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Barry Allen had never coughed flowers.
He had watched other people cough them. He, like everyone, had the lessons at school on what to do when it started, the options available. The seemingly drastic measures people would take to deal with them, as if just accepting someone didn’t feel the same didn’t sound so easy to Barry. He had heard about the things people would justify for the flowers. Had had been to the crime scenes where the flowers were evidence and people would accept that as a good enough motive for far too much.
They had found flowers the night his mother had been murdered. Just a few pale purple petals in the entrance to the broken door, so easily blown there by the wind, but they had still used them as evidence against his father. That the reappearance of the petals, the rumours of an affair between her and Darryl, even if it wasn’t true, it was enough of a motive for them to convict him.
The vine died back if the other person died.
Not always. Not right away. Not entirely. Tiny preserved petals would appear, like someone had pressed them between the pages of a book, and people would talk if they didn’t. They would whisper like the flowers were good, like they were a blessing, like they weren’t twisting themselves inside.
Like they didn’t kill. Slowly, painfully, a seed that had sprouted and a vine that wouldn’t stop until it was satisfied.
A handful of people had coughed petals in front of the Flash. Just tiny petals of yellows and purples and pinks, new buds of roses and clematis and sweet peas that made him think of his parents and wisteria that made him sneeze, the tiny petals of a tiny crush, one that could still fade as easily as it could blossom, one that wouldn’t make their nightmare grow.
The plants wouldn’t always grow. Most people it wouldn’t. It would stay small, stay controlled, stay just a few hiccoughs of petals when they tried to hide. How it got there no one knew, not truly still. It wasn’t something people were born with, but with all the petals and pollen filling the world, there were surely seeds that could take root. Why people had different flowers, no one knew that either, though they had a million stories and superstitions.
However it got there, it was fine, for most people. They could be honest, they could keep the plant small.
Not all of them did. Some would let it grow wild, let the roots wrap around and choke them, would rather die than let it go.
It could be removed. The plant. But people would talk, they would claim without it people couldn’t love, they would talk like that was the worst thing in the world.
Barry didn’t always understand other people.
Patty at work had had a crush on Barry once. It had happened, a few times. He’d watched it, plenty of times. Sometimes they didn’t expect anything, said admitting it was enough to control the speed.
Some people did expect more. They wanted reciprocation, they admitted it in the belief it had to end in a relationship. Barry had that once, in college, but her flowers had fizzled away when she realised he had never coughed one around her.
And he had seen more, seen how some people let it fester inside them, this amalgamation of something they claimed was so good turned to poison on their tongue.
Barry had seen what love could do.
They called it a crime of passion. As if it were passion that had driven the blade, as if it were an act of the love they claimed was so pure and good and not selfishness and a refusal to accept the word no.
The victim had been found in the kitchen, a knife driven through her heart in a way so similar to a crime scene Barry knew better than any.
Her murderer lay in the kitchen too, the delicate honeysuckle burst through his chest in a bloody mess, torn through his skin, her blood mixed with his own as the sweet smelling flowers turned white and painted red, a look of horror the last his face had worn.
She had been terrified. That much was obvious.
He couldn’t have known. Barry was the fastest man alive, but he had learnt a long time ago he couldn’t stop every single crime. He couldn’t save everyone, no matter how much the guilt tore him up inside. And this, the crime scene said it all. There would be formalities to follow, but no justice they could give her.
Barry packed away his things, ignoring the gossip around him. He had work to do, he didn’t have time for speculation.
A gust of wind came from nowhere as he opened the door and Barry frowned as he crouched down to pick up another petal caught under the dresser by the door. One that didn’t fit, one that was withered, and purple, and made his fingers itch.
Barry Allen was well aware he was a creature of habit, and so was everyone who knew him. It was very common for him to stop off on his way home and grab something to eat at a local diner, or at the very least a hot chocolate from the Jitters Express stand that was just around the corner from the crime lab.
