Disclaimer: No, I don't pretend to own The Flash

A/N:

I'm not terribly pleased with this one. I wrote it because I've had the basic idea for it in my head for a long while and, well, there's a considerable lack of H/C in this fandom. But I'm not sure I'm satisfied with it. So please forgive any bits of this that aren't in keeping with the show. I don't read the comics so this is strictly in the cannon of the show. Do feel free to correct any blatant character mistakes that you see.

Without further ado, here is my very first Flash fic:

The Things that Happen

It was like when you try to turn on your high beams in a snow storm.

It was like being inside a dusty snow-globe.

It was like the dirt of a million vacuum cleaners had been released into the air.

It was…really hard to breathe.

It was harder to cough though but he needed to breathe so he made it happen. One sloooow drag at a time.

Something sparked and sputtered and he swatted around his head. Or, at least, he tried to swat around his head. His hand wasn't working. It was sort of just flopping against his face.

He coughed. Gasped. Coughed again. Breathed in small particles of dust and drywall and insulation.

He opened his eyes again and his vision was floaty. Lights flicked on and off. Water was spitting somewhere off to his right.

*CSSSCKKK* "—rry! Can you—" *SSSSSKKKKIC*

He tried to sit up. And he immediately regretted it. Pain knifed from his lower back to his abdominal wall and then took a sharp turn down to his pelvis. It was the sort of pain that traded the scream reflex for a gag reflex.

He vomited.

It was then that he realized he was lying crookedly, sort of half on his shoulders and mostly on his side, his legs angling in haphazard zigzags over a pile of bricks and wooden slats. There was a mass of debris cuddling him from everywhere. Pressing in. Dangerously.

He lifted his head to look around. His vision dipped to black and his brain scattered.

The next piece of awareness that he remembered was that he was very uncomfortable. Very very uncomfortable.

And, more importantly, there was a building on top of him.

Panic started to prickle up his spine. He started coughing again.

"Guys…" he gasped. "Guys? You there?"

"Barry!" came Caitlin's voice. "Ba—*CSSKKKSSSCSSSSSSSSK*"

"You're breaking up…" he said tiredly. "I think…I think my earpiece is damaged."

*SSSSSKKCcccKKk*

He drew in a shaky breath. "Guys, I can't hear you. I don't know if you can hear me. Um…I'm not ok."

Barry gingerly lifted his head again and groaned. There was a wall of stuff surrounding him. Brick, mortar, wood, glass, furniture, cockroaches. Light filtered in from the dozens of gaps and holes but it wasn't a great deal of light – just enough to keep his night vision from kicking in.

Nothing felt terribly settled. The place was groaning around him. Shifting.

His noisy breathing was stuttery. Frightened. Panicky.

"I'm not sure…I don't remember what happened," he told them in a strained too-high voice. "Uh, I think I might have a concussion. But uh…you should come get me now."

The earpiece sparked and fizzled.

Barry hacked a few times, nearly coming to tears as new pieces of pain made themselves known. He was 90% sure there was a piece of metal shoved through the center of his head. He tried moving his left arm again and it flopped down across his chest. It was hard to tell if it, specifically, was hurting or not.

There was blood in his mouth. His insides felt like mashed potatoes. Mean, angry mashed potatoes.

Stay calm. Just stay calm. Don't panic. It'll be ok. They know where you are. Just be patient.

He tried to settle in and focus on breathing but it was getting increasingly harder to do that – the air was thickening. Or his lungs were deflating. He wasn't sure which.

Patience, patience, patience.

He'd fallen out of practice with patience. With waiting. He'd been spoiled by the super speed. Because, damn it, this was taking too long.

Barry closed his eyes and swallowed away the dust in his throat, pretending he didn't hear the shifting weight of a support beam overhead. Pretending his spit didn't taste like blood.

What had happened was…was that he'd been running. Naturally. Specifically, he'd been running the west end of the city. More specifically, the old ghetto part of the west end of the city. Where there were hundreds of abandoned buildings. He'd been running…running…and then…

Barry frowned. His memory was sketchy from then on.

Running and then buried. Something happened to connect those two events.

His pulse spiked. Had he been attacked? Was someone trying to kill him?

His breathing went quick and shallow.

