Author's Notes: Mostly hinted QueenWestAllen, largely Westallen and Olivarry.
I'm not caught up on Arrow, but I don't mind spoilers; I know the gist of what's happening and wanted to fic a resolution.
"Medeor" is Latin for heal, cure, remedy, redress.
Enjoy!
The Future Flash appears.
"You need to talk to your friend," he says.
Barry frowns at him, stepping across the grass separating them. "How – who are you?"
The Future Flash unmasks and looks at him seriously. "Oliver Queen needs you."
Barry wakes up and stares at the ceiling, cold but not cold-sweat, and Iris is still asleep next to him. Ollie, he thinks with real pain, sitting up. Ollie. It twists in his stomach, a horrible premonition, Oliver's in trouble, and he can almost feel the Future Flash nudging him along as he pushes off the bed.
"Baby?" Iris yawns, rolling over to regard him with sleepy, half-open eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Shh." He leans over and kisses her. "Just a run."
"Mm." She cups the back of his head for a moment, pressing her forehead against his. "Don't go too far."
"I won't," he whispers, and she's asleep before he reaches the door.
Hauling a duffle bag off the top shelf in the closet, Barry unzips it and shrugs into a tripolymer jacket and pair of pants. It's a simpler version of the suit, something he takes out into the field in the early mornings; in a pinch, he can flick the hood of the jacket up to disguise his face. This is what Oliver's suit is like, he realizes, and it feels strangely vulnerable.
But it's also freeing. He feels the wind so much better without a wall of steel between them; he exults in the night air, stunningly brisk, waking him up with vat-of-cold-water immediacy but hand-on-his-shoulder gentleness. To be alive is to be in motion, he knows, right down to the molecular, to the atomic, the subatomic levels.
It takes him forty-five minutes to cross the vast grassland separating the two cities, savoring the run. He passes cornfields and small farms, stretches of isolated woods, the occasional road. He leaps over flat dirt stretches and seesaws up and down in elevation. He'd be faster if it wasn't dark; as it stands he only runs as fast as his eyes, Speed-luminescent, can follow. Tripping and breaking his ankle won't stop him from ultimately arriving at his destination, but it will inconvenience him for an hour, and it's cold enough that standing still isn't on his agenda.
But he knows this route, knows Oliver's city – the relevant parts of it, anyway. He doesn't know it with the same rhythmic, breathing, homey liveliness that he knows Central, but when he skates down the streets, gravel crackles and whooshes with satisfying familiarity. He tugs up the hood and walks, aware that his Speed shivers are just visible, using the darkness to obscure his features.
It doesn't take long to find the foundry, although it does take a few determined minutes of prying and finessing to get the door unlocked. He Flashes downstairs and is startled to find Felicity hunched over a keyboard with Curtis' hand on her shoulder, her back shaking with sobs.
A terror like he has never known it grips him and he warbles, "Ollie?"
Curtis turns without surprise to look at him, his eyebrows drawing into a deep frown. "Who are you?"
Barry throws back the hood. Curtis' frown softens. "You're that scientist," he remembers, "got hit by a bus."
"Lightning, actually," Barry corrects automatically, heart pounding. "Where's Oliver?"
"Dig and he went for a walk." Felicity's voice is dead. Barry aches on her behalf, stepping forward cautiously. She reaches out and he steps closer still, crouching slightly so he can wrap his arms under hers, hugging her tightly, trying to let his warmth and relief sink into her. Oliver's fine, he thinks, but Felicity's posture radiates agitation and anguish, and he knows it isn't.
"What happened?" he asks softly, letting go slowly and looking at her.
Choked up, Felicity explains, "Prometheus kidnapped a-and – tortured him. He escaped, but he wouldn't – he's hurt and he won't let any of us help him, he would've – we couldn't let him go alone," she sobs, and Felicity, Felicity, he's pulling her into his arms again even though his calves are burning because I-am-so-so-sorry.
"He's gonna be okay," he promises, rubbing her back. "He's a tough guy."
But Felicity just sobs and Barry can almost feel the Future Flash tugging on his shoulder, urgent and important, but it's just Curtis. "Go," he tells Barry, and it's a directive that resonates to Barry's soles.
He doesn't know where they are, but he doesn't need to. He just starts running, feeling the Speed Force shut down everything else, all the noise, all the cold, and absorbs the scene.
Time doesn't pass here like it doesn't when he's slow, and he has no concept of how long he spends, lunging with Mercurian surety across the streets, trusting his footfalls. They've gotta be near, he knows, because they're extraordinary people, but at the end of the day they are human, and cannot outpace him.
Lo: Dig and Oliver prove to be well outside the city, walking down a dirt path. Oliver limps visibly. Dig's mouth is moving and Barry can pick up on his soft tone, if not his words. There's a hand near Oliver that wants to raise and support his shoulders, but it stays down. Barry's heart hurts at the sight.
It's ten times worse when he slows down. The raw, animalistic, tidal pain crashes into him, drawing an aborted gasp from his throat, and Dig jerks and has a gun on him before he sees who it is and lowers it. Panting, hunched over his knees, Barry shakes, overcome, and Dig runs over. Oliver doesn't budge.
