed his eyes, felt them prick and flood, the grief finally clawing its way all the way out. Behind his eyelids, he saw Barry disintegrating, saw it superimposed over blurs of red and yellow as Nora was taken from him too. He saw it, he felt it, all over again. More times than any man should have to bear. He saw it.
"... So we watch him die instead," he said hollowly, turning his head, ignoring Wells himself to look once more at Wells' machine. To look at Cisco, still standing beside it, still holding that fragment of Barry's suit in his hand. To look at the silent, steady tears on the face of his son's friend. "So we stand here, and we watch him die. That's what being the Flash's father means."
Joe made a noise. A breath, an exhale, a grunt of grief and anger. "I hope not," he said, hollow and shaking. "I hope not, Henry. But so far ..."
So far. So many times. As many times as Barry could fall and be made to stand again. As many times as he could die and still come back. As many times as people like Wells could give him reasons, could pick him up and tell him they loved him and point him right back out into the fray once more. As many times as one boy could bear, and then so many more again. It wasn't going to stop. Things like Zoom, like the thing that murdered his wife. Until Barry died or they did, until he died and didn't get back up, it was never going to stop.
And the worst of it was, there was not one fucking thing that Henry could do to stop it.
"... So how do we find him then?" he asked eventually. Tiredly, the words flat and useless and scraped up from inside him. Useless. All of it. The whole thing was useless. So. Let's take it back to the only part that mattered. "He's alive. We think he's alive. None of the rest is gonna matter if he isn't. So how ... how do we find him?"
And there, as one person, for all the irony of it, all of them turned to Wells.
A/N: I'm not sure to what extent Joe was actually on board for this, but he was curiously on the fence most of the episode, and he is a lot more used to these choices than Henry is. And Harry ... to be fair to the man, we were always heading this way. From the moment Barry gave up his speed, given that Caitlin said Harry's extraction device takes it permanently, we were always heading here. This show is about the Flash. He was going to get his speed back one way or another, when Zoom is as big and as fatal a threat as he is, and there is almost no way to do that that wouldn't have gone horribly wrong. So Harry is ... None of them have much in the way of choice, and he didn't want what happened to Barry. Zoom is murdering people left and right, Zoom has Caitlin, it's getting increasingly likely that he is not going to be 'gentle' with her much longer. They don't have a lot of choices. But still. Still. Shit, what an episode.
"He isn't dead," Wells mumbled. Almost absently, his face blank and stunned as he looked at where Barry ... where Barry ought to be. "He's not dead, he's just ... he's gone. Somewhere. I'll find him. I just need to-- I'll figure it out, I just--"
"You killed my son," Henry snarled, cutting the man off before he really would have to smash his arrogant face in. "You son of a bitch, do you not even realise what you've done?! This was your plan, you pushed him into this, and now he's--"
"He's not dead!" Wells snapped, sharp and jagged as he shoved himself off the railing and paced frenetically a few feet away. He spun around, turned back to them, shoving both hands agitatedly though his hair. "I don't know what happened. It was exact, it was the same circumstances down to the last atom. I don't know what happened. But I know he isn't dead. Something changed, something was different, but Barry Allen is not dead. I will prove it, I will bring him back. I just need two minutes. Two minutes, please, let me think."
Henry reared back, spun away himself. He wiped one shaking hand against his mouth, trying to think, trying to breathe, trying not to murder the man where he stood. He looked at the faces gathered around them. He looked at Joe, hollow-eyed and mute, his arm wrapped around his grieving daughter. He looked at Cisco, still standing dazed and horrified at the foot of the stairs. The boy moved, as Henry watched him. Cisco drifted slowly forward and knelt down beside Barry's ... Barry's suit. The remains of it. The last ... the last thing ...
Henry let out a half moan, biting down on his hand and turning violently back away. Wells flinched, his arms pressed in against his middle, his fingers biting into the opposite elbow. The bastard closed his eyes. He didn't look at Cisco either. Joe was the only one of them with the courage, or the hollowness, to keep looking.
