Author's Notes: One interpretation, and by no means the only interpretation, of what will happen on the night of April 25, 2024. More fic will follow.

Barry's in trouble.

Iris runs as fast as she can, tearing across the street, her strides huge, full-tilt and fearless, flying over the black pavement. She can't stop to phone in and ask where Wally is, praying Jesse is with him. Reverse won't hesitate to take them out, but they stand a chance together. He could come after her and kill her mid-stride, but she doesn't slow down or seek shelter. Barry's in trouble.

She has to find him; that's her first priority.

Her chest burns before the tankers come into view, a wall of white flame ringing the eastern quadrant of the city square. The streets of lightning have vanished, but it presses in on her, all sides, the scent of speedsters burning before her. She reels back, halting abruptly at the edge of the sidewalk, and officers shout at each other over the roar of crumbling foundations.

A disoriented shadow in a recognizable tripolymer suit stumbles drunkenly into an alley, red fireflies trailing him. Iris' relief is breathless and enormous and short-lived: she runs to him and all but tackles him, and Wally blinks deliriously down at her.

"Iris?"

"Wally," she breathes, flinching at his left arm, torn down the middle and bleeding freely. "Oh my God."

"Where's Barry?" he asks, and she tears off her jacket and wraps it around his bleeding arm.

"You need to get to STAR," she tells him firmly, tying the knot.

"He was righ' here," Wally slurs.

She gives him a little push. "Wally, go."

He shakes his head and then a second streak appears, a golden light in shades of red and yellow, and Jesse says, "I've got him" and they're gone.

Iris breathes as evenly as she can, staring at the wreckage, compelled to draw closer to the heat pushing against her. Barry, she doesn't dare say. He's still Flash. He has to be. Because when she accepts he isn't, he's gone, it's over, and she refuses to believe either possibility.

Peering inside an abandoned shop, she startles when she realizes it's the ice cream parlor they were at just days before. The interior is gutted, reduced to cinders. Even the metal refrigerators in the back yaw grotesquely. Everywhere she looks, the lightning has touched, and it has destroyed anything unfortunate enough to come into its path.

Reverse.

She can only hope everyone got out first.

Moving down the street cautiously, she's half-afraid to peer inside other shops and bear witness to a Pompeiian massacre. The other half is too determined to proceed to let the possibility stop her.

To her relief, she never finds the performative tragedy. Wherever potential victims may have stood, only unidentifiable ashes remain.

Still no Barry. It's starting to hurt, how long it's been since she last saw him, eight-minutes and counting. She turns, her gaze panning across the street, and zeroes in on a crumpled-up doll in the street.

The world slows down, but she doesn't, sprinting towards him.

The street is slick with oil, but she doesn't stop. The wall of heat pressing against her is ignition-ready, she's covered in flammable material, and she needs to get away, but she refuses to abandon the scene, not-without-him. In seconds, the struggling shadow materializes into a familiar speedster, bleeding out before her. His exhales are harsh even from a distance of thirty-yards-and-closing. She'd shout his name if her throat wasn't scorched, closing the gap and crashing down beside him.

Her cop's daughter mentality kicks in and without hesitation she slings his arm, too big for her, over her shoulders, and drags him, also too big for her, relentlessly away, bulldog powerful, hauling him from the center of the street. He stumbles with her, splashing and thrashing through blood and debris, and she tries to be fast and gentle, but she can be neither with his bulk pressing against her. Ruthless and slow, she persists. His erratic breathing forces her onward even when tired, trembling muscles threaten to give out.

She can't breathe by the time they finally hit the curb. Unceremoniously, she drags him into an alley, away-from-all-help, and she can't help but think that now is not the time for preserving his secret identity. If it's his life or his secret she will always choose the former. But she is here, and now she can't move, and neither can he, and the pavement pillows like basalt underneath them. She can't shout for help, can't even fish her phone from her pocket, so she leans over him, propped against the wall, and presses the lightning bolt over his right temple.

It's his panic button, she knows, and four agonizing seconds pass before Cindy appears, leaping out of a breach. Iris wants to sob with relief, but Barry is cold beside her, and Cindy doesn't take him with her, staring, breathing shallow, kneeling close to him and actually cupping his face. "Hey, speedster," she says, shaking his head from side-to-side, surprisingly gentle, and golden eyes flicker like fading lamps to greet her. "Stay with me. Okay?"

He nods once, dimly, the lightning crackling until only one eye is alit. Halfway between two worlds.

It's then, and only then, that Iris sees the deep gash in his left side. His hipbone shows. It has to be excruciating. She wants to throw up.

I'm sorry, she pleads, because she dragged him over asphalt. He looks at her, his lips twitching in a smile despite the agony writ plainly on his expression.

"S'okay," he says, panting in pain when Cindy helps him up. Iris scrambles up to flank him, and she's shaking hard, but she helps him stagger forward into the portal.

Then it's blindingly bright and they're back at STAR Labs and the comparative silence is loud, but virtually instantaneously the scene is splashed with color: Barry is bleeding all over the floor, a slaughterhouse spilling out onto the pristine linoleum, and Cisco throws up into a nearby trash bin before composing himself enough to approach.