Barry knows why. "What's wrong?" Dig asks, all-soldier, and Barry shakes his head. I'm good, he gasps out, or tries to, and Dig's steadying hand on his back might be comforting, but it does nothing to ease the ache. He forces himself upright, staring forward and taking a step closer to that tall, shadowed, shallow-shouldered figure.
Ollie, he thinks, and it rips through him, like waves rippling outward, every step closer. Ollie.
He Flashes and crashes to a halt inches from him, and Oliver doesn't even flinch, like he wouldn't fight if Barry's lightning killed him. Aching, Barry doesn't hesitate even though he can feel the fire, just takes his forearm in hand, and feels the Speed Force come to life, flushing him with cold, pressing it across the link.
He's dizzy by the time it abates enough to be forgettable, watching Oliver with glassy-eyed hopefulness, but his expression doesn't change. The scars on his chest don't budge. Barry swallows hard and does not cry.
"Ollie," he says out loud, and Oliver doesn't flinch but his gaze averts. "I'm so – sorry," he finishes lamely, unsure what else to say, and he tries to press every ounce of Speed he has into Oliver, anything he can to make the ache in his eyes go away, but it doesn't, and he's just left trembling with cold.
Some people … you can't save.
Dr. Wells told him that once. But it wasn't Wells: it was Eobard Thawne. You'll never be truly happy, Barry, was another of his prophecies. Resolve firmed, Barry casts both thoughts aside.
You're wrong.
He slides an arm around Oliver's back. Dig steps up, joining their semicircle. Oliver's back is more prominent than Barry's ever remembered it being. He can't lift Oliver on his own, struggles to take even a few steps with his full weight upon him, but Dig's arm supports Oliver's opposite side, and it's very easy.
The crunch of rocks and leaves underfoot is surprisingly soothing, the cool drift prompting Speed-shivers. He's running low by the time they're back at city limits, and when Dig gets his car, Barry just slides in beside Oliver. Half-afraid Oliver will bolt, Barry lets a hand rest on the seat between them, not touching, just there. The car starts and Dig drives.
Barry looks out the window at the city, granting Oliver the privacy he so clearly aches for, and neither Dig nor he say a word even though they both know there are tears. He resists the urge to look over when he feels a firm hand on his wrist, squeezing it hard. He's not supposed to, he knows, in the same way that he knows when Oliver will listen and when Oliver doesn't want to talk.
Lyla greets them at the door and they keep their voices soft, their footsteps softer still, because baby John is still asleep and none of them want to wake him. Barry has an arm around Oliver's waist, ready to catch him if he stumbles. They don't talk about much – Lyla has questions Dig answers in the same quiet voice as before – and Oliver doesn't talk at all. Barry lets him lead, following, and reaches out to take the door for him.
The guest bedroom is tiny, barely any space on just one side of the queen bed, but Oliver just sighs and Barry lets go. He sits on top of the covers with a soft grunt, pained and exhausted, furious and afraid, burned too deeply to feel it.
Barry sits beside him, quietly tipping the door almost shut with a foot. He waits for a long time, but Oliver is nothing if not patient, and his own eyelids are beginning to slide shut when he finally hears a voice.
"I'm a monster."
Barry's response is immediate but without heat. "You're not a monster, Ollie."
Oliver doesn't say a word. Barry rests a hand between them and waits, but Oliver doesn't take it.
He remembers feeling it after Zoom: not self-directed hatred, but still a simmering, anguished pain so deep it wanted to scream. He sat numbly in a chair and watched his team work around them, and he wanted to tear into them, anything to get a reaction. He wanted to yell obscenities at Cisco and Caitlin until something happened, because they were just so normal, typing away, talking, persuading their team to be fine, and he hated it because he wasn't normal he wasn't ever going to be normal again and fuck.
Barry gets up and crouches in front of Oliver, his bright eyes dark and defeated. "Ollie," Barry says, taking both of Oliver's hands in his own, look at me. "You're not a monster." You're in pain.And any animal, no matter how strong, will react badly to pain.
Oliver looks at him for a long time, and Barry's back is starting to ache and there's barely enough room on the floor here, but he hangs on for as long as he can, I am not letting you fall, and finally Oliver squeezes his hands and he rises. Joints a little stiff and numb with his own fatigue, he hovers, almost insubstantial in the shadows, and thinks if Oliver were the speedster and he were the vigilante there would be no pulling him back. He would simply vanish.
But he's here, and real, and Barry doesn't hug him because of all the burns, and bruises, and terrible reminders, but he does sit against the headboard and Oliver just pushes him a little, making room, and leans on him. Barry holds his breath, a hand settling tentatively against his head, and Oliver wraps his arms around Barry's chest tightly.
It has to hurt but Barry doesn't stop him, aware that this is the man he loved before he knew his name. This is the human who stood on the rooftop and protected his city. And just as he and his cowl are two separate things, so too is Oliver distinct from his heroic counterpart. One is invincible; the other is not. Barry holds the stronger of the two and aches that he is still breakable.
