This takes place between 2x18 and 2x20, after Barry has lost his speed and when Caitlin is still kidnapped.

Enjoy!

One of the perks of being the Flash was an extensive knowledge of the street and alleys of Central City. Barry had run them so many times, zig-zagging through on foot chases or morning jogs or coffee runs, that he practically knew them better than the people who had designed them. He knew the shortcuts, the detours, the pitfalls.

One of the downsides of being Barry Allen without powers was having to walk these streets. On foot. Slowly.

Over the past few days, while Barry had been adjusting to the aftermath of giving Zoom his speed, he'd turned down numerous offers for transportation. Cisco had offered to be his personal chauffeur (as long as he didn't choose the music). Iris had offered to lend him her old bike. Even Joe had offered up the use of the old silver car Barry had learned to drive on.

Something, whether determination or pride, had compelled Barry to say no. He preferred to walk, he said. He hadn't been doing enough of it lately.

Still, it was a long walk from the crime lab to STAR. And it was an overcast day near the end of the week when Barry decided to put one of his alley shortcuts to good use.

And it was 4:37 when a man with a dark hoodie shoved a gun in Barry's face and pressed him against the brick wall.

The first thing that came to Barry's mind was Really? In broad daylight?

But the first thing he said was, "You've got to be kidding me."

"No jokes here, pal," said the mugger. Up close, he looked no older than twenty. "If you want to keep your head, you'll hand over your money nice and slow."

Nice and slow. The words sang through Barry's sudden hyper-awareness, his quickened heart pounding out the rhythm of the man's speech. Both hands went up in surrender, one still holding a full cup of hot coffee. Nice and slow.

"Alright, alright, just calm down," Barry said, as placating as he could be given the circumstances. "You don't want to hurt anybody."

"Don't tell me what I don't want to do," said the mugger, shoving the barrel of the gun hard against Barry's ribs. "And wipe that self-pitying look off your face."

"I'm sorry, it's just…" Barry swallowed, tasting a memory of unbelievable joy in the face of danger, of cockiness, of unabashed confidence. "Out of all the people in Central City, you choose me to rob."

"Yeah, so?" said the mugger. "You somethin' special? Hand over the money, wiseass."

But the memory clung like morning dew to grass. Memories of warmth in his blood, electricity. Of being powerful. Of being good, maybe, in a city that needed saving from the bad.

We don't want the Flash, we want Barry Allen had been the saying of the week, repeated so many times and in so many different variations that maybe Barry was beginning to believe it.

So, in a spurt of impulsive courage, Barry threw the hot coffee at the mugger's face.

The man screamed and threw up his hands to his eyes, giving Barry just enough room to elbow him in the chest. The gun went skittering across the cement, but the man recovered quickly. He pushed back against Barry's assault, catching Barry in the chin with a quick uppercut.

As Barry was liable to forget, when he wasn't the Flash, he was less than impressive physically. Although his combat training came in handy during hand-to-hand altercations, he wasn't nearly fast enough to dodge punches as he usually could, and his own attacks weren't as strong as he was used to. The punch to his chin sent him stumbling backward, and he had not recovered when another blow came to his stomach. His assailant was twice his size, and muscly—scrawny non-Flash Barry Allen didn't stand a chance.

Soon he was on the ground, pressed into the corner between the brick wall and a dumpster, with nowhere to go, nowhere to run. Kick after kick assaulted him, jamming into his ribs, his gut, his face. He held up his hands to protect himself, but with each strike he felt bones buckling, blood gushing. A strike to his cheekbone and he instantly felt his eye swell shut. A stomp to his knee and he knew he wouldn't walk right for a week.

Time began to blur; at some point, the mugging ended, with the mugger in question rummaging around in Barry's pockets until he found the wallet and phone. With a parting kick, the man ran off, leaving Barry dazed and paralyzed on the cold pavement.

How long Barry lay there, half-out of consciousness, wasn't clear, but when he finally came back to his senses he had the distinct impression that it had been more than a few minutes. His gut was heavy with humiliation and the realization that nobody had seen or heard the attack. He was still alone.

With great effort, and a lot of groaning, Barry planted his fists on the concrete and levered himself up to a standing position. Once upright, he shot out a hand to steady himself against the brick wall, mentally confirming the fact that his leg would not be able to take much weight and that his head was swimming worse than it had in the aftermath of college parties. He had no phone, and he had no intention of starting out the day in an ambulance being driven to a normal hospital—of which he had a definitive aversion—so he started walking.

He was blessedly close to STAR by that point, and that part of town was mostly quiet anyway, so he reached the building with no problem but the steadily-growing pain in his knee and ribs. He limped through the front door, into the elevator, down the hallway to the cortex. Before he reached the main doorway to the cortex, he paused; he didn't want to make a scene, not in the slightest, and his blood-stained clothes were certainly more dramatic than he'd ever hoped for. Still, there was no use in trying to hide the damage. His friends would find out eventually. They always did.

So, with his head hung low, he crossed the threshold of the doorway into the cortex.

"Hey, I was wondering when you'd get here. I've been trying to call your cell but—" Cisco looked up mid-sentence. The change in his face was immediate. "Oh, Jesus, Barry, what happened?"

