"—arry!"

Ears ringing, head throbbing, Barry rasps, "Joe." He tries and fails to push out from the interior of the crushed car, wedged into the folded axis, coughing painfully. "Joe, st' back… s'gonna…"

Joe's running towards him, not quite there but in his vicinity, shouting at him, "Hang in there, Barry!" Tortured metal screams when he manipulates it, attempting to move it aside, to squeeze through, to bully his way into the broken car. Barry grimaces sympathetically. The smell of oil pervades, potent, warning.

"Joe," he groans, because Joe isn't fast like he is, Joe doesn't stand a chance if the car goes up in flames, Joe… "y'gotta … go."

The door wrenches, and he feels Joe squeeze his left hand, crushed, splintered fingers crying out in agony. "I gotcha. I gotcha."

Barry groans in pain when Joe attempts to free him from the metal crushing his ribcage inward. "D'nt … y'gotta … y'gotta go, Joe."

"Hey, stay with me, stay with me." Joe snaps his fingers sharply, drawing Barry's attention. Barry realizes his eyelids are only at half-mast, but it is so dark, and loud, and painfully hot, and he doesn't want to keep them open. The suit is beeping faintly – multiple urgent injuries, here, there, everywhere – but he doesn't attend to it. Being forcefully incorporated into a four-ton vehicle will do that to you, he thinks, hiccupping once, an agonizing reflex his torso is effectively a Jenga puzzle. "It's gonna be okay, Wally's on his way."

"No," Barry slurs, because Wally has to – Wally has to – protect the team, protect them from Neutro, he thinks, eyelids sliding shut. Joe squeezes his left hand again. Barry lets out a strangled yell and opens his eyes. "H's gotta…"

"He's here," Wally says, out of breath but instantaneously present.

The world slows down to a crawl, and Wally doesn't even need to hear Barry's command to get Joe to safety – he draws Joe carefully out of the crushed car interior and sets him maybe five hundred yards back. "H'oh, boy," he admits, voice strangely distant, like they're both underwater, and in a way they are, the air resistance between them buoyant enough that Wally can effortlessly peel back the mangled interior cocooning Barry. "I'm sorry," he says, and Barry doesn't ask why, just bites his lip hard, groaning deep in his chest as Wally begins prying him out of the wreckage.

There's a piece of metal lodged deep in his hip; Wally phases it clear from the door and keeps pulling him out of the car. A spark lights the spilling oil nearby, and Barry tells Wally, "Go," even though Wally just grunts and keeps pulling him free. Every limb feels tenuously connected, threatening to surrender its claim to coherent flesh with any wrong movement. Fortunately, Wally has an engineer's steady hand, and doesn't make any mistakes.

The explosive repercussion of the car presses in on them as Wally hauls him bodily over his shoulders, heedless of the excruciating pain that surges through Barry's chest. They're at the end of the street in the blink of an eye, listening to the thunderous boom as the car goes up in flames. Wally doesn't set him down, just takes Joe by the back of the neck, a stabilizing hold, and keeps going.

Barry closes his eyes and lets consciousness slip away.

. o .

In Flashes, he catches the scene.

Blink, and they're at far outside the city, several hundred miles outside the city. Standing in the dark grassy field, Cisco greets them by opening a breach. Wally lets go of Joe, who walks under his own power, and carries Barry, who cannot.

Blink, and they're on another Earth, he knows because this is STAR Labs but it decidedly isn't STAR Labs, wrong-toned and wrong-mechanics. A man surrounded by purple lightning is on standby beside Cisco's girlfriend, Cindy, her name is Cindy. He puts both palms up, ready to fight, purple lightning crackling at his fingertips. "Any others?" he demands in a deeper tone than Barry expects.

"No," Cisco says. Barry blinks foggily from his strange perch, greyness already occluding his vision. "Neutro's down in the—"

Barry doesn't hear the rest, a terrible sound pried from his chest as Wally sets him down on a gurney. "Sorry," he says, and Barry tries to convey that he gets it, he gets it, but can only gasp for air instead. Gasping for air, strangling for air, fluid filling his lung—

Blink, and he jerks in place, something lodged deep in his throat. He strains upright and finds both wrists strapped firmly to the table. He thrashes ineffectually, resisting the pressure of air forced into his lungs, released from his lung. A scream tries and fails to build, halted by the obstruction in his throat, the tube taped to his mouth, what the hell is going on? "Hey, hey, hey, easy, man," Cisco – Cisco? – says from his left, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing gently. "Easy, it's a ventilator, I know it sucks, but you weren't breathing on your own, buddy."

