The Great Escapes

[run_barry]

Since Yamato offered to come to Central City and help with the epidemic crisis, things have been crazy, but handling them has been a whole lot easier now that Barry isn't operating alone.

He even got some rest in, on Yamato's orders, and they've got a bit of down time as far as emergencies in the city go so they're using it to work on other problems.

While Yamato recalibrates the S.T.A.R. Labs satellite to track the new meta they suspect is behind a whole bunch of the crime, and a death-trap or two set for Barry, Barry is getting his science nerd-amateur virologist on, trying to find a cure to the bug that has so much of the City down; including his team.

Sitting at a desk in the Cortex, Barry works away with a microscope taking notes on a tablet. Beside him are several boxes of chicken nuggets which he's working through, with a few empty ones already in the waste bin nearby.

In the middle of the space on the floor GP the porg is munching on shrimp treats while bopping around an inflatable S.T.A.R. Labs beach ball.

Comments

[run_barry]

All of the running and work is winding Barry down, and it's a huge relief when Yamato announces the lock.

"Awesome," he breathes, slowing for just a few steps.

Suddenly the scene ahead turns into chaos and Barry's eyes widen.

"Oh man."

Picking up the pace once again, Barry rushes into the gridlock, zipping around as cars screech to a halt, some of them running into each other while others narrowly miss collisions.

Barry races to get to any pedestrians in danger and check on anyone in a vehicle that's been hit.

One old man he pulls out of the way just in time as a swerving car hops up onto the sidewalk. A bicyclist misses getting sandwiched between two trucks thanks to Barry. And when a truck hauling old tires drops its gate and the load comes tumbling out onto nearby cars, the tires wind up stacked beside the truck instead.

These feats take the last of everything, and when Barry zips away from the scene and comes to a stop behind a building several blocks away he's breathing hard, leaning up against a wall for support.

"Yamato, I can't-- the truck got away," he pants, disappointed in himself. "Can you help dispatch EMTs and firetrucks? I didn't find any major injuries, but there are some people kind of banged up."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato shuts his eyes, but holds back from making any sounds that might give away how he's feeling. Instead, he just turns his attention to making sure EMTs and firetrucks are dispatched to that location.

"That's done. Get back here," he says, after a few moments.

[run_barry]

Imagining how angry Yamato must be with him right now, Barry gathers himself together and nods.

"Be right there."

It takes longer than it normally would for Barry to get back to S.T.A.R. Labs, and when he arrives he doesn't whoosh straight into the Cortex. Instead he drops out of running outside of the door and comes walking in, pushing the suit's cowl back onto his shoulders as he goes.

"Man, Yamato, I was sure I could get them," Barry says, steps dragging and his whole frame slouched in exhaustion as he walks. "Maybe I should've routed them a different way. I didn't know he was gonna do the thing with the traffic lights."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato already has a surgical kit ready when Barry arrives, and is giving off no outward hints of feeling any emotions at all.

"It's not your fault, Barry. You were injured, tired, and caught off-guard. It happens. You did good work out there today," he says, sounding like he's still very much in mission mode, which is to say flat to the point of almost being cold. "I need you out of the suit so I can fix up your arm, and then we need to get you some food and a drink."

[run_barry]

Barry chews his lip to hold off a frown when he registers that detachment from Yamato which he translates as disappointment.

"Yeah," he says to Yamato's request, giving a nod and then setting about getting undressed. Removing the makeshift bandage from his arm first, which has soaked through, Barry then unzips the top portion of the suit and very gingerly shrugs out of the jacket.

The actions are performed with a whole lot of grimacing and pained sounds, and when the suit finally comes away to leave Barry shirtless he's unsteady and very obviously hurting.

"Never really wanted to know what getting shot feels like," he grits, looking down at his injured arm.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato's blank demeanour gives way for a second or two when he sees the wound, and there's a few seconds where he just looks guilty and ashamed. He quickly turns away to busy himself with opening the surgical kit, angling himself so that Barry can't see his face.

"Sit down, Gramps," he says, tone still completely flat.

When he turns back around, bringing the surgical kit to rest next to him and pulling out the equipment he needs, he's back to being completely detached.

[run_barry]

Barry catches part of that look and is hit again with the distance in Yamato's voice.

Taking a seat, careful not to jostle his arm too much as it's really starting to hurt now, Barry studies Yamato.