He was halfway across the room, the slur of words continuing as he pulled up a chair and helped Barry down into it, clutching Barry's arm, demeanor transformed in an instant. It was amazing how fast he could go from lighthearted, jokes bubbling on his tongue, to serious and focused. It was a trait that was not only appreciated, but useful in situations that their new positions as crime-fighters required.

"Sorry," Barry said, wincing away from Cisco's prodding. "I think I'm gonna need some bandages. And a brace for my knee."

"Are you going to tell me what you were thinking?" Cisco said. "Going after criminals without your powers?"

He poked at a tender spot beneath Barry's eye before standing and moving toward the med bay. Barry cleared his throat. "Actually," he said, "not a criminal. Well, yeah, criminal. But not one I was going after. I got a little…held up."

Cisco spun back around mid-walk, squinted. "I've heard that before. You were mugged. Weren't you?"

Barry couldn't look at him. All at once he was suffocating, choked by stifling heat, nausea, panic. The memory wouldn't go away; it kept replaying itself over and over like piece of broken film. He slumped over to put his elbows on his knees, and pain lanced through his chest. He curled his fingers in his hair and whined.

"I can't do this," he said. "I'm not cut out for this."

"I know I'm not Caitlin." That struck another chord. Deeper. "But here. Antiseptic. Ice packs. I've been in more than a few t-ball scrapes in my time."

Barry heard him rattle around in the med bay for a bottle of antiseptic and cotton balls. All of it was being drowned out, though. Barry was falling, fast. Water was rushing in his ears, plunging him further into darkness.

From his throat—from deeper, even—came a guttural sob.

The tears didn't fall, not really, but the rumbling emotion shook him where he sat. In an instant, he felt Cisco's presence again in front of him. He was thankful for the absence of Wells and anyone else on the team, thankful for the moment of privacy. Cisco's voice was panicked, quick, but soft.

"Where else does it hurt? I can get the x-ray machine working, or, or—"

Barry went slack.

A pause.

"It's not that, is it?"

At this, Barry wiped at his face, smearing blood and tears across the heel of his hand. "No, I mean, this sucks. It does."

"But?"

"This was just an ordinary guy," Barry said. "It was one thing when Zoom—" He swallowed, unable to complete the thought. When Zoom broke my back. "But this should've been so simple. And I couldn't do anything. I can't even defend myself against a mugger. How am I supposed to do anything? How am I supposed to save Caitlin?"

"Dude, this isn't on you," Cisco said. "We're all trying our best. This isn't supposed to be easy."

"I'm useless," Barry replied. "Look at me."

"Yeah, look at you," Cisco said. "It's not a pretty sight right now—but I also see the guy who's never given up on anything or anyone. This is not the time to give up on yourself. It'll take some adjustment, but the rest of us have managed to get through as ordinary people."

"You're a metahuman too," Barry said, wiping again at his nose, which had been reduced to a slow ooze of blood. "You do have powers."

"Don't want to brag," Cisco said with a playful smirk. "But you're missing the point. I didn't get these powers until this year. We've always done this as a team. We pick each other up when we stumble—we fill in those spots of weakness. That doesn't change now. You don't have to shoulder this yourself."

"This is a pretty big hole of weakness," Barry said.

"Well, you've never done anything half-assed," Cisco said, and Barry couldn't help the watery chuckle that slipped out. The laugh dissolved a small slice of tension between them, though Barry couldn't help but feel that the humor was an automatic thing. A necessary means of survival.

"Do you ever get sick of giving me pep-talks?" Barry said, watching Cisco's face relax as well.

"Actually, I think it's more Caitlin's specialty." Cisco resumed his original business of soaking a cotton ball in antiseptic and dabbing it at the worst of the scrapes on Barry's face. "Yet another reason to get her back here. But, like I said, filling in those temporary gaps."

"We're kind of broken."

"Yeah." Cisco gave an exaggerated, sympathetic wince as Barry winced—he had always been more squeamish than Caitlin at these things. This gesture alone made Barry chuckle again, a kind of delirious humor. "But right now your face is giving us a run for our money. Too bad that accelerated healing is gone."

"Hey, chicks dig scars, right?"

"Oh my God, Barry, you did not just say that."

"I'm obviously kidding. Ow." Barry jerked back as Cisco prodded his ribs. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"Uh huh." Cisco rose and strode toward the med bay. He rummaged around in a drawer while Barry massaged the tender spot on his chest. "The good thing about your accelerated healing being gone? You can finally get the good stuff." He tossed the bottle of painkillers Barry's way. With his swollen eye, Barry's depth perception was shot, and the bottle hit him square in the face.

"Yeah, I think I'll need them," he groaned, as Cisco looked on sheepishly. "Who put you in charge again?"

"Like I said," Cisco said, "temporary fix."

"I hope so."

Cisco sniggered and disappeared into the med bay again for a knee brace. Barry wiped more blood from his face—it seemed, lately, that he couldn't stop bleeding—and uncapped the pill bottle. The smile faded from his face as he held the two pain pills. A luxury he had never been afforded as the Flash. One he wasn't sure he could be grateful for now.

He closed his fist tightly around them. Took a breath. Threw them back.

Thank you so much for reading! This idea was bouncing around in my head for a while because I love angst and I especially love parallels. You know the drill-please consider leaving a comment with your thoughts. I really appreciate it!

Till next time,

Penn