Judy, the waitress at this particular diner, knew Barry by name, and had a table already waiting for him. Barry ordered without needing to look at the menu, enjoyed his meal, paid, got up to leave-
A petal blew in as he opened the door and Barry frowned as he picked up the withered, purple petal of a wisteria.
There was a third petal in the tea Patty handed him in the lab a few days later and Barry found himself pouring it away almost instantly.
Barry visited his mother every year on her birthday. On the anniversary of her murder. Every single year since he was nine years old. He brought flowers too, the same bunch of white lilies and tiny blue forget-me-nots, with white and pink sweet peas. Darryl had never understood why Barry insisted, but they were his parents’ flowers, in their colours, he knew she would want them.
It was late though. He was late. He was always late, every year, but usually Barry did this on the way to work and this year he’d been woken up at an ungodly hour by Hal and spent the next eighteen hours fighting Parademons with the League.
Not even Darkseid could make Barry miss visiting his mother.
It was dark, in the cemetery. The Moon was tucked behind the clouds, not a star visible in the sky.
Barry gripped the torch he had brought, the dim light of the dying battery he could have sworn he’d already replaced flickering even more after his few knocks against it.
He didn’t need to see to know where he was going.
He gripped his bunch of flowers, and headed for the grave he knew so well.
“Sorry I’m late, Ma,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
Barry went to set his flowers down and stumbled back at the wisteria bloom already placed by her stone.
Something had shifted in Central City. Barry didn’t know what, but he knew there was something.
This was the third crime scene in two weeks where the apparent murderer had choked to death on their own flowers after killing the so-called object of their affection.
Every one of them murdered with a kitchen knife through their heart. Barry had seen crime scenes like this before, but this many, with this many similarities-
He dropped into his chair in his lab then shoved himself back away from the desk with a jolt so sharp he tumbled backwards off the chair.
“What are you doing, Allen?” Singh called over.
“Sorry.” Barry pinched the bridge of his nose then dusted the withering purple petals off his desk. “Long day.”
His eyes would not stop watering. Barry couldn’t stop sneezing, his nose was constantly running, he hadn’t been sick since he was struck by lightning, but right now he felt awful. Entirely run down. His throat was scratchy and he found himself unable to run more than a few miles before he was doubled over, wheezing, trying to catch his breath.
Forrest patted his back sympathetically as he found Barry once again having a coughing fit in the back of the lab.
“Whoever you’re coughing flowers for, you should tell them,” he said. “It only gets worse.”
“I’m not-”
Barry inhaled and immediately started coughing again.
“We’ve seen the petals following you,” Forrest said. “It’s better to get it out.”
There was a bunch of wisteria flowers on his doorstep. Half withered, half vibrant, flecks of red staining the purple.
Barry threw them as far as he could, then ran.
The woman had red hair. Red hair that spread in a halo around white skin, sticky red blood spilling across her tiled floor. A knife was buried dead in her chest.
Her murderer- confessed in their final moments- was slumped where they had been sitting. Mottled green staining their skin. Rose thorns bursting out their chest, out their mouth, green leaves stained red with the blood and flesh they had torn through. Blood ran down from their eyes and Barry swallowed the bile rising in his throat.
“This is the worst case yet,” Patty said, staring at the remains of the body. “How did they even manage it?”
“According to the call he made to 911, someone told him to do,” Singh said. “Archibald Reynolds. He’s been missing for two weeks.”
“I’ve got something,” Barry said.
He tugged a slip of paper out from under Rebecca Smith’s body.
A scattering of wisteria petals tumbled out, and Barry felt the world go dark.
A crack of thunder woke him and Barry scrambled back as the lightning outside illuminated the silhouette at the foot of his bed.
He tumbled back out of it, crying out in pain as something ripped at his arm.
The door to the hospital room flew open, a light switching on to show the empty room as a nurse rushed in, and rushed over to Barry.
Even his home made his head spin. Even his home felt full of this thick cloud that filled his nose and lungs and burned. Iris had brought him soup, soup Barry normally would have devoured, but he could barely see enough to put it in the microwave.
