Chapter Thirty-Eight: Clinging To False Hope; Iris West-Allen

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Central City, Star Labs, 2019

Two hours after the Team's defeat,

Iris sat deep in thought on the couch in the Star Labs' lounge room (which had become her favorite place in all of Star Labs, all because Nora had found it for them), two fingers lightly resting on the side of her temple, thinking over the long list of events that had gone down that day as she tried to put them all together.

First, Thawne uses the other three speedsters, Zoom, Savitar, and Godspeed, to lure out Barry and the rest of Team Flash into a staged fight to steal some mostly random piece of defective tech.

When that leaves him alone with Nora, he uses her to help him make a speed stealing device, which after pitting her against Barry, he uses to... take them both.

To take away my family.

Then he just disappears?

Zoom and Savitar come back for more, the Zolomon obviously with some new upgrades from him.

But Thawne, with all of his new power that he just stole, leaves? What's his game here? And where does Godspeed play into it?

Iris's thoughts were interrupted by someone sitting down next to her, the older man letting out a tired sigh as he sat next to his daughter.

" Cisco seems to be recovering well downstairs," Joe said, happy to have seen that his friend was doing well.

" How are you doing?" he asked, concernedly.

Iris noticed that he was looking at her bandaged ear worriedly, his deep set frown one that he had been wearing all night, for obvious reasons.

" I'm doing fine, dad. Catlin said that when I fought Savitar some of the wood from the jury stand flew into my ear. It got cut up pretty good, but she was able to operate quick enough and stop it from getting worse." Iris explained, recalling the quite frankly terrifying duel with her late husband's time remnant counterpart, and Catlin's skillfully done medical work thereafter.

" Is there any permanent damage?" Joe asked, gently.

" She says that we'll have to wait to be sure, but I'll probably have hearing loss to some degree." Iris sighed, quietly, though barely even thinking about the injury to her being as opposed to the massive hole in her heart that still resided where her family should've been.

What Savitar did was far from the worst pain I've felt tonight.

" Iris, I'm so sorry," Joe said sadly, holding one hand to his temple as he shook his head slowly.

" I should have gone in there with you as backup, brought the force along so you wouldn't have been going in alone." he explained, regretfully.

" Dad, you did nothing wrong, it's my plan that failed," Iris reassured him, her heart falling even further at the many mistakes she had made, at the cost of her friends.

" I pushed to get in there and help those people, to catch Zoom and Savitar, without taking into account the team's state. Without Barry, we didn't only lose the Flash; we also lost the team's morale. Their hope. I should've been the one to see that before I sent them out into the field."

" To see it in myself." Iris admitted, feeling a few tears swell up into her eyes at the thought of her family, their loving faces and happy smiles still lingering distantly in the quiet walls of the open room around her.

Just like Frost told me.

" I just can't believe that they're really gone. I keep telling myself that, that I lost them, as if I remind myself enough then it will force me to accept it," Iris explained heartbrokenly, wiping a few tears from her eyes as she spoke.

" But my heart keeps telling me no. And, and I think I know why," Iris added hesitantly, as she looked over to her father, who was listening intently and understandingly to each of his daughter's words.

If there's anyone won't think that you're crazy, it's your family.

" Because I still have hope." Iris stated, voicing the feeling that had been deep in her chest for hours now, even though she already knew that everyone would say she was wrong.

Joe shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat, averting his eyes from his Baby Girl.

" And I know that it's a long shot, but I think that Barry and Nora, that they're still alive!" Iris exclaimed, her heart starting to beat quickly at the possibility of seeing her two everything's again.

" Iris, you know that I want them back too, but you have to look at the facts..." Joe sighed, though he was quickly cut off in his train of thought.

" That's what I've been doing!" Iris protested, throwing her arms out in the process.

" Looking over the facts! And something isn't adding up! Why would Thawne just take their speed and kill them? His plans always have a much bigger endgame to it! And he has to be the one to kill The Flash, but I don't think he'd ever want to end it like that!" Iris explained in quick succession, pouring all of her pent up thoughts out for her detective father to hear.

" That wasn't a big enough show for you?" Joe asked in disbelief.

" And then once he has their speed, he just disappears? Cutting his ties with the others?" she pressed, pulling all of the information she'd found together.

" How do you know that he's not just pulling strings behind the curtain again?" Joe asked curiously.

" Because of Zolomon." Iris stated confidently, recalling the two's encounter a few hours prior.

" The way that he fought at City Hall, it was like he wasn't holding back. Like he didn't have someone telling him what he could and couldn't do anymore." she said, describing what she had seen earlier that night.

Joe rubbed his chin, processing his daughter's words as he tried to put her picture together himself.

" So the real question is, where is he now?" Iris finished, letting her words hang still in the space between them as they slowly sank into the detective's mind.

" So you think," Joe said, as he turned his attention back to Iris.

" That wherever Thawne is, he has Barry and Nora?" he asked, connecting the dots to the puzzle that the investigative reporter had discovered.

Iris nodded slowly, fully believing every bit of what she'd said.

" And I know it sounds crazy," she admitted, looking at him.

" But I just have this feeling in my heart that they aren't gone. That they're still out there. That they just need us to find them." Iris said, her voice as cracked as her hands felt shaky at just allowing herself the thought of reuniting with her family.

Or help them find us.

Joe thought quietly for a moment, before speaking again.

" Okay." he stated, nodding lightly.

" Okay?" Iris asked, confusedly.

" You're Barry's wife and Nora's mother. If you think that they're still alive, then I'll follow your lead." Joe said softly, his half-smile that he wore conveying how much he trusted and loved his daughter.

" And you don't think that I'm just clinging onto false hope?" Iris asked, truthfully.

Joe laughed shortly as he shook his head side to side a few times, before looking back up at Iris.

" Do you know how many times that I've clung onto even the slimest glimmer of hope, when everyone else told me that I'm not going to see someone that I care about again? When Barry got struck by lightning, when he got sucked into the Speed Force, when you were going to die to Savitar, when Nora was sent to the future for us to never see again. Each and every time, I held onto the hope that I would see you guys again, and each time I haven't been disappointed. And I'm not about to stop believing now. Because I don't believe that there's such a thing as false hope." Joe explained, his hand clasped together in front of him as he spoke, his words filling Iris with the inspiration and confidence that he always was able to, as she smiled thankfully.

But even better, he helped prevent her from losing what she needed more than anything in that moment.

Hope.

If he believes me, then maybe there is still a chance. Still a chance for me to find you guys. To bring you home.

" But," Joe started, shifting in his seat again, as his demeanor fell once more.

" We have a big problem on our hands to deal with first."

That's an understatement.

" What?" Iris asked, concernedly.

" Cecile's been rounding up all the metas in the city so we can get them to safe houses, like we did earlier this year with Orlin. That way we can try and get them to an Argus safehouse before Zoom can get them. But the helicopters that are coming to pick them up are still an hour away. Which might not seem like that long for us..." Joe trailed off, though it was impossible to not see where he was headed.

" But it's all the time in the world for a speedster." Iris finished, seeing how easily Zoom and Savitar could come and get every single one of their "power cells" in one swift stroke.

" We have them all gathered at CCPD for extraction, but I'm sure given our luck that we'll have some visitors before they're gone." Joe explained.

I'm sure that we will. The real problem is, how can we stop them without The Flash?

" I'll get the team." Iris stated, already standing up and moving towards the doorway without hesitation, stopping right before she could leave.

" And Dad, thanks for believing in me."

" Always, baby girl."

There's no world in which I'm going to give up on you guys. Or lose my hope that I'll find you.