Here we see Barry, still down in the pipeline, drinking himself to death, when an unlikely person comes along to snap him out of it. Warnings for depression and thoughts of self-harm. We get some Mick Rory backstory in this installment. Also, it looks like Barry might be going to save Len soon :)

"All by myself … Don't want to be, all by my-Hey!" Barry squeals mid-lyric when a bucket of ice water hits him square in the face. "Watch it! This is a private pity party! No guests allowed!" Without moving from his spot on the ground, he vibrates the water off his skin and clothes, spraying the man standing over him.

Armed with an empty bucket, Mick Rory stares down at a sputtering and coughing Barry Allen in disgust.

"I've been lookin' all over for you," Mick says. "What the hell are you doin' down here, Red?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Barry doesn't stand up to talk to him. He doesn't have the energy or the motivation. He had decided about an hour ago that this was where he was staying. It's nice here, quiet. He likes the cool comfort of the pipeline. He likes what it represents – safety, isolation. It's an oubliette. He could stay down here and, over time, if no one found him, he would be forgotten – even by himself. Except Mick found him, and he doesn't look like he's going to leave any time soon … the bastard. Barry turns his head and hacks to clear the last of the water from his throat so he can speak. Maybe if he explains, Mick will realize that this is best and simply leave him alone underground to rot. "I'm feeling sorry for myself."

"You're drunk," Mick announces, disappointment thick in his gruff voice.

"But I won't be in about seven seconds," Barry says with a bone dry chuckle. "Which reminds me. I need to re-fuel."

Barry reaches for one of his shot glasses. When he'd finished the first round, even though he didn't want to move, he went upstairs for a refill. These were the last of the toxic jet fuel shooters he'd concocted. These he knew had to be poisonous, unlike the others, which he'd only suspected. These burned his throat like a bitch, and not in that good, brash alcohol sort of way. They made his head throb like the blood was being forcibly drained, and his heart lurch into his stomach between beats. But they also made his thoughts evaporate for about a minute or two, leaving behind a complete void, as if they had been sliced out of his brain. So regardless of what's in them, or of what long term damage they could do, he continues to pound them back.

Because he wants the void.

Barry lazily extends a hand to the side in search of the closest shot, but Mick steps forward and kicks it away. He kicks the next one, and the next one, and the next one, until a puddle of thin, volatile liquid covers the floor, creeping towards Barry's body.

Barry watches it encroach, and clicks his tongue. "Now what did you go and do that for?" he slurs. He slowly sits up, intent on racing upstairs to make more.

Mick grabs Barry's arm as he starts to stand, pulling him to his feet. "Come on. We've got work to do. We don't have time for this."

"Are you kidding?" Barry giggles like an idiot. The village idiot. He has been since day one without him even knowing it. But … but … the lightning chose him, isn't that what Oliver had said? Chose him for a reason? Right. And Barry was dumb enough to believe it. It had become his mantra, the definition of his purpose. It's what he held on to when the going got tough. Being struck by lightning wasn't just an accident. There was a reason. He was supposed to become The Flash. Being a super hero is hard, there's no denying that, but he thought there had to be a trade-off. It couldn't be all sacrifice, all give and no take, all punishment and no reward. If he was a good person and did good things, he deserved to be happy. Isn't that how it worked? Just like, if he and Len loved each other and worked hard to be together, they could make it work, because they deserved to be together. Except, it hadn't exactly happened that way, had it? Turned out, their relationship wasn't simply some TV trope where the good guy reforms the bad guy and they live happily ever after. No. Said bad guy was a good guy all along –a sheep in wolf's clothing. In the end, he made the noble sacrifice, the one he was always afraid would be Barry's undoing. Barry was an imbecile of magnanimous proportions to believe that things would turn out any different. "All we have is time. Len is dead, remember?"

"Yeah. I remember," Mick says soberly, still holding the empty bucket in his hands, debating between crushing it and using it to smack some sense into the kid in front of him.

"So, what's the use in rushing? We can put off failure for another day, can't we?" Barry laughs. Mick's lack of laughter, his intense stare to the contrary, unnerves, even annoys Barry. "I mean, do you really think this is going to work?" Barry asks, putting every inch of condescension he has in his body into that question. And he has a lot of it. He absorbed it every time someone told him that he couldn't have seen what he did the night his mother died. That he had to be mistaken. That there was some other explanation.

Every time that explanation was automatic – his father did it, without a doubt, without question, and Barry was too young, too traumatized to understand.

But Barry understands this - it doesn't matter that he's the impossible. No matter what, when it comes to the people he loves, he's doomed to fail.

"Yes," Mick replies. "I do."

It's a simple, straightforward answer, unwavering in its belief, and it sobers Barry up a hair. But then the truth comes back at him, a knowledge garnered by similar attempts to save people in the past, and he laughs again.

"No, no, no, you want it to work. That's not the same thing as believing it."

