Work Text:
24 JUNE 1943 – FALLVILLE, IOWA
The school office always smelled bad to Barry. Over-brewed coffee and the horrible perfume worn by the school secretary, Mrs. Baxter, which smelled of too much lavender. It was something that he was getting to recognise, if not get used to.
He looked at the clock on the back wall. Five minutes to three. It was the waiting that really killed him. Mr. Fox wasn’t as really scary like he guessed a head teacher could be, but he didn’t have to be scary when the reasons why he was here were scary enough.
The second hand swept around the dial and Barry let his attention focus on it as he tried to make himself go blank. It might just help.
As the minute hand reached the hour, the door opened. Mr. Fox stepped out of his office. “Barry,” he said. “Please come in and take a seat.” The weight of fear dropped back into the boy’s mind as he walked the few steps.Get this over with, he thought. Just survive it.
Mr. Fox went back to his own chair behind the desk. “You do understand why you’ve been summoned here, I take it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, just so we’re both perfectly clear, this is about the incident on Tuesday afternoon when you attacked Jack Tomlinson. The two of you started fighting, you got some leverage over Tomlinson and pushed him back. His head hit a gate handle and he fell to the ground. He was unconscious. Mr. O’Reilly found you both and called the ambulance to get Tomlinson to the hospital.”
“Sir, Jack and his buddies have been on me for months, ever since the cops took my dad away! They just… I just… sir, I couldn’t just sit there and take it! I had to do something or it’d never stop!”
Mr. Fox winced. “You’ve been told, I think, about the extent of his injuries?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was lucky. The impact on the handle created only a hairline skull fracture.”
“I understand, sir.” And he did understand; he was the son of a doctor, and he could make enough sense out of his father’s books to know what had happened – and, even more, what could have happened.
“I’ve had word back from the hospital. Jack is going to be okay, I’m told. They’re just keeping him in for a couple more days just to be sure.”
“That’s good,” said Barry. And for a given value of good, that was even true.
Mr. Fox leaned forward over the desk. “It could have been a lot worse, Barry. You know that.”
“Yes, sir.” And he also knew that Tomlinson’s retribution would be, like they said in Bible class, mighty to behold. “I didn’t mean it to happen.”
“I don’t doubt you.” Mr. Fox sighed. It was a strange, rattling sound, but it was a sigh. “I know these last months have been hard on you. I know you were provoked, Barry, I understand that. But your response wasn’t the answer.”
“No, sir.” But it had certainly felt like it at the time. Barry could still remember what felt like a flash of white over his vision as something broke; how good it felt to give Tomlinson the kind of pasting he’d had coming to him for months.
Not that it had achieved anything. All of Fallville thought that Dr. Henry Allen was a killer – that he’d killed Nora, his wife – and now they thought that Dr. Allen’s bad character had transmitted itself to his son. He’d even overheard Mrs. Baxter saying as much – “like father, like son” – to someone on the phone when she thought nobody could hear her.
“I’ve given this a lot of thought, Barry,” said Mr. Fox. “I don’t think that you are the kind of boy who would normally make a habit of things like this. Before…” he paused for a moment, deliberately not saying something. “You were never a concern. Your grades were good, your teachers spoke well of you. I know you’re struggling to understand what happened, and why it happened.”
“I understand, sir.” Barry’s voice was harder than was right for an eleven-year-old boy. “My dad did not kill my mom. I know he didn’t. Something in that blur did it.”
“The blur.” Mr. Fox’s expression softened a little. “Barry, that blur of red and yellow which you saw was a trick of the light. It wasn’t real.”
Horse-crap. “If you say so, sir.”
“I have the authority, if I so choose, to expel you from this school and advise the state schools board to make – what arrangements it best sees fit.” Barry’s ears pricked up. Reform school? Some special class for crazy kids? No way under God’s heaven.
“But I think that wouldn’t be justified, or fair on you,” the headmaster concluded. “You are going to be punished. I am going to suspend you from classes for the next two weeks, During that time, you are going to write a letter explaining to Jack Tomlinson what happened, why you understand that it was wrong, and make an apology or your actions.”
Eat a big heaping plate of crow and have Tomlinson gloating over it. But what was the other option? Stupid question.
“I asked Mrs. Baxter to make a telephone call. Mr, Dean should be here shortly to take you home. You can wait outside for him.” Mr. Fox stood up, which was Barry’s cue to do the same. “Think very hard these next two weeks, Barry. This is the wrong path that you’re walking on. Understand, come back. Heal yourself. We will all do what we can to help you.”
“Thank you, sir.” It was the right thing to say, even if he didn’t feel all that thankful.
o-o-o
Mr. Dean didn’t say a lot on the way home, which was fine with Barry since he didn’t feel much like talking. Howard and Emily Dean were pleasant enough as foster-parents went – Mr. Dean had said something about them having played host to a lot of kids who had been through some “tough times” – and he supposed he could have done a lot worse. Their daughter was pleasant, too. Daphne Dean was three years older than Barry and went to the same school. She was probably one of the prettiest girls in the school, and he’d heard some of the older guys say she looked a bit like a young Rita Hayworth.