He doesn't know who falls asleep or if either of them really do, but his jacket buzzes inoffensively and Barry grunts and fishes out his phone. With Oliver, he tells Iris, tap-a-tap-a-tap.
He okay?
Barry sighs aloud, aware that Oliver isn't asleep, either. No.
A beat. Should I come?
Barry thinks about it, aches for her, his light in the storm, but even the thought of leaving Oliver's side to greet her at the train station hurts. He doesn't want to leave Oliver. He doesn't dare.
Still, he can't keep her away; she loves Oliver, too. Okay.
I'll see you soon.I love you.
Love you, too.
It's a little after seven, he notices. Singh will expect him in the office at eight. He shoots off a quick text to Joe, still bleary-eyed in the dark, windowless room. Cover for me with Singh?
Joe's response is clumsy, two minutes late. What did you do?
Barry huffs a little and feels Oliver shift. But he doesn't get up, and neither does Barry. Friend needed me, he explains. They don't actually have a word yet for what it is – "friend" will have to do.
Without missing a beat, Joe responds with a single word: Oliver. Then, another minute: Okay.
Thank you.
Barry puts the phone aside, feeling sore muscles creak a little. He can't tell where the pain originates, his own limbs or Oliver's, but he knows it's agitating his lightning and not helping the situation. So he carefully persuades Oliver to let him up and Oliver does not sit up at all, just lies back in his spot, and Barry tiptoes and Flashes out of the room.
The thing no one tells you about moving at the speed of sound: everything else slows down. To himself, he doesn't seem to move fast at all above a certain arbitrary mileage: he just moves with tremendous ease, underwater without resistance, in space with more control, flight built into his memory. Among other things, the shower cannot keep up, forming a stream of suspended droplets in the air before him. Even so, it's divine to step into.
The downside to his Speed is that sometimes he can't control his own perception, forced to wait for his world to slow down – or speed up, from his perspective. He doesn't mind the rush today, Flashing back to Oliver's side showered and dressed in a pair of Dig's shorts and a t-shirt that hangs off him. He doesn't reclaim his spot, just wedges into a corner facing Oliver's back, and he doesn't need to talk to talk to Oliver.
It's okay, he says with lightning, warm and sure. It's okay.
Oliver turns over slowly, resting on his back. Barry scoots a little farther into the corner to make room, long-limbs and lightning. There's a long silence, light sneaking around the barely open door, but neither of them move. Then Oliver shuffles closer to him with almost dreamlike slowness, crowding him further, and presses his forehead against Barry's chest.
Barry could not move if he caught fire, wrapping a tentative arm around Oliver's shoulders and feeling the fever-ache pain but insisting on his own lightning, on gently burying the aches under the surface until Oliver relaxes.
"I've got you," he says softly, because he needs to say it out loud, and Oliver's fingers curl into his shirt and hold on. He rubs Oliver's back slowly, careful of the bruises, the still-healing wounds. I wish I could give you everything, he thinks, the lightning, the safety, the fear from being trapped.
Barry knows he can't promise any of those things. Over time, he's lost all three. But what he can and does promise is to be there.
"I've got you."
Oliver folds onto his back, but he doesn't let go of Barry's shirt, dragging him on top. Barry situates fully eighty percent of his weight on his legs on either side of him, but Oliver holds him there long enough and gives an insistent pull that eases more of his weight on him. A final tug and he knows he's pressing against broken ribs, against terrible burns, against a lot of pain wrapped in one person, but Oliver exhales like he can finally breathe again once he's there.
He doesn't know how he falls asleep, how Oliver falls asleep, but he wakes up to a tap on the door and sleepily stirs when someone grabs his foot gently, a little wake-up that makes him lift his head slightly from Oliver's chest. "Mm." He slides to one side carefully; Oliver's breaths remain deep and even. Barry notices even in the poor lighting that the sharp edges of the burns are gone, already faded to scars. I wish I could take those from you, Barry thinks, but he's happy, all but purring, with the change at all. Vibrating softly, he unintentionally draws Oliver towards him, an irresistible lure of warmth and satisfaction.
Iris just sits on the bed and Oliver blinks at Barry, turning and relaxing a little when he sees who it is.
I'm here, Iris says without a word, a hand on his calf, and Oliver sinks back under.
We're here, Barry agrees, relaxing when Iris sinks onto the bed on Oliver's opposite side.
It's hard to carry the weight alone, he knows, reaching a hand across Oliver's hip so she can intertwine their fingers. She has no lightning, but there is a magic about her all the same; his shoulders relax, and his lightning reflects the shift.
It's ten before Barry's growling stomach finally forces him out of his pleasantly hot cocoon, all but crushed against the wall; eleven before he's actually able to pull himself out of bed, unwilling to wake Oliver or Iris; and almost noon by the time he can look at Oliver and feel something other than the desperate, howling torment of before, the fire suppressed, the tide receding.
You're gonna be okay, he says, and no one asks about the hand on Oliver's wrist or the fact that Iris still kisses him good morning.
We all are, he amends.
And he'll do whatever it takes – whenever, wherever, Ollie – to keep it that way.