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[ after breaking up the fight between alistair and captain hook, barry slides to a stop inside of his room. pulling his mask off his face, he doesn't begin to undress yet. he easily could in a flash of yellow light, but there's something more important he has to attend to first. ]

[ picking his phone up, he easily dials iris' number — she's speed dial #1. and he doesn't even give her or her voicemail a chance to speak when he bursts, all excitable energy: ]

Hey, Iris! You're never going to believe what just happened to me!

[ barry's forgotten to stop vibrating his vocal cords. ]

[ on the morning of july 20, just after the event that's seen wonderland gender-flipped, iris' mirror isn't clean. ]

[ when iris wakes up, she'll find, regardless of the time of day she happens to glance toward it, a flower drawn with marker on her mirror. it's an iris; the outline of it, with no other details, no colour, not many leaves, not even a location of where it's supposed to be found. it isn't a map to drive her out onto the colourful grounds of wonderland. if anything, it's a message — one she may not be able to unravel at all, as the meaning behind it's so subtle there's not even a smudge mark on the mirror to indicate a fingerprint. ]

[ if she tries to rub it clean, it won't work — it's been drawn on the opposite side of the mirror. and it doesn't disappear, not in the morning, not in the afternoon, not in the night. it's drawn on the side of the mirror, just in case she wants to talk — or peer closely toward the glass, just in case she thinks she can see movement behind it, as though it's not a reflective surface at all — and so he can observe her even more closely than before. ]

[ at the very bottom of it, where one would expect an artist's signature to be, is a very small picture of a simple bear's head. ]

[ eobard's gone. and barry doesn't feel free. ]

[ barry thinks on how to tell iris what he's discovered, and he knows face-to-face would be the best. but he doesn't want her to see how confusion etches its way onto his face. he doesn't want her to see the pinch of his brows, the anger brewing beneath him, and even the defeat — thawne's out of his grasp once again. barry can never get a handle on him. ]

[ it'd be easier to text, but barry finds his fingers can't quite pull up that part of his phone, and his brain, whenever he does manage to open a message for iris, goes completely and painfully blank. ]

[ so, he calls with the plan to do the following: insert laughter and warmth into his face, say hey, iris, how's it going? eaten any brownies yet? and make a good joke of it, settle her in, hear her voice and enjoy her anecdotes. it's perfect and fault-free, and he knows he'll feel better for it, given he's gone without her voice for a few hours now. but he doesn't follow his own timeline of how the following conversation will unfold. ]

Thawne's gone.

[ it's what he says the moment she connects the call. void dead, his own self feeling like he's hollowed out — the one chance he has to take thawne out, save mom, get proper justice for her — it's gone. ]

[ thanks, wonderland. ]

[ barry's no longer a mutant. back to being the flash, metahuman, minus the flash or the meta part of human, he's returned to his roots, to the barry iris west had grown up alongside and perhaps had been exasperated with numerous times over the decades with how he still was one of the quickest and stealthiest people she's ever met. ]

[ tonight, barry's pissed off his face for the first time in the last two years. ]

[ and he decides to use his time wisely. he calls iris. ]

Are you still interested in the news?

[ on the morning of december 25, iris received a festive little pair of elf pants holding a gift specially tailored to her. merry christmas...? ]

[Reminiscent of their time in the mutant event, Iris will find a case of blood phials in front of her door, only the liquid they are filled with is transparent. Vodka.

There is a note:

Happy Hanukkah,

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

- L.S.]

[ after ghosting iris for the entire day of valentine's, he texts her in the late afternoon. ]

[ ... a few times. all in rapid success. ]

Meet me on the roof.

Hey, Iris. Can you help me with something? It's a good something for once. [ No killing any zombies, but this is way more difficult than walkers, because she has a date??? ]

[ soooooooooo ]

[ what do you do when you end up arrested for speeding? barry allen wouldn't know, since he has an impeccable driving record. ]

[ when it comes to him running, he's a bit too quick for the cops to book him. he's pretty sure the ccpd don't care if the flash goes macha speeds through the streets as long as he gets the perp in the end. but this space world? they care. he hadn't realised they cared so much until he ended up here — and it wasn't some great joke. space people can joke, right? ]

[ now he's going to be late for not one thing but two. he had an errand to run before he went and saw iris, and now he's going to be able to achieve neither. ]

So, I'm going to be late.

[ or later than he already is, given he had refused to use his one phone call (text?) for a good hour. stubbornness, thy name is bartholomew! ]

[He hasn't watched her as closely as some of the others, but, oh, he knows enough. He'll just say hi, an innocent chat.]

Hey, there, reporter friend.

[ barry's been laying low since december, curious to see how the events unfold — if they unfold as he remembers them. and they do, to the very last detail. if he was the type to gamble, he would've placed numerous bets on the events and the reactions of those on the real side in order to pull in some good money. ]

[ but it isn't money that he wants. ]

[ it isn't until the month of may he decides to stop being a bystander. may represents so much to him — the end of a season where things are meant to bloom, while simultaneously the opposite, where things are meant to fall. and he's not too keen on falling once again. ]

[ in the early hours of the morning, barry draws a leaf on iris' mirror: ]

[ he did promise to give her one, didn't he? they never stipulated how many. ]

[ it's may 23rd, a day on the calendar barry prefers to speed right by, while also remaining obsessively stuck within it. where barry allen on the real side can never quite leave the living room of his childhood home, this barry can never quite abandon infantino street. ]

[ having relived it over and over and over again, he wakes in the morning expecting a shot of pain to strike right through his chest, but he isn't hit with it. lightning doesn't strike twice, but heartbreak seems fond of coming over for a visit many times. ]

[ it's why he decides to write on two mirrors — a warning for one, and a reminder for another. ]

[ drawing two dinosaurs with very little detail to them, he puts a holster on the leg of one of them to represent joe and a pencil behind the ear of the one that's smaller and more feminine to represent iris. ]

I tried, I tried, I tried, in every way I could
To make you see how much I love you
I hope you understood

[ she couldn't remember it, after all. he's only here to serve as a reminder. it's what joe would've done, if he were here. it's the song he remembers joe was barely able to sing a couple of days after she died. ]

AUDIO. | christens this in the only way it should be.

MIRROR.

AUDIO.

AUDIO. | AUGUST 9.

text

ho ho ho (and welcome back!)

GIFT

TEXT. 14/02

[audio]