So it was Joe who moved first. Joe who shifted, slowly and carefully, as Cisco made a sharp, cut-off little noise, looked down at the kid with a desperate, hesitant sort of a hope in his eyes. "Cisco?" the detective asked, Iris stirring in his arms. "Did you see something? Did you see ...?"
"Barry," Cisco breathed, his hands knotted into white-knuckled fists around the remains of Barry's suit. "Barry, he's ... I don't know, I can't tell, but he's not ... I can feel him. See him. He's not ... I don't think he's dead. He's far away, but he's not ..."
"Oh god, thank you," Wells breathed in his turn, the violent tension of him almost collapsing in on itself. "Oh god. All right. I knew ... I knew. Okay. He's not dead. We just ... we find him, and we get him back, and then ..."
"And then?" Henry snarled, the relief slicing through him, ripping and tearing the numbness and firing the helpless fury into sharp relief instead. He turned, strode furiously towards the man. Wells flinched in the face of him. His chin went up, his shoulders back, a man wide-eyed and waiting to be hit. Henry thought about it. He had his fist already raised in the air before he changed it to a finger at the last second, stabbed the man full in the chest with it instead of slamming him across the face. "And then what? You haven't got enough out of him? You haven't done enough trying to get him killed?"
Wells stared at him, a half-terror in his face, a guilt and a grief and wild-eyed, shaking horror. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out of it. He just stood there, flap-jawed and useless in front of Barry's almost-resting-place. Henry wanted to kill him. He'd never wanted to kill anyone so badly in his life. Not even that fucking bastard who murdered his wife. The one that looked just ... looked just like ...
"... Henry," Joe said quietly behind him. "Come on, man. Ease back a bit. Man knows what he did wrong. This ain't helping anybody."
Henry laughed. He kept looking at Wells. Not Joe. He didn't look back at Joe. He looked right into Wells' eyes, the guilt still living there. And the righteousness. The conviction, even still. The 'and then'. Wells looked at him, wild-eyed and heartbroken, but his chin was up. Raised and ready. Like a man who thought he was right. Like a man who'd just killed Henry's son, and still thought. That he. Was right.
"... Does he?" Henry asked, shaking his head in slow incredulous disbelief. "Does he know he was wrong? Look at him, Joe. Is that the face of a man who thinks he was wrong?"
Wells looked away. Licked his lips, turned his head out to the side. Looked at Henry out of the corner of his eye, his chest heaving with ragged, determined breaths. Henry watched him set his jaw. He watched the man armour himself up in righteousness.
"It had to be done," Wells said, and but for the fact that Henry'd been expecting it, he'd have floored the man right there. He surged forward in spite of himself, a rolling, furious step, and Wells stepped sharply backwards instantly. Swayed back, out of reach, but looked Henry right in the face, his eyes wild and desperate and sure. Still sure. "I know you don't believe me, I know right now you don't care, but it had-- It had to be done. It had to."
"Do you never, ever quit?" Henry asked him. Softly, very softly, his hands shaking at his sides. His heart pounded in his chest. He could feel the others watching them, could see Cisco off to one side, Barry's suit in his hands, his expression fearful and grief-stricken and horrified. Watching them. Watching them fight. Henry didn't care. He had to ... He couldn't let this ride. Not this. Never. "Do you never stop using them? Do you even give a shit?!"
"Of course I do," Wells shouted, his voice cracking in the middle of it, rocking forward half a step himself before wheeling away again. Pawing his hands across his face. Turning back to Henry, a wild, genuine grief in his face. "Of course I care. Of course I didn't want ... I don't want this! I don't want to do this, I don't want to watch Barry Allen die. Again. Over and over again, do you think I want this!? I want this to stop, I want to make it stop, but Barry is the only one with a chance to--"
"YOU JUST KILLED HIM!" Henry roared, striding over and grabbing the man in both hands, grabbing him by the arms and slinging him back into the nearest wall. Cisco squeaked. Joe let Iris go, moved down off the platform after them. Henry didn't care. All his focus, all his attention was on the man held shaking and terrified and defiant in his hands. "You just killed him. If he's alive it's no damned thanks to you. And all you can think about is how you still need to use him? All you care about is what he can do? If we get him back, if he's even in one piece!"
