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Barry sat quietly in the pipeline. He wasn't sure how long he'd been in there. It'd been hours, but of how many, he couldn't be certain. His perception of time was different than it was to other people. Hours felt like days sometimes. All he could think about was Zoom's hand being rammed through his father's chest and his friends and family locking him in a cage for being emotional about it. Would they act any different if they were in his position? He wanted to be angry with them, but at the same time, he was too busy being worried about them. What if Zoom killed them?

They had turned the temperature down in the cell to thirty degrees. That was probably to keep his muscles stiff for when they finally let him out of the cell; they wouldn't want him to run off or anything. Speed and cold were opposites, after all. If Barry were a normal person, he would get hypothermia in about half an hour at this rate. Thankfully, he was a metahuman with a healing factor and was working on vibrating, but he was getting too weak to. It had been hours since he had eaten. He'd probably been in this cell for about three hours and hadn't eaten anything for around four before that. He couldn't bring himself to. He just wasn't hungry. That sounded so weird coming from a speedster, but loss of appetite could come as a symptom of the depression grief can cause. Now, however, he was starting to get it back. He was starving and he was burning all his calories shivering and vibrating to stay warm.

Barry started to feel a bit lightheaded after another hour or so. It was like how he would back when he didn't realize how fast his metabolism was. He needed to stop vibrating; he was expending too much energy.

Barry still felt lightheaded and decided it might be a good idea to lie down. As he lowered himself down, he yelped as the dart in his back brushed the floor and jerked back up. He'd forgotten it was there. They hadn't even had the decency to take the dart out of his back.

He reached around, trying to remove it, but he couldn't reach it. He struggled with it for a few minutes, but that only made him feel weaker and he was unsuccessful at making any progress. He didn't even come close to taking it out. Barry's vision started to blur, whether it was from the tears pooling in his eyes or the dizzy spell, or perhaps both, he didn't know. Whimpering, he lowered himself onto his side.

He kept shivering, curled up into himself on the ground, hoping they would be back soon.

Team Flash returned to STAR Labs after an unsuccessful attempt to take down Zoom. They'd been out there all night and now morning had come. They were all exhausted. Zoom had seen right through their fake Caitlin and when they tried to open a breach and force him back into Earth Two, he fled. They continued searching for him for several hours to no avail. If Barry had been there, they probably would have caught him, but they all knew it was for the best that they locked Barry in the pipeline. Really, it was for his own good in all their minds.

Despite their fatigue, Team Flash got coffee out and discussed what they could try next. Sadly, Zoom had seen through their only plan and now knew they were coming for him. They didn't know what else they could try.

"Well," Joe said, "if we aren't going to come up with any ideas any time soon, we should check on Barry. See how he's doing."

Caitlin's eyes widened. "Oh, my God. He… he's been down there all night."

"So?" Cisco asked.

"Well, we turned the temperature down to thirty degrees, remember?" she said. "I thought we were only going to be gone for a couple of hours. We haven't exactly tested it, but we know he doesn't do well in the cold."

"What are you saying, Caitlin?" Iris asked. "I mean, he heals. He's alright, isn't he?"

"I… we need to check on him," she said.

The team made their way down to the pipeline and opened the door to Barry's cell. He was lying on his side, eyes closed, not even shivering in the cold cell. The floor of it was frosty and Barry's cheeks were tinged slightly red from the cold. The dart was still sticking out of his back.

Joe opened the cell immediately and pulled his son out of there. Barry was ice cold to the touch. Joe felt his neck for a pulse and breathed a sigh of relief when he found one, though it was weak.

"We need to get him upstairs," Caitlin said. "And get blankets. Lots of blankets."

Joe pulled the dart out of Barry's back and carried him upstairs to the med-bay as quickly as he could. He laid Barry down on one of the beds and pulled the top half of his suit off, trying to remove as much of the cold clothing from his son's body as possible. Caitlin was already looking him over as Iris, Cisco, and Harry came into the room with as many blankets as they could find.

They covered Barry in the blankets, trying to get him warm.

"Is there anything else we can do?" Iris asked. "Would heating pads help bring his core temperature up?"

"No!" Caitlin said. "You never want to use heating pads, warm water, or massages to warm someone with hypothermia up. You could cause his blood vessels to open up too quickly and his blood pressure to organs such as his kidneys, brain, heart, and lungs could fall dramatically. He could go into cardiac arrest and very likely die. We're just going to have to make due with the blankets. If we can get him to wake up, we can give him a warm drink, though. Or something else high in energy…" her eyes widened.

"What is it, Caitlin?" Joe asked.

"We… we had him down there all night. And for a good part of the afternoon," she whispered. "Who knows how much energy he expended trying to stay warm? Add it all together… I need to start him on an IV. He's probably starving."