Very suddenly, he needed to be moving. Anywhere. Anywhere very very fast. Before he could consider the stupidity, Barry pushed up into a sitting position. The pain in his back localized quite vividly in his left hip. Localized was a loose term, of course. Everything hurt. Everything was fuzzy and achy and lava-y. By 'localized', he meant that it felt like someone was ripping his leg off.

He cursed a few times and whimpered and groaned and the building groaned back and his sense of time slipped into an unsure place.

Slow down. Slooooow down…

Carefully, thoughtfully, Barry picked a brick off his body and tossed it to the side. And then a piece of wood lath. And another. There was a little pocket of space around him. A big ass wooden beam was wedged above him, holding off the worst of the debris. Or…or rather…he was wedged under the big ass wooden beam. He was holding up the beam which was holding up a large slab of wall.

There was day light above him, off to his right.

This was important but he couldn't remember why.

"Hey, if you can hear me…" he said very quickly in a voice pinched with pain, "…this place is really old. I think it's a house… I'm on the west side…I don't think I can get out on my own…"

He trailed off as he caught sight of his side. It was raw. As in meat grinder raw. As in major road rash raw. There were bits of stuff coming out which looked like grass and pavement and…

Grass. Whatever had happened, it had been outside. He'd been running outside last. Yes, he remembered that. He remembered turning the corner past W 124th and coming down Walnut street and—

How long had it been?

How long would it be until they came?

Star Labs was…god, it was almost on the other side of the city! In normal city traffic…they could easily be twenty minutes! But what time was it? He'd left the lab at 4:00 to play in rush hour traffic. But then he'd made a city-wide loop to, well, work out. Even with that…Rush hour commute.

His bones would be setting crookedly by the time they rescued him. If he didn't choke on his own blood first.

"I-can't-do-this…I-can't-do-this…" he gasped to himself.

His right hand shook.

"Guys please hurry…please…"

Barry broke into a wet hacking cough that rattled his bones. Literally, rattled. He felt them.

How many bones were broken, he wondered. Probably a lot. Caitlin wasn't going to be happy with him. It'd probably take the whole night to heal properly and that was if they didn't have to re-break anything. How did you set ribs if they were shattered? Would she just let his ribs heal crookedly? Did ribs do that? Or would they have to insert metal supports in his chest? Could they do that? He wasn't anesthesia would work on him and he didn't fancy the thought of being coherent during surgery.

What about internal damage? He probably was rife with that. It felt like he was, anyway. Like his insides were all mashed together in one disgusting pile of chum.

He flicked through his knowledge of the human body and was met was blurry images of class-note doodles and frowning teachers.

He was probably going brain dead. He was probably going to conk out at any moment and the others would find a crumpled origami version of the Flash buried beneath a collapsed building.

Barry realized that he was hyperventilating. Really really fast. It was vibrating his entire body. And it hurt.

He held his breath.

Counted to ten.

Let it out

S

L

O

W

L

Y

This was foolish. He was the Flash. He was brilliant. He could figure this out. Because if there was light coming through then he wasn't completely buried. Somewhere, above him, there was air and space and not death.

He looked around again, judging the shadows more intently than before, willing his eyes to work. It was time to break this down into a workable plan. Steps. Order. Logic.

Step 1: Support the bearing beam.

Barry took a brick with his functioning hand and carefully wedged it on the far side of his leg, where the beam met the floor. Then he did it again. And again. Building up a support for the beam. On the fifth brick, the house c-c-crunched.

He froze, holding his breath.

But nothing caved in.

He placed a few more bricks, moving as quickly as he dared which was about as slow as a snail and it frustrated him to no end. The slowness made his skin crawl. But he was diligent. And eventually there was a nice pile of debris under the beam.

Step 2: Create a bigger hole.

Barry grit his teeth and began clearing the space underneath the beam. It came down diagonally and the wall slab made for sort of a tent above him. He figured he could enlarge his hole and maybe get out from under the wall and then head upwards.

Dig dig dig.

His hole expanded a foot. Then two. And then…and then…

Many minutes had passed – agonizing minutes – before he realized that he was stalling for time. He, Barry Allan, was stalling. The Flash was trying to waste time.

He made a face, chewing his bottom lip, right hand trembling.

This is gonna suuuck.

Step 3: Move into the newly enlarged hole.

