Re-watching the pilot, there is a cut from Joe finding out that Barry is the Flash, to the next day, which was a scene that I felt should have been written into the show. Oh well. The tricky part was finding out how to write it with the second episode in mind, since Joe clearly is not informed about what Barry plans to do with his powers. Enjoy!

Joe West was no stranger to uncomfortable car rides. Previous uncomfortable situations had ranged from furious criminals delivering expletive-laden speeches, to his red-faced teenage daughter who had just been given, "The Talk." Despite all of that, Joe could not remember a more awkward car ride than the current one.

Barry was in the back seat, refusing to look anywhere except out the window. Dirt was still smeared liberally across his face except where tracks of constant tears had eaten their way through, and his eyes were puffy and red. He was wearing Joe's long brown coat, and in his slouched position, the long folds of the fabric almost hid the dull red jumpsuit with the lightning bolt emblazoned on the front. Neither of them had spoken since the car had started.

When Barry had first fallen to his knees in the mud in front of him after running down a tornado Joe had simply followed suit. He didn't have enough brainpower to process what he had just seen, let alone enough to figure out how to remain standing. What he had seen was impossible. There was no way that what he had just seen really happened.

His first thought went to drugs. Clyde Mardon had somehow drugged him, then all of Barry's earlier comments about controlling the weather and men encased in yellow lighting worked their way into his drug trip. Then he considered that he was hallucinating. The stress of the job had finally driven him crazy.

Then Barry had started to cry. It was a real cry-snotty, chock full of hiccups, snorts, and fat tears that didn't even leave his eye before the next one started forming. His shoulders were shaking, and his hands, with nothing useful to do, started to vibrate-not shake-vibrate, with little sparks jumping off of then, then winking out of existence just as quick as they came.

For the young metahuman, the cry was a release more than it was anything else. Since he woke up, he found out that he had abilities far beyond his wildest dreams, his childhood crush was dating someone else, he had met his idol, almost gotten killed by a car, re-met up with the freaking Arrow, and attempted to solve a weather disaster by running as hard as he could at it. Crashing to the ground in front of Joe and seeing the look on his face; a mixture of confusion, anguish, shock tinged with disbelief, and his features settling on horrified acceptance turned out to be the trigger for what had been building since he woke up at STAR Labs: a good cry.

Barry crying snapped Joe out of it. His mind switched from a hazy mess to "Parent Mode": One of his kids was crying, and it was his duty to find the origin of said tears, and destroy it. The familiar state helped ease his mind into a state where he could have rational thoughts. Who was crying? Barry. What was he crying about? Barry had done something that shouldn't be possible, and was apparently just as overwhelmed as Joe. When? Just now. Where? The farmhouse. Why?

That was a question that Joe wanted a very good answer to.

After a few more minutes, Barry's tears quieted down to a bit of snuffling. He nearly started back up again after meeting Joe's gaze, and for what seemed like forever, both men simply held each other's gazes.

It was Detective Thawne that snapped them both out of it. When he started telegraphing his return to consciousness with a few groans that pierced the eerie silence, Barry snapped into motion. He struggled to his feet, and after a bit of staggering, he ran like a normal person to Joe's car and hopped into the backseat with a muttered, "I can't be here."

Joe didn't even remember getting up. He just sort of made his way over to his partner, who was blearily beginning to sit up. He let the blonde come to his own conclusions as he took in the destruction around him. The barn was in shambles, huge shards of wood were scattered all over the yard, and somehow the tractor was upside down, letting out pathetic little puffs of smoke.

"What the heck happened?" Eddie demanded, still trying to take in the sheer amount of destruction.

In the first of what would be many times, Joe quickly made up something to explain away the madness for a police report. "Mardon knew we were coming and already had the place rigged with bombs. Gave a stupid speech about how he wasn't going back to jail. After he blew the place, and we all three somehow survived, he pulled out a gun and I shot him. No, I don't have any idea why he just didn't pull the gun in the first place." The speech rambled on a bit, in a way that was more characteristic of Barry than Joe, but after what he had just seen, Joe thought he had an excuse.

Eddie nodded, fitting the scene in his head to the story Joe had told him.

After that, everything was more or less a blur. (Pun not intended.) The Captain was called, as well as emergency response teams. After forensics cleared the scene, both of their statements were taken, and the reports were put off until morning.

Captain Singh had nearly stopped his heart when he had strode over to Joe's car to get one of his spare notepads that he always kept in the car. With his heart in his mouth, he watched as the Captain opened the backseat door…and found no Barry.

Later, as he did a micro search of the area to try and find him when he was cleared to leave, he found him sleeping in the trunk. Somehow he had been quick enough to get from the backseat into the trunk to hide when the captain had started for the car. After a cursory glance around to see that nobody was watching, he shook Barry awake, hating himself as he did it. Barry sleepily came to, slowly getting up, apparently having completely forgot where he was. Joe shoved him back down so no one around would see, and it was this motion that jerked Barry back into reality and brought all of the motions crashing back like a tidal wave. His green eyes widened and he pressed himself down flat in the trunk until Joe gave him the okay to get out.