Whining dryly, Barry tries vibrating in place, but it's another Earth – delirious, half-blind with pain and fully blind with panic, he cannot phase through the restraints. "Hey, hey, hey," Cisco shushes, taking his left hand and squeezing it firmly. "Slow down, we'll take it out, okay? You gotta slow down first."

Shaking, Barry swallows unconsciously and jerks, coughing, gagging, fighting with renewed fear against the restraints pinning him to the bed he's gonna die he's gonna die he can't breathe—

They wait it out, torturously wait for him to calm down, and he's aware of Joe stepping forward and sitting near him, holding his right hand and stroking his sweaty hair back, reassuring, "I got you, Barry. I got you."

At last, sheer exhaustion wins out – pain bleeds red across his torso, his thin, harsh exhalations tapering off to mechanical inhalations, exhalations, and he hates the sensation almost as much as he hates the feeling of a plastic tube lodged in his throat, feeding his lungs, a balloon inflated partway to keep any other air from going in or coming out.

When he's almost limp, almost accepting of his terrible predicament, he hears Caitlin for the first time. She speaks to him through a dull haze as the straps on his wrists are undone. "You won't like it, but it'll be over quickly," she prefaces, walking him through the endotracheal extubation like it's a flu shot, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, and before he's ready, how could anyone be ready, she's telling him to breathe out and he's trying, he's trying but it's hard as he effectively vomits up the tube.

He's coughing violently, gagging into a plastic bowl Cisco hands him. Iris shows up. He wants to stop, wants to reassure her that he's fine, wants to grimace over the fact that they let her see him like this, don't let her see him like this, but he's too focused on the pain and panic creeping back in his chest as he tries to extubate the rest of his lungs, hunched over the plastic and gagging loudly.

"Oh, hon." She takes Cisco's place as Joe steps back, sitting on the bed barely big enough for two, hip-to-hip. Iris wraps her arms around him, so gently he can barely feel it. He frees one black-and-blue hand to clutch at hers, settled on his forearm, her thumb stroking his hair-raised skin soothingly. "Shh."

Every ache is becoming louder the longer he sits upright, and he shakes in a mixture of pain and overwhelm, his lightning struggling to target every constellation of pain begging for attention. His vision flickers, threatening to go out, and numb fingers release the plastic slowly. Someone liberates it from his grasp altogether, and he slouches back into the gurney, groaning in supreme discomfort.

Caitlin is talking to him, explaining the damage, but he can't really hear her. He turns his face towards Iris instead, nose against her side, breathing in her familiar, homey smell. His eyelids slide shut as she runs her fingers through his hair, gently scratching the base of his scalp. Caitlin mentions the word concussion and he drops off before he catches the rest, trusting Iris to listen for him.

. o .

Barry sleeps through it.

Most of it. He awakes in groggy, minute-long interludes to acknowledge the pain that demands his attention. Before he can panic, Iris shushes him, stroking his cheek until he falls asleep again. He's still lying beside her, one arm slung loosely over her waist, when he awakes at an indeterminate hour, exhausted to his core but sore enough to tolerate consciousness.

"H'w long was I out?" he asks in a voice that is sandpaper thin. He grimaces in discomfort.

Iris hums, sounding sleepy, and he has to gently nudge her before she stirs, saying, "Oh, hey – sorry, Bar, I didn't realize –"

"S'okay." That hurts, too. "C'd you…" He doesn't need to finish the phrase; she shuffles out from under him gently. He almost hates that she leaves, but when she returns with a small paper cup full of ice chips, he's grateful. "I love you," he tells her seriously, taking the cup and finishing out a chip, letting it melt on his tongue.

She sits on the bed again, and he plants his cheek on her belly, because it is safe and warm. Her hand curves around the base of his skull, thumb stroking lightly through his short hair. "It's about two in the morning," she says quietly, yawning, and he makes an apologetic sound. "No, it's okay – don't worry, I wasn't sleeping."

"Should be," Barry murmurs, fishing out another chip and sucking on it.

"Cisco and the Accelerated Man are currently having an existential conversation with Neutro about metahuman responsibilities," she continues in that same sleepy voice.

He blinks slowly, struggling to process – every part of that sentence, actually. "What's an Accelerated Man?" he begins, crunching a small piece of ice between his teeth.

"Kind of like a speedster, but – different," Iris says, shrugging a little in a way he feels rather than sees. "He's from Earth-19. Which is where we are." She cards her hand through his hair. His eyelids sink shut. "How're the painkillers?"