Mick puts the bucket down. If he doesn't, he might just choose door number 2. To further that end, he crosses his arms over his chest and locks his hands underneath them. "Okay. Maybe I have my doubts," he admits. "But this is important. There's not just you and me riding on this. Lisa, she's … she's a mess. She's not doin' good at all, and I'm getting scared for her. I don't know what she's going to do."

"She has Cisco," Barry remembers bitterly. "She'll be fine … eventually."

"What do we have to lose? Why not take the chance?"

Without knowing it, Mick has hit the crux of Barry's problem, what drove him down here to begin with, stuck between hoping to succeed in a 70 to 30 against endeavor, and wanting to disappear. Failing at this isn't just a matter of not doing what he's supposed to do. It's possibly witnessing the one thing that could be the end of Barry whether he survives the trip or not.

And since luck isn't entirely on his side in this, he'll survive.

"Because I could overshoot the target," Barry says softly, hands moving on their own to wrap around his chest, grab his arms and hold him steady. "Get there right when it happens. I could watch him die. I can't do that. I can't. I watched my mom die, my dad die, one of my best friends die. I don't have the strength …"

Mick looks at his filthy, scuffed up boots, nodding comprehension. "When I was a kid, my house burned down … with my family inside."

Barry stares at Mick, speechless, but not necessarily surprised.

Mick is not an altogether perceptive man, but he can see Barry's next question in his eyes, and continues before he can ask.

"I set the fire. I'll admit it. It was an accident …" It had taken Mick a while to admit that to himself. Talking to the younger version of himself helped, but it was a while before he could truly believe it. "I didn't intend on it burning down the house, but it did. You see, I had an obsession with fire, with its power, what it could do. I thought I had a handle on it, but I became distracted watching it, watching the flames dance, watching it consume. It grew too big too fast. I couldn't control it. And when I realized what I had done, I ran. I saved myself, without waking my family."

"Mick," Barry starts, though he really has no clue what he should say. As horrible as this confession is, in Mick's case, it's not an aberration. It's what Mick does. He hurts people. It's only been recently when that's seemed to change. Maybe it's the scared boy inside him making amends for running, or the adult who took a long time to know better. But how does Barry console a man as unapologetically destructive (most of the time) as Mick Rory? "Mick, I'm …"

"I didn't see Snart die," Mick interrupts. He doesn't want to let Barry finish. Knowing Red, he'll apologize, and all of the apologies in the world can't change what happened, won't absolve Mick of what he did. It had crossed Mick's mind that maybe Barry could fix it, but would saving Mick's parents change anything? His dad was kind of a bastard, and his mom, she went along with everything he said, good or bad. Mick didn't intend on killing them when he set that fire, but he's not entirely heartbroken about them being gone. "But I saw the explosion. It was the worst thing I've ever witnessed. I heard it, felt the aftershocks hit the Waverider. I thought that it would take us with it. I think, in a way, I kind of hoped it would."

It hits Barry that that's what he felt that day he came home to find Mick and Lisa in his apartment. That explosion took place years away from him, but he felt it in his chest, like his own heart rupturing. A tear comes to Barry's eye picturing it, remembering the dull agony of it, the screaming headache he had that brought him to his knees, the searing heat that curled him into a ball.

Was that what Len felt in the split second before his life came to an end? Pain? Burning agony?

Barry doesn't want to know. He can't face it, not in real life. He can't be there watching when it happens.

But Mick is also correct in that this doesn't just affect him, or Barry. There's Lisa to consider, too. Her brother has been there for her whole life. He's raised her, supported her. They have a unique and undeniable connection. Even as an adult, she's lost without him.

If he has to try for someone, it has to be her.

"I don't want to mess this up," Barry says. "There's … there's too much riding on it."

"So, what's your plan then? Just stay down here the rest of your life? Drink yourself into oblivion?"

"I was beginning to think it was a good idea."

"And what about everyone who relies on you, huh? Everyone who needs you to be The Flash?"

Barry shrugs, amused by the irony that a criminal to Mick's extreme is asking him to think about all of the innocent people who rely on him to protect them from people like Mick.

"Do you want to do it?" Barry asks.

Mick tilts his head, pulls a face. "It's tempting. I mean, I do look good in red. But I don't think I'd fill out the costume the same way you do. Besides, I don't think I'd make much of a hero. Not like you and Snart."

"Len thought you would."

Mick huffs. "What makes you say that?"

"Because he told me once that you're the best man he's ever known."

Mick smiles, self-depreciating, unbelieving, and what could pass for humble in the world of Mick Rory. "I wish I could believe you."

Barry brushes off his pants, turns up his sleeves, rolls his neck on his shoulders till they both hear a crack. "Well, why don't I go get him, and you can ask him for yourself?"

"It's a deal," Mick says. He puts out a hand. Barry takes it. Mick shakes his hand once. Barry sighs. A wall of stench, of sour chemicals and what's probably the ghost of a late night cheese pizza, hits Mick, and he turns his face to the side. "But, you know, kid?"

"Yeah?"

"You might wanna clean up first."