Seeing that the CSI team was engrossed in the scene and not looking in their direction, Joe slid off his coat and handed it to Barry, who awkwardly covered himself in an effort to hide his rather outlandish suit. He hopped out of the car and disappeared in a flash of light, only to reappear in the backseat of the car.

Impossible.

In an effort to hide how much the tiny display bothered him, Joe took a minute to force a casual air. He swung the trunk door shut, walked over to the driver side and slid himself in.

Barry was already on the phone. "Sorry, I must of slept through the alert…Yeah, I know…Wow. A Farm…okay. Be there in the morning..thanks."

With barely a glance, Barry handed Joe's phone back to him. "Apparently, needing to sleep off a nine-month coma is a good reason for not answering the head CSI's texts about a huge crime scene. Darryl just told me to come in the morning to deal with the aftermath." It was obvious that Barry was also trying to force a casual tone.

Joe cleared his already parched throat. "Thought you would have been gone by now. Raced right back to your apartment. Done that thing with the lightning."

Barry averted his eyes. "I think we need to talk."

The next twenty minutes in the car were completely silent.

Joe sensed the increasing gulf between them that grew with every second of silence. Barry was retreating into himself, just like he had done when his mom had died.

His mom. Dear Lord.

Suddenly, a flood of memories popped up, each of then clamoring for his attention. A young Barry tearfully protesting his dad's imprisonment. An agitated Barry explaining what had happened the night of the attack. A teenage Barry who still slept with a nightlight. A young adult that insisted that the impossible was real, and that a man in lightning had come into his house and stabbed his mother to death.

The sheer force of the revelations coming at him from every direction nearly caused Joe to derail the car. Thankfully, he managed to save him and Barry's hides and pulled into a Sonic.* From memory, he placed both his and Barry's orders then settled back to wait for the carhop.

The food arrived quickly, and for a moment, Barry looked like his old self. He gleefully accepted his hot fudge shake and promptly dipped a tater tot into the ice cream. On instinct, he glanced up and Joe to see his customary grossed-out reaction, but instead found Joe staring at him. With a more subdued air, Barry began working on his burger, and after Joe pushed his meal at Barry, he ate that too.

Drinking the pop that came with his meal had done Joe some good. His hands were no longer shaking, and he felt as if he could drive them both home without causing a wreck. Barry for his part, was licking mayo off of his red-gloved fingers with studied obliviousness.

Finally, he asked. "When?"

Barry didn't even pretend to play dumb. "When I woke up from the coma."

That was a relief. Joe had been preparing for a confession that was along the lines of, "I was born this way, and was too nervous to tell you," or, "I just couldn't trust you with this. Like I couldn't trust you with investigating my mother's murder.

Joe had been preparing to ask another question, but found he just didn't have the words. Barry sensed this and helped him out a little. "Turns out that the lightning bolt that hit me was formed by a dark matter wave from the particle accelerator explosion. Altered my body chemistry a bit. I woke up and found out that I can sorta run fast enough to break the sound barrier."

The questions were coming easier now. "Who else knows?"

"The STAR Labs crew. We ran a few tests this afternoon to see how fast I could go, take blood pressure readings, stuff like that. I was expecting all of the tests to come back in a few weeks at the earliest, but nope. The equipment at STAR labs is the very best, and we could just do then right there and..," his voice began to trail off, as he realized that Joe probably did not want to hear about the sheer awesome factor of using up to date equipment, something Barry didn't experience very often with the CCPD's budget.

"Anybody else?"

Barry decided that it probably wouldn't be a wise decision to tell Joe that he ran over to Starling City and blabbed to the Arrow. "Nope. Nobody. Nobody at all. Mum's the word."

Joe was not stupid. "This other person isn't Iris, is it?"

Barry shook his head, giving up the idea that he could lie to Joe. "No. You wouldn't know them," he tacked on quickly, hoping to divert this line of questioning.

Joe started the car. "I'm going to have a lot of questions in the morning. I'm going to want to know why you didn't come to me before you went to Dr. Wells, where you got that suit, and I'm going to want to know if there are diet or lifestyle changes that come with your new condition." He held up a finger before Barry interrupted, "but for now, we are both going to the house. Not your apartment, the house. You are going to take a shower, and get into some pajamas. Then you will march yourself to bed and get some sleep that isn't induced by a magical lightning bolt."

Barry looked like he might pass out from everything being thrown at him. He had expected anger, disbelief, and possibly the Joe West Silent Treatment. Not this. "Are you okay?" he asked, a little furtively.

Joe shook his head. "Nope."

Both men shared a weak laugh. After a beat of comfortable silence, Joe started again in a soft tone. "And then I will make a call down to Cold Cases and have them pull Nora's file. I'll tell them that some new evidence has come to light."

Without warning, Barry reached over and hugged Joe as hard as he could. Joe hugged him back and rubbed small circles in Barry's shaking back. After a moment that felt like it lasted as long as the car ride that brought them here, Barry sat back in his seat, blinking back another flood of tears.

"Thank you," he said.

He didn't need to say anything more.

*I was surprised to find that Sonic is not something that everyone knows about. Eh, consequences of never living anywhere but the Midwest. For those poor souls who don't know, Sonic is a fast-food chain where you pull into a parking lot, order from the menu in the parking lot, and a carhop brings you food. Amazing limeades and mozzarella sticks.