They drag him onto a gurney and he's ashen-faced, clawing for conscious, and Iris gives him her hand and expects him to break it, setting her jaw expectantly, and is startled when he only squeezes it gently, rhythmically. Help-me, he implores, repeating it with each press, words he can't force himself to say. Help-me, help-me, help-me.

He keeps a straight-lined jaw. After all these years, all-the-wear-and-tear, he's still stunningly young, not-a-day-over-twenty-five, and Wally is there and Barry grunts when Wally rests a hand on his stomach and pours Speed into him. Before Iris' eyes, the wound stops bleeding, knitting over. The hairs on the back of her arms rise in sympathetic horror when he finally breaks, a cauterizing howl reaching as deep into his chest as it can go, his back arching off the table.

Wally backs off and Iris feels how hot Barry's hand is and realizes his side must be on fire, overwhelmed by the lightning doing its job, his human body straining to hold it all. She says his name over and over, BarryBarryBarry, and he lets go of her hand because he needs to break something and Cisco passes him a metal water bottle, snatched from a side table, and Iris knows and doesn't care for a second that they aren't cheap as Barry takes it and crushes it, denting it, demolishing it.

The spray of water from its container is lukewarm and sudden, but Iris is already covered in his blood, in oil, in the smoke and brick and mortar of a city on fire, and she doesn't care, climbing onto the space near him, bringing his head to her chest, cradling it there.

Hands shaking, he lets the crushed metal drop with a thunderous rapport onto the floor, breathing stressed as he confines it to his nose, mouth-shut, soldier-up. She says, "It's okay." Over and over and over until she's sick of hearing it and he's trembling, holding onto her. She's vaguely aware of Wally and Jesse conferring in a corner, and Wally's barely conscious, and she should check in, but she couldn't let go of Barry if she caught fire. Jesse has it under control. She has to trust that.

They're a team of alphas: everyone holds their ground.

They have to. If any portion of the wall fails, the entire dam will collapse. The city needs them too much to let that happen.

Breathing shakily, Barry finally succumbs to the call of unconsciousness, going limp all at once. Reflexively panicked, Iris calls his name twice before letting it go. He's still alive. She can feel it, the warm, subtle pulse of lightning under his skin. Still beating.

Cisco asks in a ragged voice, "What happened?"

Iris hugs Barry closer to her, aching for him. Tears burn in her eyes. Do not cry. Do not cry. If she starts, she won't stop, and crying means the unthinkable, and he's still here.

"Reverse got him," is all Cindy says, quietly, reverently, and it feels like a eulogy.

I've got him now, Iris does not reply.

"We've gotta replace this," Cisco says, gesturing vaguely at the sea of red without looking at the floor. He looks stone-cast. Or almost-sick.

Cindy asks, "What's his type?"

"A positive."

Twenty minutes and a sizeable donation the nearest blood bank revives Barry, both eyes glowing a dim gold. "Hey," he husks, reaching unconsciously for his hip, for the wound, and Iris diverts his hand. "'m okay," he promises, stroking her calf, and she does not let him see her cry. "S'okay." Glancing over at Cisco, huddled in the corner, he redirects his focus. "Where's he?" he rumbles.

They all know he means Reverse. "Gone," Cisco says weakly. "Hopefully for a very long time."

Barry exhales. He shakes his head, sitting up slowly. "Barry," Iris warns, but he insists.

"S'okay."

Cindy folds her arms, standing off to one side. "What happened?" she asks, brusque, military.

Barry grimaces. "Caught me off guard," he admits. "We were …" All at once, the desire to tell sinks out of his shoulders, and he shakes his head. "I wasn't watching him," he apostrophes.

Cindy looks like she wants to press.

From his corner, Wally interjects, "You saved my life."

Barry blinks and turns to look at him. "You good?" he asks.

Wally grimaces. "Are you?"

Barry shakes his head. Then he stands and a horrible strangled noise escapes him as he puts his weight on both legs, pitching over and gasping in pain. Cisco helps him up as he insists, "It's okay, I'm okay" like he must convince the universe before he can feel it. Iris helps Cisco corral him back onto the gurney, keeping a hand on his arm and a lid on her emotions.

"Barry," she warns.

His jaw tenses like he wants to speak, but he holds his silence. Exhaling, he leans back into her. She isn't expecting it but quickly regroups, wrapping her arms around his neck and shoulders from behind, holding on. His Speed-warmth is dim and shaking and hurting, but it's still there, still his, and resting her chin on top of his head, she has to hope it's enough.

"Wherever he is," she promises, "we'll figure this out. Okay?"

He nods. She can feel his fatigue like it's her own. He needs time. The shaking hasn't died down completely; she can still feel it, subsurface, aching for acknowledgement, release, reprieve. She can't give it to him, but she does what she can.

She presses a kiss against his hair. "We'll figure this out," she repeats softly, his ears alone.

That night, cradling a sleeping Flash in her arms, she writes the final draft of a soon-to-be-headliner article:

FLASH MISSING: VANISHES IN CRISIS.

(It'll give us time, she knows, even though she also knows it'll torment Flash's fans. It'll give him time to heal.

Eobard won't come after a missing target.)