Chapter Three: Father, Lead Us Through the Darkness

It was approximately 18:29 and around 15:29 in GMT when warplanes attacked Khan Sheikhoun about fifty kilometers south of the city of Idlib in Syria. A great explosion, akin to a mushroom cloud, yellow in color, had engulfed the town in no less than fifteen minutes with all citizens in the surrounding area being affected by the fumes. It was a bomb, more deadly than the conventional thermobaric fuel-air bomb, leaving damage far greater than anyone could have possibly imagined.

A chemical weapon.

Eight-year-old Sayid only remembered how much his eyes stung in the dead of the night. He was ready to go to bed to attend school the next morning, before the explosion occurred. The air was absolutely acrid. With his sleeve over his nose, he ran from bed to find his younger sister and then his parents.

When his sister awoke, they followed each other down the stairs only to discover his parents lying on the kitchen floor, convulsing with foam dripping at the corners of their mouths. He cried in terror, too afraid at the scene before him, before he grabbed his younger sister by the arm and tugged her outside of the house.

Outside was much worse, a chaotic scene unraveled before the children's eyes, from what little they could see through the stinging sensation that permeated within. Their neighbors, equally terrified, were running about the streets, screams reverberated from every corner—it seemed as if the world was ending right then and there. He felt as if he could not move his arms, his sister was still desperately clinging to him and crying hysterically, everything was becoming more numb by the second. His hands, his legs, his body—the air was getting more difficult to breathe.

The world around him was spinning out of control, he felt himself choking now. Why could he not breathe?

All sensation was escaping him, replaced with nothing but a stinging pain that he felt in his limbs, in his veins. He felt his sister's grip on his arm loosening and suddenly, she fell to the floor, twitching uncontrollably. Sayid wanted to scream, however, no noise would come out.

His vision was depleting by the second, he blinked furiously, trying to stop the stinging in his eyes. The streets, the darkened sky, the people were all blurring around him, coalescing into a jumbled mess. Before fully losing all control, he glimpsed up at the sky to see an angel descending upon him. Her hair blew in the wind held by a golden crown upon her head. A look of worry marred her beautiful features, but she reminded him very much of his mother.

Was he going to paradise? He felt her hand cover his nose, before she carried him up in her arms.

And then everything went black.

It took a total of eighteen hours before Barry was able to fully contain a sarin gas bomb in Khan Sheikhoun on the onset of its detonation, along with the help of Diana and Victor.

According to the U.S. intelligence agencies, the gas was released by the Syrian government in response to civil warfare as a result of rebel offensive in the northern Hama province.

It was clear that this was a blatant act of chemical warfare. At least two hundred and eighty-six people, including children, were killed while hundreds of more were affected by the gas.

It was about eight o'clock in the morning when Victor alerted him about the explosion from the League's global surveillance station, he was just about ready to begin his day when he heard of the tragic news. Before even leaving, he knew that children would have been affected, chemical warfare knew no age limit. It killed all the occupants in its way with no discrimination.

Age, gender, political standing—nothing of that mattered in the face of death.

He was the first to arrive on the scene, Diana and Victor followed in less than an hour. To disperse the gas away from the area as quickly as possible, he was forced to circumvent around Khan Sheikhoun repeatedly for seventeen hours straight while Diana and Victor rescued the denizens throughout the area. He had to wear a protective mask to prevent inhalation of the fumes as he sped throughout the town until the gas was finally contained and oxygen levels in the atmosphere were able to fully stabilize.

Once he was able to bring the environmental conditions back into homeostasis, he ran through the town trying to save any of the few remaining survivors and transport them to the U.N. safety zone. With a heavy heart, Barry finally reconvened at the safety zone with his teammate Victor, carrying the last of the victims.

There were hundreds of people being treated by the medical professionals and volunteers of the Red Cross, while dozens of trucks were wheeling in the bodies of those who did not survive.

