recklessthings | ϟ barry allen

[Barry runs a hand over his face, because this is going to go wrong in so many ways. There are so many ways this can go wrong. So many splinters of reality that could be broken just by Nora being here and he knew that.

He knew that and he let her stay anyway.

Barry honestly doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to steer her out of this without knowing what Thawne wants. A small part of him, an arrogant part of him, thinks that maybe he can try. He can figure it out and protect Nora and still save his daughter.]

Don't ... just don't do anything rash, okay. I need ... I need to talk to your mom.

[Iris will know what to do. Iris will help him figure this out, he just needs to know that Nora isn't going to make this worse before he can make it better.]

[She stares at him, like she's trying to decide if she can relax the kinetic energy thrumming in her veins, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. It could be a trick to slap a pair of metahandcuffs on her and take her back to the future whether she liked it or not.

She decides to trust he wouldn't do that to her.]

I want to be the one to tell her. Please. She deserves that.

[He considers for a moment before nodding.]

Okay. Let's go talk to your mom.

[Probably the last thing Iris expected Nora to be hiding was a deceased twin sister. Working with Thawne she can almost understand. She doesn't love it but blames herself more than Nora for it, since in the future, she never tells Nora what that monster did to her family. It isn't all Nora's fault for being the lamb to walk into the lion's den when apparently Iris did her best to make her a gullible as possible.

But the fact that she did that to not one daughter but two of them-- yeah she's going to need a minute to process that. Away from Nora. She lets her daughter cry on her for a little while, burying her face in Nora's hair and dropping tears of her own over how much pain her little girl has been hiding from all of them.

Eventually though, she pulls away and suggest that Nora go find her grandparents, because they deserve to know the truth too, and because Iris needs a minute alone with Barry. It's a minor miracle that Nora actually listens to her, leaving her parents alone.

Almost immediately, Iris's shoulders slump and she practically curls into Barry's side.]

We have twins.

I know.

[He pulls his wife into his arms without a second thought, just trying to find a way to process all of the information that has just been dumped in their lap. He both gained and lost another child in one fell swoop, and he doesn't know how to deal with any of it, honestly.

It had been bad enough, feeling like he had abandoned one child. It's another thing entirely to find out that he had abandoned two.]

I don't know what to do, Iris.

[She's glad when he admits that, because she's been feeling lost and hopeless for a while now. Nora has been with them for months, and as far as they know, none of her memories have been changing. Which means that Barry disappearing is a fixed point and Iris doesn't relish the idea that he never comes home to her.

Her arms tighten around his shoulders for a moment.]

I know. I know what we can't do. We can't push her away. I know she's lied to us and I don't love it, but she's still our daughter. I know it's Thawne but she's still Nora.

[He nods, because she's right, and he doesn't want to push her away, but at the same time ...]

We need to find out what he wants. See if there's ... a way around him getting that that doesn't involve alienating her.

[Truth be told, Iris will always picks her daughter over anything else in the world, even Barry himself, and if that means she has to be civil to Eobard Thawne... then it's really not the highest price to pay. She's facing down a future where she loses Barry and a daughter while completely alienating another. If Thawne knows how to change it, she kind of wants to let him do it. What else can he do to them that he hasn't already.]

What if there's not, Barry? He's terrible and evil, I know that but this is our family. Nora and her sister-- [Iris sucks in a deep breath, suddenly aware that she doesn't even know her other daughter's name.] They matter more than he does. So much more than whatever he wants.

It is our family. And that's why ...

[That's why he doesn't know what the acceptable level of risk is. Because when it comes to his daughter(s) and Eobard Thawne in the same sentence, none of that is an acceptable risk. Because Eobard's gifts always come with a price and odds are that Barry won't be the one to pay it.

Nora will.]

Nothing with him ever comes for free, it's not a clean trade, there's always a cost. And it's a cost that I don't want her to have to pay. She's already lost so much.

[She knows. She knows better than most, the cost that Eobard Thawne has taken from Barry. She'll never hate him the same way her husband does but then he's never stolen as much from her as he has from Barry. Eddie made his choice of his own free will and it took Iris a long time to move past that. Losing Eddie didn't change her life entirely. She was always going to end up with Barry. Maybe it spared her a divorce and some broken hearts, that's it.]

I'm not sure you'll convince her to walk away. She's too much like you.

[Wasn't Barry offered a similar chance, to save his mother and let Eobard get what he wanted. True, Barry chose to stop the villain that time but even he was there, in that living room a year later, tempted all over again to make things happen differently. And Nora's already made it clear how alone she's felt. Iris thought her daughter would do anything to save her father but she knows that Nora will do twice that and more to save her sister.]

I know.

[He closes his eyes, lacing his fingers behind his head as he turns away from her. He knows the person he used to be. But then he grew up, he moved forward, he started looking towards the future. He wants that for Nora, not whatever catch Eobard has waiting for her on the other side.

He moves to sit nearby, before looking up at Iris.]

How do I ask her to move on? To leave the people she's lost behind.

[When he pulls away, she lets him go, wrapping her own arms around her middle instead.]

Maybe you can't.

[When he left her and asked her to keep running in his place, a little part of Iris resented him for it. She was barely holding on by a thread for those six months, barely able to sleep, going through the motions even as she quit her job at CCPN and what friends she had outside of STAR labs slowly faded away. But she knew the risks when she agreed to married him, to have and hold in sickness and health, til death do them part.

Nora didn't get much of a choice in any of it, born a speedster and with her father ripped away from her at such a young age. Iris can't imagine losing a twin but if she'd lost Wally in that time Barry was gone too, it would've just been another chip in her armor that was already cracked.]

Dad used to say that part of being a parent was letting us make mistakes. I don't love it either, Barry, but if someone had told you to not create Flashpoint, would you have listened?

[Barry makes a face and scratches at his temple.]

That isn't so much an "if" as it is a "did and I didn't listen."

[Which is basically his way of saying that he's conceding Iris's point. But that doesn't mean he wants Nora to have to go through the pain he did in order to learn those lessons. He wants to save her from it, even if he knows he can't.]

If Thawne hurts her ...

[Barry is Done.]

I know.

[He doesn't need to finish the sentence for Iris to know what he would do to Eobard Thawne if he hurts their little girl. She'll be right there with him to kill the son of a bitch (again) for even thinking about it. How dare he. Hasn't he done enough to their family without trying to derail Nora's life too.]

We're going to help her. We've changed the future before. And this is our family, not his. Let's get our daughters back.

[He nods, because okay. Okay. They can do it. They can change the future. They just have to find a way to make sure Eobard doesn't screw it up first.]

Okay. Yeah. We'll get them back.

ϟ barry allen | the flash

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