He shoved the man back against the wall, punctuated the words with short, jerking slams of his hands. Wells didn't say anything. Didn't speak, didn't protest, didn't even wince. He just took it, his hands locked around Henry's arms, his expression fierce and desperate and sure even as Henry did his best to shake it off of him. He took it for a whole half a minute, before Joe arrived and Joe wrapped his arm around Henry from behind and Joe hauled all three of them the hell away from the wall. Wells stared at him, that fixed, immutable expression on his face, while Joe grappled with Henry's arms and hissed firmly in his ear.
"I know what you're feeling, man!" he said rapidly. "Henry! Henry. I know what you're feeling. But Barry's alive, okay? Cisco said it. He's alive, and we're gonna get him back. Wells is gonna help with that. Okay? He is gonna help, so you need to let him go. This ain't helping anybody!"
Henry shook his head. His lips pressed together, his hands shaking as they loosened on Wells' arms. Slid down, gripped the man's shirt desperately. He could feel the tears in his throat. Below the anger, thick and clenched and knotting in his throat. He shook his head.
"He's my son," he whispered. Holding onto Wells, trying to make the man see. "Okay? He's not the Flash, he's not your weapon, he's my son. You can't do this. You can't just kill him, just ... just wipe him away, and then talk about using him again. You can't do that. I can't let you. You understand? You understand that?"
Wells closed his eyes. Dropped his head, his hands quivering around Henry's arms. He shook his head too, a helpless, desperate side-to-side. He wasn't going to agree. Henry could see it even before the man spoke. Wells wasn't going to agree.
"I'm sorry," the man said, rapid and quiet and tired. "I'm so sorry. I know you don't believe me. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It was supposed to work, it wasn't supposed to be this way. I'll fix it. I will find him, I will fix it. But I can't ... It had to be done. We had to ... Zoom is not going to stop. You saw him. He came in here, he mocked ... That's what he does." He looked up, bone white, that thin, savage desperation in his face. "He didn't kill them in Jitters because Caitlin asked him not to. He didn't kill Barry then because Barry was helpless and because Caitlin asked him not to. That isn't going to last. She's alone, she has nothing to work with, and sooner or later he is not going to care anymore. He's going to kill her. He's going to kill all of us. He is going to take this city and break it, just like he did mine. I've been there. I've seen it. He is going to torture us and he is going to kill us and it isn't going to matter whose son or daughter we are. You think if Barry didn't have his speed that Zoom was just going to leave him alone? We're all going to die. One way or another. We are all going to die, unless we stop him first."
Henry let him go. He took a step back, shaking his head, feeling Joe move automatically with him. Feeling Joe step out to the side, one hand still on Henry's arm, as Henry backed all the way up and left Wells standing there on his own. Shaking and fearsome and on his own.
"... So you're just going to do this," Henry said softly. "When you find him. No matter what condition he's in. You already almost killed him, more than once, and you're just going to keep doing it. You're just going to use him until he kills Zoom or Zoom kills him. You're going to use him until he's dead and he's not coming back."
Wells opened his mouth, worked it soundlessly and helplessly for a second. His hands opened and closed uselessly in the air. When he shook his head, when he managed to answer, it was as thin and helpless and useless as everything else.