A plethora of corpses, draped in white blankets and government issued plastic body bags, were stacked on the back of a truck passing by. It was a scene he was all too used to seeing; terrorist attacks, civil warfare, death.

However, each time he saw it, it was as if it were new all over again. Like a fresh wound festering in the skin, painful and unpleasant. The faces of each person he tried to save, they managed to ingrain themselves in his memory no matter how many times he had seen it.

This was real life. This was the result of human error and the result of the malignancy that darkened the hearts of men who were put in positions of power for all the wrong reasons. He wanted to cry out for them all, all the poor unassuming souls that lost their lives from the terror of politics.

Though his body was spent from fatigue, he continued on, ambling around the safe zone; sending his condolences to the victims who cried out for their dead husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters—children.

The last of the trucks came by and it made him physically flinch as he surveyed the silhouettes of bodies under the white cloths. They were smaller this time and he knew for certain that it was the children. Parents scrambled towards the truck, wanting to see if they could confirm the bodies of the deceased. The drivers unveiled the cloths, and he immediately heard screams of anguish as each parent discovered their child in the heap. Barry winced, putting his hands over his face.

Things like this, the suffering, was something he would never quite get used to no matter how hard he tried.

He felt a strong hand grip his shoulder and turned. Victor stood by his side with a face like stone, but underneath the hardened lines, he could see the pure, unadulterated hurt that his expression failed to hide.

"How you holding up?" Victor murmured as they watched the mourners cry over their children's bodies. A dull aching pain was weighing down on both of the hero's hearts as they looked on.

"N-Not good, man. Not good," he replied in a shaky voice.

"...I know I'm not supposed to feel anything at all anymore, this programming has altered my body so much. But, God, I was crying. For the first time since my accident, I thought I wouldn't be able to feel human emotions anymore. God, I was wrong."

"Are you alright?"

"I...I guess I will be. It's been so hard on all of us. I know Bruce wanted it to be a three-man unit, but damn, I feel like we should've had more help."

"Where was Clark? Arthur? Bruce? Anyone."

"Apparently, a localized chemical detonation isn't as severe as the other things going on tonight. Lois was kidnapped and Clark thought it more important to find her than being here. Bruce and Arthur are trying to contain a poison that was released in Gotham's waters by the Joker, millions of people were in panic. We just didn't have enough manpower to allocate around the globe tonight."

Barry sighed.

"Hey," Victor spoke with a gratuitous voice. "Thanks for staying in the front lines to destabilize the gas, I can't imagine how much you've been through these past couple of hours. Must be tired."

"No, no...I can't imagine how you and Diana feel. You had to rescue them all...Christ, you had to see all those faces, those bodies."

Victor swore under his breath. "Speaking of, where is Diana? Did she ever confirm her progress at the checkpoint?"

"N-No, I haven't heard from her in hours. I didn't even see her at the checkpoint." His heart began to palpitate at the revelation.

Was Diana okay? Where was she? For all she was worth, Barry knew that Diana was by far, one of the strongest women, no, one of the strongest people he knew. He was well aware that her strength rivaled that of an entire army and in any situation, she could hold her own. Despite that, a sliver of dread had crept up within his chest. The man was completely afraid. Afraid for her safety.

"I thought she probably checked in with you, Vic! Did she not?" He was a little frantic now.

"No, I...I assumed she checked-in with you..."

"Shit..." he muttered under his breath, preparing himself to take another cursory round around the town to find her.

Before he could leave, however, Victor gripped him on the shoulder and pointed up towards the darkened skies. Barry turned, only to see the woman in question descending upon the ground, two small bundles in hand, with a look of agony etched across her features.

He exhaled a breath of relief and squinted his eyes to see her. There were tear stains across her cheeks.

A group of officials ran towards her and he felt himself running too. As she landed on the ground, she held out the two bundles. Inside, lay two dead children—a small boy and girl. The medical professionals reached out towards her to take the children, but she would not let go. He felt his heart sink even further in his chest.