He couldn’t work. Ralph had already made apologies to the League on his behalf and offered to cover Central City.
And Barry.
Barry felt entirely useless. His health entirely in the hands of other people. A superhero, brought down by allergies. If the Rogues could see him like this...
He had to run. He had to, he was the Flash, he was made for running. If he could just run somewhere far away, run into the wilderness away from people, away from their flowers, just for a few days. Just a few days of peace.
Darryl probably wouldn’t be pleased Barry had found the cabin by asking his dad if he still knew any, but Iris had driven him out here, deep in the woods upriver, and Barry could already feel his lungs easing. Just him, the trees, the birds, the river, being alone in the middle of the woods wasn’t necessarily Barry’s ideal weekend, but right now?
He felt so good.
There were a small collection of cabins clustered together, he wasn’t entirely alone. It was early enough in the year most were empty, but there were a few other people here.
That was fine, he’d just lay back in the cabin and finally, finally breathe easily.
Something woke him in the middle of the night. Something outside, trying to get in.
Barry pulled the covers over his head and curled up. Probably an animal of some kind. Something he would be able to outrun.
His eyes were still red and watering.
The day had been nice.
The night was storming. Barry hadn’t been afraid of lightning for a long time, but this time, this time every crack of thunder made him jolt. Every flash drove him further into the bed.
The wind and rain hammered at the door. The windows rattled, the glass desperate to escape the frames. The chimney howled, echoing around the room, and Barry darted over to relight the dying embers of the fire even with the rain hissing as it hit the smouldering logs.
The match wouldn’t light.
Barry tried again, striking so hard the match split in two, and it still wouldn’t light. He should run.
A red petal blew in front of him.
No, not red.
Barry darted back away from the blood-stained wisteria. He was running, he needed-
Glass shattered behind him and Barry darted blindly, instantly colliding with something solid and falling back onto the floor.
He looked up at the dark silhouette standing over him. Watching him.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the Reverse Flash from behind.
“Thawne,” Barry breathed a sigh of almost relief.
He coughed again.
His eyes were blurring again.
Barry tried to push himself up, to reach the new epi-pen sat on the bed-side table, and Thawne crouched down to him. Right over him.
And coughed, a blood-stained petal landing directly on Barry’s chest. Two petals, three, four-
Barry wheezed as he tried to push back. Tried to get away as Thawne pulled down his cowl, as a green and pale mottled face looked down at him.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this, Flash,” Thawne said.
Barry wheezed, still desperately trying to move back, to find the pen he'd heard fall-
“I tried to find a way to escape it without losing it,” Thawne said. “You saw how my attempts failed, didn’t you?”
“You- You-”
The coughing overwhelmed him again.
“You see how I feel about you, Flash?” Thawne said. “It’s real. I have the flowers to prove it. I can prove it, I saved every petal I coughed for you. You see?”
Thawne dragged a bag over, withered wisteria spilling from it, spilling onto Barry.
“Thawne,” Barry choked. “Thawne, I’m-”
He wheezed.
“You can’t breathe either,” Thawne said with glee. “The more flowers I gave you, the worse it got. The more my vine grew, the worse you got too.”
“All-All-”
Thawne pressed a finger to Barry’s lips. A woody, bloody finger as the vines started to burst through.
“Even our healing can’t end this, Flash,” Thawne said. His voice was hoarse. His breath almost as laboured as Barry’s.
Barry gasped, desperate, his eyesight blurring, the darkness surrounding them growing.
“There’s only one way this ends, Barry,” Thawne said. “Only one way you and I can cure our shared affliction.”
He wrapped his fingers into the front of Barry’s pyjama shirt, lifting him off the ground, lifting him close, close enough Barry could see the vines attempting to escape his mouth, could see the blood trickling down as the flowers grew still.
He made a tiny noise of fear, the only thing he could still do.
“I’ll make you admit you love me, Barry,” Thawne promised. “Even if it’s the last thing we do.”