Caitlin started fixing up the IV to get nutrients into Barry's body.

They continued to cover him with blankets, wrapping the majority around his torso and the sides of his head. Eventually, Barry started to stir as the warmth and the nutrients entered his body.

His green eyes fluttered open and he whimpered.

"Hey, Bar," Joe grabbed his son's cold hand. "It's me. It's Joe."

Barry looked at him in confusion. "J-Joe," his teeth chattered. "Wh-wha-what's g-go-going o-on? Wh-where a-am I?"

Joe glanced at Caitlin.

"Confusion and memory loss are symptoms of hypothermia," she explained.

"You're at STAR Labs, Bar," Joe said. "You have hypothermia, but you're going to be okay. I need you to keep shivering for me, though, okay? You need to get warm."

"I-I'm ti-tired," Barry whispered, his eyes drooping.

"I know, Bar, but you have to stay awake, okay?" Joe said. "As soon as you're better, you can go to sleep."

Barry whimpered.

Cisco exited the room and quickly came back with some very high calorie protein bars. "Here," he said, handing them to Joe.

"Barry," Caitlin turned to her patient. "I need you to cough for me, okay? I need to make sure you can swallow before Joe gives you something to eat."

Barry glanced at the protein bar. His stomach felt like it was being clawed at with the hunger coursing through him. Obediently, he let out a small cough.

Caitlin nodded to Joe. "Give it to him a little at a time."

Joe opened the protein bar and broke off a piece. He brought it to Barry's mouth and the speedster took it gratefully. Once Joe had finished giving him the protein bar, they had Barry drink some water Iris had heated up, and then they gave him another protein bar. Caitlin had had to start him on a second IV before they were finished.

By the end of it all, Barry was exhausted. His eyes were drooping, but he was shivering less. He was no longer in danger. "Can I go to sleep now?" he asked in a small whisper.

"Of course," Joe said, stroking his son's hair gently. "Go to sleep, Bar."

Barry's eyes fluttered shut and he quickly drifted off.

"What did we do," Joe whispered.

"We were just trying to protect him," Harry said. "We didn't know things would turn out this way. Though it was pretty stupid of us to leave him in a freezing room with nothing to eat and a fast metabolism when we weren't a hundred percent sure how long we were going to be gone. That's on us. We have to live with it, and we have to hope he can find it in his heart to forgive us. Knowing Allen, he will. It's only forgiving himself that he has a problem with."

Harry glanced at Barry one last time before heading off to find his daughter. Since Zoom was still on the loose, he was worried about her seeing as she'd been held hostage by him for months. He'd come back to check on Barry again later. He had grown very fond of him while he was here. If he had had a son, he hoped he would have been like Barry. Barry had made him a better person than he had been when he first arrived on Earth One.

Joe, Cisco, Caitlin, and Iris were still in the room with Barry. He was still shivering a little and had burrowed deep into the blankets.

"How could we have done this?" Joe asked. "We put him in there to protect him and instead we nearly got him killed."

"We didn't mean to, Dad," Iris said, sitting next to her father on the edge of Barry's bed. "He'll understand that."

"Will he?" Cisco asked. "Barry wasn't okay when we put him in there. He was… he was so upset. I almost couldn't do it. I mean, what we did wasn't very good for him mentally either. One of us should have stayed with him. We didn't all have to go after Zoom."

"Cisco, with Zoom, it was kind of all hands on deck," Caitlin said.

"No," Iris said. "I could have stayed with him. I'm not a scientist, I wasn't needed as a distraction for him, I wasn't needed to shoot at Zoom… I could have stayed with him. If I had, not only could I have given him the comfort he needed, but I could have prevented this from happening. He could have asked me to take the dart out of his back and I could have relieved him from that pain, he could have told me he was getting too cold, too hungry… we left him unsafe. That was the exact opposite of what we were trying to accomplish."

"There's nothing we can do about that," Joe said. "We can't dwell on what we should have done, what we could have done. We can only make choices now. We have to focus on the present. We made a mistake and we need to make it up to Barry now. We can't let him go race Zoom; he could just get himself more hurt, but we need to stop contributing to that pain. To that danger. We almost killed him tonight. If we hadn't checked on him when we did…"

None of them wanted to think about what it would have been like it they'd all decided to go home and get some rest, if no one had bothered to check on Barry until much later. The thought of going down to the pipeline to find his corpse frozen to death in a cell made all of them feel sick.

They all ended up taking turns watching over Barry. They were pretty sure he was going to be okay, but they wanted to be absolutely sure. After neglecting him until he almost died, they were afraid to not have someone watching him. They all needed to sleep though, so they couldn't watch him all at the same time. They all slept in shifts.