"M'am, please, we have to take the bodies now. We need to confirm their identities," one of the volunteers pleaded.

"No, no, no...Please...I can...I can still save them...Please..." her words died out under her breath as she shook her head vehemently, clutching on to the bundles even tighter.

"Wonder Woman, please, we have to confirm their bodies," a U.N. official stepped in.

She shook her head, stepping away from them cautiously. "N-No...please..." she was crying now.

It was Barry's turn to step in. He could not handle it anymore, he just could not see her like this. It hurt him too much. "Wonder Woman please, we have to take the kids now. There's nothing you can do," he said sadly as he reached out to gingerly take the children.

Thankfully, she allowed him to, and he handed them to the medical reporters. Once she let go, her knees buckled and she fell to the floor. Her hand flew over her mouth to quiet the gasps that escaped her lips, the tears flowed down uncontrollably now while she watched the officials carry the children's corpses off.

Barry kneeled down with her, wrapping his arms around her, and she cried into his shoulders. "I could've saved them...I could've saved them..." she repeated in a broken mantra.

"Di, there was nothing you could do. You tried your best, the gases were too toxic for them to handle," he tried to reassure her.

"B-But, I thought that if I could...If I could just shield them away from it all... I could save them...It's all my fault."

He held her tighter. "Oh, no, no, no, Diana. It was not your fault. We couldn't have done anything more than what we did tonight. We gave our all, you gave your all. Don't blame yourself," he cooed.

"B-But, it wasn't enough...It wasn't enough..."

Victor trudged towards them with heavy steps. The expression on his face could not betray his pain no longer.

Barry watched as Diana looked up towards the cyborg, eyes still welling with tears. To his surprise, a single tear fell down Victor's face and he and Diana stared at one another for a moment. The two shared an unspoken conversation, one that Barry knew well. Everyone was hurting. This was all too much to bear.

Victor kneeled down and held Diana's hand, pulling her up to her feet. He then embraced her tightly, rubbing her back to console her as she continued to tear up.

"I'm so sorry Diana, you did your best," Victor choked as another tear streamed across his cheek.

By now, the group of Red Cross volunteers and medical professionals had long gone in order to give the grieving heroes their space.

It was just the three of them standing outside of the tents, looking upon the hundreds of dead adults and children that lay in piles. They were heroes, they were considered to be the pinnacle of what their species had to offer in power and strength, but they were intrinsically human too.

No matter how many times they ran into battle or experienced the tragedies of death, they could not stand there stoically without flinching. So long as they had the capacity to empathize with these victims, would they feel their pain. No amount of suffering could desensitize them from such a basic instinct.

Diana sniffed once more, before straightening up, as a solemn expression wiped the saddened visage completely clear. With her eyes still red, she wiped the tears furiously from her cheeks and her lips formed into a thin line.

"We can't stop now. There's more work to do," she said in resolution.

No longer did her voice quiver, and the strong, regal tone synonymous to her person reappeared once more. With the tears now dried, her face was devoid of emotion.

As much as they wanted to cry out for all the unfortunate souls lost that night, they had to remain as stoic as they could possibly be. After all, they were the only pillars of support for the victims and volunteers who needed them the most at this very moment.

This was simply what being a hero was.

They were to report their mission status back in the Watchtower in Metropolis.

Barry opted on riding in Victor's jet with Diana rather than traveling on his lonesome. Diana was still a bit shaken, despite how hard she tried to conceal it. He saw right through her and he wanted to support her any way he could. If that meant accompanying a grieving heroine in a harrowing three hour trip back to Metropolis, then so be it.

They all sat in silence, with Victor quietly piloting the ship, and Diana emotionlessly gazing out the window. She had been gripping his hand the entire trip, but he did not care. No words had been spoken in the hours that passed their journey back to the U.S. The silence was heavy with unspoken grief that clung to the air, however, no one had the heart to utter any of their thoughts.

