Hard Truths

[run_barry]

Barry makes it back to S.T.A.R. Labs. Barely.

 

 

"I can't breathe. I can't-- "

 

"He needs oxygen, get the crash cart!"

 

"Cut me open-- the poison's still in me."

 

"He brought us a sample. Caitlin, we need to do a pulmonary biopsy, extract an active portion of that gas."

"I can't give you any anesthetic, your metabolism will burn right through it."

"I heal quick, remember?"

"It's a small needle, he probably won't even feel it."

"You're definitely going to feel it."

When Barry wakes up the room is mostly quiet, save for the steady beeping of the monitoring equipment still attached to him.

Opening his eyes and blinking slowly, Barry looks up to see the face of Cisco hovering over him.

"The Streak lives," Cisco says with a cheerful smile that conveys true relief.

Also in the room is Caitlin, who's quick to begin assessing Barry now that he's conscious. "You'd be dead if your lung cells didn't regenerate so quickly."

Barry feels like maybe he should be dead. In addition to the lumps he's feeling from the fight, his chest burns like a fire was lit inside of it. Rubbing his sternum, he groans, "My chest feels like that one time I had a cigarette."

On the look from Caitlin Barry chuckles, "Yeah, teen me lived for danger. "

Caitlin isn't amused. "This isn't funny, you could've-- "

"I didn't."

Caitlin gives him a disappointed look and walks away and, despite Dr. Wells' assertion that Barry should rest, Barry takes his own leave.

He needs to talk to Joe.

*****

Joe is waiting in Barry's lab at the precinct, looking through a file about the victim from the mall. She was a judge, and Barry gets to explain to Joe that not only were they wrong about the her attacker's abilities, Barry was too late to save her.

"I should have been faster."

Joe frowns, shaking his head at Barry, "Focus on the job, don't think about that right now."

"You don't wanna know what I'm thinking about," Barry replies, frustration and anger in his voice.

Crossing the room, Barry looks into the box Joe had pulled from storage earlier from Barry's Mother's murder. Barry has been through every single scrap within the box a thousand times and none of it has mattered. None of it has helped him to find the real murderer, or free his father.

"My dad has spent 14 years in a six by eight foot cell for a crime he didn't commit. I couldn't save my mom, but I can save him."

"Didn't I promise you that we would get your father out of prison?" Joe reminds him. "Together?"

Turning his back on the box to face Joe, Barry shakes his head. "I don't need your help, Joe. I could be in and out of there with him before anyone even sees me."

Joe doesn't blink. His tone remains measured as he replies, "Okay, you break him out of there. Then what? He's on the run, for the rest of his life. Something tells me he's not as fast as you are."

While Joe speaks Barry takes a seat on the desk, listening, ready to talk it out.

"You don't know what it's like there," Barry says, shaking his head at Joe. For over a decade Barry's dad has been confined to a box, tucked behind concrete walls, seen only through glass sparse minutes at a time.

It isn't fair, and today's failures only remind Barry of the things he can't do.

"You think I don't understand what you're feeling?" Joe counters. "I have been a cop for almost as long as you've been alive. So you should know putting on that suit does not make everybody safe. For every person you save there's gonna be somebody you can't."

Joe's words hit home, and Barry's head bows as he listens to them. Someone else tried to tell him the same thing, and she was right. This hurts.

"The hardest thing you're going to have to face is not some monster out there with powers," Joe continues, the weight of knowing heavy in his voice. "It's gonna be that feeling of uselessness when you can't do anything. Or, the guilt that weighs on you, when you make a mistake."

Barry's eyes lift to Joe's and he feels that guilt Joe is talking about, and he can see it being carried on the other man's shoulders, as well.

"Some things, Barry, you can't fight. Some things, you just have to live with."

[dialogue taken from episode 1.3]