"You know this isn't your fault either, right?" he asks cautiously.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"I need to concentrate," Yamato replies, without giving much in the way of indication that he even heard Barry, sitting down and pulling a pair of gloves on.

He spends a few seconds looking at the wound, before setting about tying a tourniquet above it to cut off the flow of blood down into it. He settles back a little, picking up a narrow set of pliers and carefully dousing them in a little bit of rubbing alcohol.

What follows is a very cautious process of reaching in, grasping the bullet with the pliers, and carefully, carefully drawing it out along the path it entered through.

"Put pressure on it, I'll clean and suture it in a second," he says to Barry, pulling a small metal dish from the surgical kit and dropping the bullet into it.

[run_barry]

Barry withdraws on that curt reply, feeling like he's been kicked.

Shutting up, he holds his tongue on anymore attempts at conversation. He's about to speak up about them having better supplies here in S.T.A.R. Labs than the pliers Yamato brings out, then thinks the better of that and stays silent.

Mostly silent.

When Yamato sets to work Barry turns his head rather than watching, letting out lots of hisses and groans into his clench fist pressed against his mouth, and tensing despite his best efforts not to.

The bullet finally comes out with a loud 'OW!' from Barry and he clamps a hand over the wound, still grimacing through the hurt.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"Sorry," Yamato says, when he hears that exclamation, his blank expression breaking into a grimace for just a second. "Worst is over now."

He sets about irrigating the wound with a saline solution, and once that's done, applies some antibiotic gel over it.

"Almost done."

[run_barry]

Setting his teeth as Yamato cleans the wound out, Barry just nods.

When Yamato is finished Barry inspects the job he's done, buying time with that while waiting to see what Yamato will say now.

Barry's expected more silence or an explosion and isn't sure which would be worse.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato remains more or less silent throughout the rest of the process, but by the end of it, the wound's sutured and bandaged up. Yamato keeps not saying anything while he packs up the surgical kit, only breaking the silence to quietly whistle a few bars of 'A Spoonful of Sugar,' making the kit vanish back into his sylladex.

"Sorry," he says, after a few moments, tone not as detached and unemotional as before but still a little flat and controlled. "I know you're going to say it's not my fault, but -- I was the one who suggested using the prisoners as bait at all, I wasn't quick enough to get comms back when the Commander took over, and I was the one who suggested forcing them to call for help. And now we've lost two of them, and worse, you got hurt. I let you down."

[run_barry]

Stitches are no fun either, but Barry handles those better than the process of pulling the bullet out.

When Yamato finally does speak Barry cants his head, surprised that Yamato's ire is with himself and not Barry. Thinking about it a moment, Barry realizes he shouldn't be that surprised at all. Of course Yamato would take responsibility, even when the blame shouldn't be landing on him.

Shaking his head a little, Barry says, "No, man. Maybe there was something else we could've done, but your plan was definitely the best chance we had of tracking the Commander down."

Short of waiting around for the meta to decide to go on another spree, forcing him out was really the only option.

"And we needed to," he adds fervently. "Look what he's done today. Besides all the robberies and trying to kill me a bunch of times the trick he did with the traffic lights was dangerous. Ruthless even. People could've been seriously hurt, and it's like you said earlier, if we don't stop him now he's just going to keep escalating."

Barry gestures at his arm and then shakes his head.

"As for this, chalk it up to being a vigilante." Which means it's not Yamato's fault, either. "I mean, because I am. I don't even blame Eddie, given what was going down and all."

He's not pleased with the detective, but it is Eddie's job to stop criminals and lawbreakers.

"You didn't let me down at all, Yamato. If I had done some parts different today we might have Camera Commander already, but the important thing is we've still got a chance to get him, because you were here."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

It's not that what Barry's saying doesn't make sense. It does, Yamato knows it does, but it doesn't feel that way, somehow.

"Don't say that. If you'd done things differently, it could've ended just as badly, or worse. You did more than anyone could ask of you," he says, shaking his head. "But I should've known he'd try to get into our systems, I just -- didn't think he'd be able to trace us back here, I didn't think he'd even realise we were scanning for him. And I should've known he'd try to pull that stunt with the traffic, but I didn't think he'd go that far."

He grimaces a little. "I can't help but think that I just made things worse. You might not think so, but you don't have an accusatory bone in your whole body, of course you don't think so. At the very least, we both know you'd never say it."