Barry woke up around mid afternoon. By then, all of them were awake and Caitlin had changed his IV bag several times.

Barry opened his eyes to find himself in the med-bay in STAR Labs. The last thing he remembered was lying down on his side in the cell they all put him in. He remembered the cold, the hunger, the pain… he remembered wanting it all to just go away. And now it had… for the most part. He was still hungry.

Barry struggled to sit up, finding himself covered in blankets. They were making him really hot. He found that ironic. Not to long ago, he'd felt like he was freezing to death, and now he was boiling.

"Barry."

Barry turned toward the voice to see Joe sitting in a chair beside the bed he was in. "Joe?"

"How are you feeling, kid?" he asked.

"Hot," Barry said, pushing some of the blankets off him.

Joe smiled, but it didn't quite meet his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Bar."

"For what?" he asked. "Leaving me locked in a cell after my father just died or nearly killing me in it."

"Bar-"

"You know what the worst part of that was?" Barry turned toward him, eyes hard. "It wasn't that you betrayed me, that you literally shot me in the back and locked me up in a cell like I was a criminal, like I was some weapon you can put away when you don't have need of it or send to a repair shop to calm down when it malfunctions-"

"Bar, that's not-"

"It wasn't that you lowered the temperature and starved me until I almost died by the time you came back. I'm assuming that's why I'm covered in blankets, right? I got hypothermia. And the IV bag. That's because I went into hypoglycemic shock again, right? I was at least close, wasn't I?" Barry said. "But no, those two things, they hurt, Joe, but they weren't the worst part of what all of you did. The worst part was that you went off to fight that monster without me. You all could have died. You could have been murdered by him just like my dad was and I would have been powerless to stop him again." Tears welled in Barry's eyes and he started sobbing. "I can't lose you too."

"Barry, you're not going to lose me," Joe said. "You're not going to lose any of us."

"I didn't think I'd lose my dad, either," Barry said. "But I did. He took him from me."

"Oh, Bar," Joe said, pulling his son up into a hug. "It's okay; I've got you."

Barry pushed back a little. "Do you? Do you, really? Because I needed you, Joe, and you weren't there. You don't lock someone in a cage when they're grieving. You don't leave them alone with nothing but that. I needed you, all of you, but you just left me. And I needed you when I almost died, too. You told me you got a feeling when Iris's appendix burst. You knew she needed you. Did you know I needed you when I was down there? Probably not, right? I'm not actually your son. I'm some charity case you took in. My father is dead."

"Barry, I'm so sorry. You are my son," Joe said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. We all should have been there for you. What happened yesterday will never happen again. I promise."

"How can I trust you?" Barry asked.

"I guess I'll just have to earn that back," he said. "All of us will."

Barry was silent for a few moments before nodding. "Okay. I'll give you a chance to earn it back. Let me take down Zoom. You all thought I didn't have a plan, but I do. I did then, and I do now. I said I was going to make him suffer, right? Well, I know exactly how to do that."

"Barry, this isn't you," Joe said.

"Would you prefer I kill him?" he asked. "My plan doesn't involve that. I don't want to kill him. And I don't think you want me to either. Think about it, Joe. We can't send him back to Earth Two. That's selfish. We'd be leaving Earth Two at his mercy with no one to save those innocent people. And we can't lock him up. It's too likely that he'd get out. We tried to trap him once; it didn't go too well. I have a way to stop him for good that doesn't involve killing him. And if you can trust me this time, then I think I can maybe start to trust you again."

Joe hesitated, and then said, "Okay, Bar. What's your plan?

AN: Well, please review and let me know what you think about this story.

I personally got so mad at Team Flash when they locked Barry in the pipeline. It was cruel and wrong to do to a grieving person. So, I decided to exaggerate the circumstances a little more so it was a tad more life threatening, but if you really think about it, it still kind of was. Even though they didn't lower the temperature on him, they still locked him up for hours without any nutrients. That isn't exactly a good thing with how fast his metabolism is. I'm willing to bet a speedster could starve to death much faster than a normal person could. I really wish Flashpoint hadn't happened, because I wish season three could have been less about everyone bagging on Barry for creating Flashpoint in a moment of grief and more about Barry not trusting Team Flash anymore because they betrayed him. They shot him in the back and locked him in a cage. Who's to say they couldn't do that again to him? How can Barry ever trust them again? How could he not have been more upset with them for it? I just wish Barry wasn't so forgiving sometimes, but at the same time, it's one of the qualities about him that I love. Barry's ability to forgive is part of what makes him much more likable than any of the other characters in my opinion. They all proved to be pretty unforgiving about Flashpoint. Anyway, sorry for the rant. I could honestly go on all day about it, but it's pretty late where I am, so I should probably stop here.

-DragonsintheMoonlight