"I don't want to," Wells said, tiredly and exhaustedly, like it made any difference at all. He tipped his head back, his eyes blind and savage in their grief. "I don't want to. Barry saved my daughter's life. I don't want to kill him, I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to put him out there and watch Zoom hurt him over and over again. Okay, I do not ... want that. But I have tried everything I can think of to stop Zoom. Everything. He's going to kill us. My daughter has claw marks in her skin, where he dug his hand in and electrocuted her. I can't stop that. He has Caitlin, he thinks ... he thinks he loves her, god knows what she has seen at his hands, and I can't stop that either. I can't stop any of it. This city, everyone in it. Everyone in this room. The only one, the only one, who has even had a chance, was the Flash. Your son. I had to do this. It went wrong. I will ... I swear to you I will fix it, I will try, but it had-- I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It had to be done."
"... Barry chose this," Joe said quietly. Henry looked over at him, turned his head sharply and in betrayal, and Joe shook his head, his grief stark and staring. "I wish he hadn't had to, Henry. I wish to god he hadn't. But he did, and I know why he did. It's not about his speed. Never has been, not at the bottom of it. All he wants is to keep people safe, to be able to keep people safe. I've watched him go through so much shit. I've watched him be hurt in ways a man should never have to watch his son be hurt. I don't wanna watch that again, not ever. But ... but Wells isn't wrong. That's why Barry chose what he did. It's not gonna stop, Henry. That thing out there ... he's gonna come for us. For our children, for all our children. All Barry wants in the world is to keep that from happening. If there was another way, you know I'd take it. In a heartbeat, I'd take it. But we couldn't see any. None of us. If we had, we wouldn't be here. None of us wants this to happen. I just ... I don't know if there's another way. He doesn't want to watch anyone die. Barry. He doesn't want anyone else to die."
Henry closed his eyes, felt them prick and flood, the grief finally clawing its way all the way out. Behind his eyelids, he saw Barry disintegrating, saw it superimposed over blurs of red and yellow as Nora was taken from him too. He saw it, he felt it, all over again. More times than any man should have to bear. He saw it.
"... So we watch him die instead," he said hollowly, turning his head, ignoring Wells himself to look once more at Wells' machine. To look at Cisco, still standing beside it, still holding that fragment of Barry's suit in his hand. To look at the silent, steady tears on the face of his son's friend. "So we stand here, and we watch him die. That's what being the Flash's father means."
Joe made a noise. A breath, an exhale, a grunt of grief and anger. "I hope not," he said, hollow and shaking. "I hope not, Henry. But so far ..."
So far. So many times. As many times as Barry could fall and be made to stand again. As many times as he could die and still come back. As many times as people like Wells could give him reasons, could pick him up and tell him they loved him and point him right back out into the fray once more. As many times as one boy could bear, and then so many more again. It wasn't going to stop. Things like Zoom, like the thing that murdered his wife. Until Barry died or they did, until he died and didn't get back up, it was never going to stop.
And the worst of it was, there was not one fucking thing that Henry could do to stop it.
"... So how do we find him then?" he asked eventually. Tiredly, the words flat and useless and scraped up from inside him. Useless. All of it. The whole thing was useless. So. Let's take it back to the only part that mattered. "He's alive. We think he's alive. None of the rest is gonna matter if he isn't. So how ... how do we find him?"
And there, as one person, for all the irony of it, all of them turned to Wells.
A/N: I'm not sure to what extent Joe was actually on board for this, but he was curiously on the fence most of the episode, and he is a lot more used to these choices than Henry is. And Harry ... to be fair to the man, we were always heading this way. From the moment Barry gave up his speed, given that Caitlin said Harry's extraction device takes it permanently, we were always heading here. This show is about the Flash. He was going to get his speed back one way or another, when Zoom is as big and as fatal a threat as he is, and there is almost no way to do that that wouldn't have gone horribly wrong. So Harry is ... None of them have much in the way of choice, and he didn't want what happened to Barry. Zoom is murdering people left and right, Zoom has Caitlin, it's getting increasingly likely that he is not going to be 'gentle' with her much longer. They don't have a lot of choices. But still. Still. Shit, what an episode.