After filing the reports, they unanimously agreed that they were done for the day and were given the approval to return to their respective homes from Bruce. Victor needed to recharge his system and left first, leaving Barry and Diana alone to discuss their burgeoning thoughts. As they sat in the watchtower, going through the global surveillance, a comfortable silence hung in the air.

Barry spoke first, not wanting to stall any longer. Since they had left Syria, he had a myriad questions still lingering in his mind all involving the incident that occurred with what he saw tonight. Tentatively, he placed his hand over hers as she idly scrolled through the surveillance servers.

"Hey, can I, can I ask you something?" He managed to say.

She turned towards him, breaking her concentration from the screens. "Yes?"

"Earlier tonight...when you returned to the safety zone with the kids...what happened?"

She visibly flinched. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it's just...we've worked together so many times in situations like this. We've always seen stuff like this, you know. But, not once have I ever seen you like that...so, so...affected, by it all."

"Well...they were children, Barry. That's why."

"No, no. We've done this before, you've saved kids before who weren't able to make it. This time was different. I want to know what happened, Di, please tell me."

She leaned back in her chair and stared blankly at the ceiling for quite awhile, as if she were beseeching towards the heavens for the right answers. Finally, with a deep sigh, she straightened herself and looked at him in all seriousness.

"It was the boy," she acquiesced.

"What?"

"The boy...he was with his sister. She had succumbed to the poison but he was still breathing."

He remained silent, allowing her to continue because he knew there was more to say.

"You see, I saw them when I was passing by and collecting some of the other remaining survivors. His neighborhood was at the very end of the town's borders and they were the last to be helped. I saw him there, standing, looking up at me. He was choking on the air, his sister was already on the floor. I...I rushed towards them and you know what he said to me before I picked him up?"

"...What did he say?"

"He said,' mama.'"

A tear fell from the corner of her eye as she said this and she blinked rapidly and inhaled a deep breath.

"Wait, so...?"

"Don't you get it? He thought I was his mother. His last moments of his life, this child was dying and thought he saw his mother. He thought she was saving him. That was his last living memory."

"Oh..."

"He smiled before I tried to cover his mouth from continuously inhaling more of the gas. He—He smiled at me when he was in my arms and closed his eyes," she was crying now. "He died smiling, thinking that I was his mother saving him. Do you know how much that hurt me? How much it hurt when I realized that I could not save him? When I realized that at that very moment, that child died in my arms."

"Diana, I'm sorry..."

"For all the power in the world, we cannot even save the most innocent of them all. That poor boy..." she looked up at him, wiping her tears away," That's why it hurt me so much. To think, what if I was that parent? What if I lost my child in such an evil way? I felt as if I could feel his mother's pain that moment he closed his eyes in my arms. It just hurt so much."

Barry leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her. "I'm so sorry Diana."

"...I wish I could've saved him. I wish I was stronger."

"You are. You're the strongest person I know and not just physically. Sometimes, things just happen. Things that are too far out of our reach. We can save them, but we can't save them all."

"I just wish that I could have saved him. In his last moments, he thought I was his mother...He probably thought that she was going to save him."

"Well, you know what?"

"What?"

"At the very least, he died thinking his mother was with him. If I could die, with my mom right by my side, holding onto me...I'd have been the happiest person right then and there," he admitted sadly.

Diana's eyes widened, knowing how deeply affected he was of Nora Allen's death. At that very moment, she thought of the boy in Syria and his last declaration before his death. Perhaps there was only hope in his mind as he closed his eyes. Perhaps there was happiness at the thought that he returned back into his mother's arms. She understood now.

She squeezed Barry's hand gently, a melancholic smile still lingering on her visage.

"Thank you, Barry."

Author's Note: Posted this chapter in celebration to the weekend release of Justice League (2017).

I modeled this chapter under a real life situation that occurred earlier this year in light of the current political turmoil in Syria, my apologies if this offends anyone. I wanted to show the real life, gritty issues that plague our everyday world and ultimately wanted to show, that at the end of the day, heroes are human too. They feel pain like any other person.