The bar wasn’t particularly crowded — not on a weeknight, not in Central City where the only thing louder than the music was the silence Barry Allen carried inside him. The neon signs flickered lazily, reflecting against the rim of his empty glass. The bartender had stopped asking if he wanted another soda a while ago. Barry just kept tracing the condensation ring it left behind, watching it fade and reappear as if it was something that could distract him from the gnawing ache in his chest.
He didn’t come here to get drunk. He couldn’t, not really. But he came here not to be home. Home meant silence that used to be laughter, conversations that ended before they started, Iris sitting at her laptop across the room pretending not to look at him when he walked in.
They were both pretending. Pretending it didn’t hurt. Pretending they hadn’t built their lives around a daughter who no longer existed.
“Rough night?”
The voice broke through the static in his mind — soft, steady. He turned his head slightly to find a woman sliding onto the barstool next to him. She wasn’t dressed to impress — just jeans, a loose sweater, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail — but there was something about her, something grounded. Normal.
Barry managed a half-smile. “Something like that.”
She nodded, flagging the bartender for a drink. “You look like someone who’s trying not to be home.”
That pulled a quiet laugh out of him — the first real one in what felt like weeks. “Yeah. That obvious?”
“A little,” she said, smiling back. “But it’s okay. Everyone ends up here for something they’re trying to forget.”
He didn’t tell her that what he was trying to forget didn’t exist anymore. He didn’t tell her about Nora, or the speed force, or the timeline that stole his daughter out of his arms before he even got the chance to raise her. Instead, he said, “Guess I just needed… noise.”
“Then you came to the right place.” She took a sip of her drink. “I’m Mae. You?”
“Barry,” he said, the name feeling strangely heavy in his mouth. “Nice to meet you.”
For a while, they just talked — about nothing and everything. She told him she worked as a graphic designer, hated coffee but lived off tea, and that her apartment had one of those perpetually dripping sinks she’d been meaning to fix for months. He found himself laughing more than he expected to. Not because she was particularly funny, but because she didn’t know who he was.
No pity. No awe. No fear.
Just conversation.
When she asked what he did, he hesitated. “Forensics,” he finally said. “With the CCPD.”
“Smart guy, then,” she teased, swirling her glass. “That tracks. You’ve got that whole quiet-genius thing going.”
He blushed, ducking his head. “I don’t know about genius.”
She tilted her head, studying him for a second. “You’ve got that look. The kind of person who carries too much in his head and not enough in his heart.”
Her words hit a little too close. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah… maybe.”
The music shifted to something softer, slower — the hum of low conversation filling the spaces between them.
“You look like you’ve lost something,” she said gently.
He froze. For a heartbeat, his throat tightened. “Someone,” he corrected quietly.
“I’m sorry.”
Barry nodded, staring into his glass. “Me too.”
She didn’t push. She didn’t pry. Just sat beside him, quiet, her presence enough to let him breathe again.
And for the first time in a long time, Barry Allen didn’t feel like the Flash, or the husband who couldn’t fix his marriage, or the man who’d failed his daughter.
He just felt like a person sitting in a bar, talking to someone who didn’t expect him to be a hero.