He didn't scream at first as he rolled onto his belly. At first, he just sort of huffed and moaned. But then his left foot caught on something as he dragged himself over. Then he screamed. It was a tight, lock-jawed series of screams. Pain unlike anything he'd felt before exploded into his body as he dragged himself onto the new space. It was a smoldering, oozing, grinding sort of pain that suggested his leg maybe wasn't a leg anymore but rather a tube of lightning flavored meat paste.

He made it a full foot before he came to a quivering stop.

Step 4: Cry like a very small child.

Barry's eyes rolled back into his head. His body shut down all movement as he slipped in and out of consciousness. But his brain was recovering too quickly for him to stay unconscious and he hated himself for that. He shouldn't be lucid. He shouldn't be aware of what was happening. He should be in a wonderful delirium if not completely unconscious. He should be waking up happily in Star Labs an hour from now.

An hour. Maybe more.

He felt sick again. Probably because he was pressing down on the liquefied organs in his abdomen.

Time stretched out before him, mockingly. Making him feel slow and small. For a while, all he did was lie there, listening to the sounds a collapsed building makes. Seconds crawled past him, joining the oozing parade of minutes which dragged along the mammoth sloth of an hour.

Barry shook his head, trying to rouse the problem solving part of his brain again, which was protesting at having been so badly abused in the last plan.

He took another long moment to look around at his surroundings. Making plans. Plotting routes. It was hard to focus though. His eyes only skipped faster and faster around the half dark, not truly processing anything. The thought of having to continue to claw his way out of the debris made him feel heavy and useless.

He pulled in several deep breaths and coughed. And moaned. And coughed again. And—

"HEEEEEEEEEEEY!" he yelled. That's what people did in these situations, right? They called for help.

His voice sounded extra loud in his hole.

Almost immediately, Barry felt stupid. No one was going to hear him. This part of the city was mostly abandoned anyway.

A feeling like dread pressed in on him then. A heavy heavy dread. He wasn't going to die fighting a big bad villain. He wasn't going to sacrifice himself. He was going to die because—

"Ooooh my god," Barry murmured, eyes going wide. The memories snapped into place.

He had tripped.

He didn't know what he had even tripped on but he had definitely tripped. Like a klutz. Barry Allen was going to die because he had tripped and fallen.

His cheeks flushed in embarrassment.

"I'm an idiot…" he grumbled.

Barry closed his eyes and pressed his palm to his forehead. There was a new fresh glut of emotion that dog-piled his confidence. Shame, embarrassment, guilt, horror, fear, loneliness. He wasn't even going to die quickly. What crueler thing was there than this – that the Flash should die a slow and painful death.

Well, ok. Maybe he was giving in to the drama.

By morning, his bones would quicken and his organs would stop bleeding and he'd be able to climb out. It wouldn't be pretty though. He'd probably burn through most of his remaining calories in the night and be half starved by the time he jogged back to Star Labs – not to mention dehydrated. That was assuming his bones healed in a way that would even support running. He might be reduced to a degrading hob—

"Barry?!"

He froze.

"I'm heeeeere!" he shrieked.

He heard more voices yelling at each other, car doors slamming.

"We're coming! Hold on!" came Cisco's voice.

A smile of disbelief breathed across his face. "I'm down here! Be careful!"

He listened as they came nearer and nearer. Caitlin, Cisco, Dr. Wells, Detective West. Warm fuzzy feelings welled up. Relief.

There was movement above him.

"Barry?" said Caitlin. She was close. Probably over top of him somewhere. He couldn't see her.

"Be careful," he warned.

"How badly are you hurt?" she asked calmly, in her best doctor's voice.

He swallowed. "Bad."

"Can you move?"

"Yeah…yeah, a little. I've got a little bit of room," Barry explained.

"Are you pinned under anything?" she pressed.

"No but there's a bearing beam ready to come down on top of me. Please be careful."

"Understood. Detective West and Cisco are finding a way into the basement. Where are you hurt?"

"Umm…everywhere?" he said in a small voice.

"Ok. No problem," she replied lightly.

He heard sounds to his left – shifting debris, voices debating. "I hear them. They're close."

"Good! Excellent! Just hang on, Barry. We'll get you out of there in no time," she assured him.