He rubs his cheek against her belly, holding the cup of ice loosely. "Hm?" Curiosity fades away as she continues brushing her fingers through his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. His love aches sweetly in his chest, and he forgets his question altogether by the time she answers.

"They've had a multi-generational head-start on the metahuman game here," Iris explains. "Which includes speedster-strength painkillers."

He hums, focused on her hand. "Mmhm."

Amused, she exhales and says, "You wanna go back to sleep?"

"Wanna … stay with you." The cup slides out of his grip. Iris takes it before it hits the floor, leaning down to kiss the top of his head.

"Go to sleep, Bar."

It's easy to oblige.

. o .

Turns out Neutro – civilian name, Nicolas Fenwright – is twenty-four-years-old and deaf.

Sore but stable and twenty-two hours into recovery, Barry sits down with him in the Earth-19 Cortex to talk. Cindy, translating for Neutro, explains that he didn't notice Barry and responded with more force than he intended to The Flash's confrontational tap on the shoulder. Neutro's – Fenwright's – face flushes apologetically as he looks right at Barry and signs, I'm sorry. Apparently, he didn't even realize that he could cause sudden gravitational shifts, hence Cisco's nickname – Neutro, like a Neutron or a Neutron Star.

In the split-second before impact, Barry's gut instinct led him to hit the warning button on his suit. Unlike the panic button which summoned help, it was an order to get to safety or brace for impact. Accordingly, Team Flash would stand by for further instructions – rather than rushing to the scene, as Barry truly needed. Fortunately, Joe had already been out in the field tailing him, ready to assist with an extraction if needed. None of them – Fenwright included – anticipated that it would be needed so literally.

It might have been fine it Fenwright's skill wasn't gravitation. Merely being thrown into the car would doubtless have hurt, but even Griffin Grey and Tony Woodward hadn't been able to use enough force to break a car in half with the impact. Barry sank into the metalwork and survived solely because the suit largely maintained its shape, only breaking where the car door snapped off and crushing inward but not completely.

The conversation is more tiring than Barry expects, sapping the residual strength from his bones until he has to excuse himself or fall asleep in front of them. Sinking onto the bed, he closes his eyes and sinks into a deep stupor, dreaming about that spontaneous gravity well that almost but did not kill him.

. o .

On the third evening since their arrival on Earth-19, Fenwright – Nick, he signs, and Barry signs it back agreeably – returns with them to Earth-1, while Cindy stays with the Accelerated Man on Earth-19.

Back home, Wally gratefully surrenders the guard to Cisco and Caitlin so he can zip off for a well-deserved nap. It's only midday, but Barry's wiped out – speedster painkillers, while effectual, sap his strength. Shaking hands with Nick, Barry signs, Friday, noon, STAR Labs and Nick affirms, STAR, Friday, 12. They part ways and Barry gently lifts Iris into his arms before Flashing them back to their apartment.

He sets her down gingerly and doesn't bother to kick off his shoes, slouching over to the couch and sinking onto it face-down. He only wants a moment, just a second to catch his breath, catch up, and loses the battle the second he closes his eyes.

He awakes a time later to a delicious smell and a warm blanket draped over his back, half his limbs hanging off the sofa, both shoes gone. Pushing himself upright, he rubs his mouth, hungry and sleepy, unsure which he wants more before shuffling to his feet. "Was starting to wonder if you'd join me," Iris says, half-teasing, half-concerned, as she slides her arms gently around his waist. "You okay?"

He nods, tucking his chin over her shoulder. "Mmhm." Sighing when she rubs his back, he admits, "I'm getting too old for this."

"Oh, Barry, you were always too old for it. Too young, too." She runs her hand up and down his spine, releasing tension. "It's been eight years. You know you're allowed to take a breath, take some time off."

"Mm." He squeezes her back, swaying gently. "What're we gonna do with Nick?"

She scratches the back of his neck. "We are going to spend tonight relaxing and worrying about Nick on Friday."

Nodding agreeably, he mumbles into her shoulder, "You're so smart."

"I know." Kissing his cheek, she steps back when the oven timer goes off. "We'll work it out," she promises, fishing out Grandma Esther's chicken, mm. "But tonight – we do nothing."

He sighs. "I love you so much," he says, slouching into a chair.

She wraps her arms around his neck from behind and kisses the top of his head. "I love you, too."

And with her alongside him, he knows that even if he falls apart, he'll have her to help put him back together again.