[run_barry]

"Wow Yamato, I didn't know psychic was something you could do," he replies, prickled a touch by that last part from Yamato because it implies Barry somehow can't be objective about the situation, even though clearly Yamato did nothing wrong.

"How were you supposed to know all that? I didn't. I trusted the systems here in the Cortex to be pretty well safe-guarded against stuff like that, and even with the guy shooting at me all day and trying to pull a SAW on me in that basement I didn't see him risking other people just to let two of his guys get away."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato's a little taken aback by Barry's remark, partly because he didn't expect it and partly because it pushes him rather abruptly into admitting to himself that he was maybe being an asshole by saying that.

"Am I wrong?" He fires back, detached expression breaking into a scowl. He forces himself to relent after a moment, looking to one side and blowing out a frustrated breath. "Sorry. It was a dickish thing for me to say. I just meant ..." He doesn't know exactly what he meant, so he just gives a terse shrug.

He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck and shutting his eye. "You're right. I know you're right," he says. "But it doesn't feel that way. And I hate that you got hurt."

[run_barry]

Barry waits for Yamato to finish that sentence, and when he doesn't Barry makes a sound that's both annoyed and disappointed.

"Whatever," he replies in the space after Yamato trails off.

Standing, Barry cradles his forearm to keep the rest from jostling. The room tilts a little, but he keeps himself upright and straight.

"You know what I don't hate? Not being dead," he counters. "The bank, the cash office, and the basement? I wouldn't have gotten out of any of those situations without your help."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato can't quite suppress a grimace at that noise and the reply that comes after it, looking mostly at the floor and only just slightly at Barry, out of the corner of his eye.

"Give yourself some more credit," he says, tone going gruff again. "You'd have figured something out."

His gaze flicks up to Barry's arm, just for a few seconds. A little more gently: "Do you need painkillers? Or -- would they even work, if you did?"

[run_barry]

Barry has doubts about that, but doesn't comment.

Instead he shakes his head to Yamato's offer.

"No, I metabolize them out too quickly," he says, his own tone not softening much. "I'm gonna go get cleaned up, grab a shirt. Cisco has another suit around here so I'll find that. Gonna need it when we go after this guy."

With that Barry exits, still holding his arm he speeds off to other parts of the compound to change and maybe give himself and Yamato a minute or two.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato rubs both hands through his hair, entirely unsure as to whether he wants to hit something or just isolate himself somewhere, but since neither of those are options right now, he just sort of paces irritably, keeping one eye on the Cortex's main display.

[run_barry]

When Barry finally returns all the blood has been cleaned up and he has on a t-shirt and sweats. His arm not ready yet to try and pull on the tight clothing, he's carrying another suit; depositing it on the chair he was working from at the microscope earlier.

Picking up the bloody jacket he had been wearing, he frowns at it while examining the damage and the mess.

"Cisco is gonna be pissed," he murmurs.

Dropping the suit out of the way to be dealt with later, he finally looks at Yamato.

"Anymore of those juices left?" he asks.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"He takes a few days off and we manage to destroy his robot, his laser sword thingy, and one of his suits," Yamato says, just a touch wryly, although he doesn't look at Barry as he says it. "We're kind of wrecking all his stuff."

He jerks his chin towards the rucksack by the chair, pausing in his pacing. "We've got seven left. Help yourself. Take a meal bar while you're at it."

He's stopped moving now, but he's still not looking at Barry, and his entire body is tensed up, with one heel tapping against the floor as though he's barely keeping himself still.

[run_barry]

"At least we've taken care of his porg," he replies, then pauses. "Right? GP is still around?"

Walking over to the bag, Barry pulls out a bottle and a bar. Opening the bottle, Barry watches Yamato for a moment before asking, "Everything alright?"

Obviously not, which makes him worried.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"Yeah, he was nosing around at the robot a while ago. He seems pretty content."

He does look at Barry after that next question, just for a moment out of the corner of his eye. "I should be asking you that. You've got a hole in your arm, after all."

Turning back towards the wall, he makes a frustrated noise, scuffing his foot against the floor, and just slightly shifting his weight from foot to foot. He's a bit of a nervous ball of energy right now.

[run_barry]

Barry nods, glad for that at least.

Glancing at his arm, the bandage visible just beneath his shirt sleeve, he shrugs his other shoulder.

"It's fine. Still hurts, but with the bullet out now it's started healing."

Tugging his sleeve down, he looks back over at Yamato again.

"Still wondering about you, though," he says. "What's up?"