Of course, that meant that Daphne got nominated as courier for his classes, because just because you were suspended from school didn’t mean you were excused homework. And she accepted the responsibility with cheerful grace, she was that kind of person. Barry was willing to put money on her being class valedictorian when her year group graduated. And she didn’t rub it in when she handed him a whole bunch of stuff.
By the time he’d set aside the last assignment – something to do with the Battle of Lexington and the start of the War of Independence – he was worn out. For once, sleep came easy; too often he’d woken with nightmares over the red and yellow swirls around his screaming mother.
Tonight was different. Even if he was, again, back where it began, making the walk along Hamilton Street towards his old home. The air felt different. On the night his mom died, he’d got home at about seven o’clock after football practice. This was later, the sky was darker and it felt heavier somehow, threatening in a way he couldn’t put a name to.
As he turned the corner off Polk Road, he saw a tall figure raise himself from the small wall around the Broomes’ house, where he’d been sitting with a kind of vacant expression on his face. He stepped into the roadway; his walk was slow and leisurely, like he had nowhere special to be and all night to get there. He looked strange. All his clothing was black, every scrap of it, and it looked untidy, like he’d been sleeping in it. But even though the light wasn’t great, Barry could see that his skin was very, very white, almost like ivory under a slight smear of dirt. His hair was black and shaggy, making him look like his mom had always said, like he’d “been dragged through a hen-house backwards.”
The man was walking towards him. Normally, Barry would have stepped up his own pace, maybe even started running, but something wouldn’t let him. The dream wouldn’t let him.
“Good evening, Master Allen,” the man said. His voice was odd. His accent sounded British, but there was a slight echo to it, like it was coming through a badly-tuned radio. “I apologise for the intrusion.”
“Can I help you, mister…”
“More that I can help you, I think.”
“How?”
“Let’s walk and we’ll see.”
The walk from the end of the road to the Allen house wasn’t any more than half a mile, but it seemed to take an age. Barry felt like his feet were sticking to the sidewalk, not letting him walk more than a slow, steady plod. He glanced across at the stranger. The man had an odd expression on his face; he looked sad, almost resigned – like he knew what was going to happen and couldn’t do anything about it.
Barry shrugged. His dreams had brought him back here time after time and he couldn’t do anything about it, either. As they reached Barry’s home, the stranger hung back slightly, letting the boy go first up the path to the house. The front door was ajar, as it had been when this night had been real. Barry pushed it slightly, and it swung wider. “Hi, mom. I’m home,” he called.
“NO! STOP!”
His mother’s scream always shook him alert, even within the dream. He found speed from somewhere, moved into the hall and turned to the sitting room in the front of the house – but this time, the stranger stepped forward, blocking his path with an arm that looked too spindly to be that strong.
“I know what you’re going to see,” he said. “Now you will see it clear.”
The two of them stepped into the sitting room. Just like before, Barry could see his mother, face twisted in fear as the blur of red and yellow lights swirled and danced around her. He could hear sounds – something that he didn’t remember from when this really happened. It was a strange, high-pitched whirring noise, but he could swear he could make out odd words. Shouting, arguing, something.
“See,” said the stranger. He raised a hand.
The world slowed.
The blurs shifted. They turned into something solid.
Two men. Two very strangely-dressed men.
The one wore a red body suit, with a yellow lightning bolt on his chest and around his waist and bright yellow boots. The other could have been a mirror image, except his suit was yellow and the lightning bolts and the boots were red. They were circling the room around Nora Allen fighting each other. The one in the yellow suit was trying to reach her and the other trying to stop him.
“Damn you, Thawne,” the man in red said.
“This is how it must be!” The man in yellow jagged sideways mid-run, bodyslamming his opponent and forcing him to crash into the Allens’ old sideboard. “This is what makes you!”
The man in red pushed back to right himself and turned back into the fray, but the other one was quicker off the mark. Barry could see his hand blur as he pushed it hard into Nora’s forehead. He screamed as the woman’s head shattered like a watermelon struck with a mallet.
In a moment, the yellow man was gone. The red man followed almost at once. Barry dropped to his knees as he did then, as he had in this dream before. “What?” he shouted. “Why?”
And, with a new realisation, he turned to the man with the ivory-white skin. “How?”
“You needed to know,” the man said. “You were right. This was not Henry Allen.” He raised his arms to his chest, steepled his fingers under his chin. “You know who this man was. Now you begin the work of finding him.”
The man began to blur. So did the house,. So did Barry’s vision. So did everything.
o-o-o
“It’s all right, Barry!” the voice was saying, hugging Barry to her. He’d woken up screaming again – and wet; he’d peed himself again with the fear. Emily Dean didn’t care, she just knew that he hurt and she was trying to help. “You’re here, you’re safe!” Behind her, Howard and Daphne stood at the doorway.
“I know,” Barry said, too quiet for the Deans to hear. “I know it was the man in the yellow suit. Now I have to find him.”