He nodded to himself and listened. They were digging closer and closer. He drummed his fingers against his chest - fast enough that they were a blur.

"Caitlin?"

"Yes?"

"This is not 'no time'," he said with a pinch of shrillness in his voice.

"Try to stay calm, Barry. They're almost there," she insisted.

"How long?"

"Just a few more min—"

"No, I mean…how long have I been down here?" he pressed.

She paused, considering the full weight of the question. "I'm so sorry, Barry," she started. "It's been the better part of an hour."

He made a face.

"Barry?"

"No, it's fine. It's ok. Thank you," he insisted.

She went quiet.

The wall slab suddenly started moving backwards and he found himself bracing for a deluge of debris – eyes and mouth closed tight, right arm covering his face. A long moment passed. Small bits of stuff came down on him. Joe cursed. Cisco yelped.

Barry just focused on breathing. His breath was nosy.

He waited.

And waited.

More things flicked down onto his face.

"Guys!" he barked.

"Almost there," came Joe's voice. "Almost…"

There was a hand on his shoulder and Barry almost started crying.

His brain started disconnecting from the scene then. He vaguely remembered Joe calling for a stretcher and Cisco saying something about how awful Barry looked and then he remembered someone grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling and the horrible horrible pain that followed.

And then everything cut out.

There was nothing.

.

When things came back, they came back all at once. Quick and sharp.

Barry sat up with a gasp.

"Whoah! Easy, man!" came Cisco's voice. A hand pressed his chest back down.

Barry flopped back against pillows. Medical machines beeped and hissed.

"'m ok," Barry mumbled.

"Ok?" said Caitlin who was swiftly coming to his bedside. Cisco winced at Barry. "You're ok?"

Barry swallowed. His throat felt like cotton. "…Not…ok?"

"You're—" She bit off what she'd started to say. Caitlin huffed and made a face. She decisively grabbed a cup and straw from the bedside table and offered the straw to him. With cautiously raised eyebrows, Barry took a drink.

They shared a look, she frustrated and worried, he properly meek. Cisco just sat awkwardly to the side.

"How are you really?" Caitlin asked.

Barry grimaced. "Sore."

"You should be," Caitlin insisted. "You snapped all the tendons in your left hip, you shattered your left femur and dislocated your knee. Your left ankle bone was crushed. There was literally nothing but skin holding your foot to your calf."

She gestured to the impressive contraption of poles and screws encasing his leg.

"You cracked your skull. You damaged your liver, your kidneys, and your pancreas. You were bleeding internally. Your left arm was dislocated. Every single one of your ribs is fractured in at least one place. Barry, what happened?!"

Barry made a face, looking from Caitlin to Cisco and back again. He was really glad Dr. Wells wasn't in the room.

Caitlin's face went from impatient to serious to panicky as she considered all the possibilities that he wasn't telling her.

"Barry…what happened?" she asked in a very serious low voice.

"I-I…Things and—"

"Barry!"

"I tripped," he blurted.

Caitlin and Cisco both looked a little stunned.

"You…"

"Tripped," he said again.

"Huh," Cisco replied. He was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Barry frowned at him.

"It's not funny," he said sourly.

"It's a little funny," Cisco insisted with a slight smirk. "Sorry. Just…How fast were you going? I mean, you must have been like a human canon ball. No wonder you took the house down!"

"Still not funny," Barry said.

"Well…" Caitlin started slowly, "that certainly explains the injuries. I think you should avoid tripping in the future."

Barry nodded emphatically.

"What did you trip on?" Cisco pressed, not hiding the goofy grin on his face.

Barry shrugged carefully. "I don't know. I didn't see it."

"Did you remember to tie your shoes?"

"My shoes don't tie!"

"Were you swerving to avoid a cat? You know what they say, Barry, you should always just hit the cat."

Barry's lips pressed into a thin line as he glared at the other man.

"I'm sorry," Cisco said quickly. "You're right. It's not funny."

"I could have died!" Barry said dramatically.

"Yeah, absolutely." Cisco nodded. He smiled again and Barry shook his head, smirking.

There was a pause in which Caitlin busied herself with adjusting the traction. The three of them lapsed into a comfortable silence.

"Hey guys?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. For coming to get me," Barry said with a sappy look on his face.

Caitlin smiled. "You're welcome, Barry."

.

Fin.