Chapter Text
Barry counted himself lucky.
He was one of few in the block that had a solo cell. He had a prime piece of real-estate on his hands; six by eight feet on the second floor. People would literally kill for it, and a few had actually tried. In that place, everyone wanted every shred of privacy that they could get their hands on. Only thing better for that than a single bunk cell, was solitary. Barry had been in there for long enough to make friends with a few guards. They had pulled some strings on his behalf and gotten him moved to his new digs some months ago. Or was it years? In Iron Heights, every day followed a strict routine. After just a few weeks, they had started melting together until they couldn’t be told apart. If he asked the guards, he had been in there for four years. If he asked himself, it had been a century. Maybe more.
There was more he thanked God for. Like the fact that the Judge hadn’t been as much of a bastard as he had expected, and granted Barry’s single wish: to be placed in any cell block but B. She had probably expected the plea as soon as she heard his name. Barry’s father (not that he deserved to call himself a father) was placed in B. The moment Barry had lain eyes on him, he would have killed him, and the Judge knew it. The whole city, the country, knew how much Barry hated Henry Allen. Barry had never hidden it. From the moment he watched his father plunge a kitchen knife into Nora’s chest, over and over and over, Barry had hated Henry with every fiber of his being. Though Barry had gladly ended Henry’s life, he thought it was better if he didn’t. Not only could Barry serve his sentence in peace, but Henry could also live a long and healthy life in a concrete closet similar to Barry’s own. Henry would die in that prison, and all he would have to blame would be himself and time.
As for who Barry had to blame? He too could blame no one but himself. Henry hadn’t made life easy for him, not ever, not even before killing Nora. Yes, to the whole world, they were the perfect family; a doctor and a nurse, and their little genius of a son? They were as American Dream as could be, and now it just made Barry sick to think about it because behind closed doors…they were anything but perfect. Henry started drinking before Barry was even born, and he beat on them both. Nora tried her hardest, but if Henry hadn’t killed her, the painkillers she tossed back like mints probably would have in the end.
But Barry came out of it with good still left in him, he would like to think. He could have taken all those horrible things and made himself better than them, than Henry. Instead, he had become intimately familiar with the backseat of pretty much every cop car in Central City and he knew the juvenile correctional facility outside Keystone like the back of his hand. He damn well better should, he had spent the majority of his teens there after all. After he was released on his eighteenth birthday, Barry had just fallen deeper into the pit of criminality and it had landed him where he was now; a cell at Iron Heights.
How’s that for full circle?