The Speed Force was always hard for Barry to explain.
Ever since the first time he had gotten trapped there in a desperate play to get his speed back, he had been trying to explain it - explain them - to the rest of his team.
He had tried many different ways, and taken a multitude of directions to try and get his friends to fully comprehend the Speed Force, before concluding silently that it was impossible in many different ways. It wasn't that they wouldn't understand, it was just they couldn't. They didn't know what it was like being one of those referred to as a speedster, or what such a title truly meant.
It meant running so fast you could feel the molecules of your body mix and blend in with the air. It meant feeling like every nerve in your body was about to simultaneously I've and receive a static shock. It meant hating yet craving the feeling of electricity running through your body, coursing through your system and mixing with blood and adrenaline. It meant always being hungry and thirsty, yet also never cut or bruised for long.
Speedster was a title that held both a blessing and a curse. It was both a privilege and punishment.
Speed wasn't always precise. It was more often than not raw. Coarse. It cared more about magnitude than whatever its course was. More distance, less time. The where and when didn't matter so much.
The Speed Force was similar. They weren't some defined thing that Barry could just describe. They were, yet, at the exact same time, they weren't.
Distance over time. Interactions. Pushes and pulls.
Speed was scalar, yet force was not.
He had known the moment that they appeared to him in the form of his mother that the experience in the Speed Force that he was going to have to endure would be different. Before it was more like an open world, a friendly yet desolate one. The Speed Force had been trying to talk and help, yet they also had to get him to learn his lesson and make his own decisions.
Now he was somewhere else entirely. A cage. A cage he built. Would build. Had build?
Time wasn't the same. Everything in the Speed Force became like it. Vectors melded and bent and tore until their directions were destroyed and lost.
The electricity no longer brought the adrenaline and thrill it used to. He longed for the days when he would use his powers, feel the tendrils crackle throughout his body so quickly that everyone only saw it in his eyes. There had be a rush then; there had been a feeling he imagined was the equivalent of when a junkie got their fix once more, effectively pushing addiction away for a certain amount of time.
The rush was gone - pain had replaced it long ago - but the addiction was not. It remained, itching and clawing at his skin as it demanded sparks and electricity and the lightning, where's the lightning, I need the lightning.
It wasn't just pain that accompanied him.
The Speed Force was complex. Barry Allen was currently stuck in the Speed Force, but also he was stuck with the Speed Force. They were there, surrounding him with a dull comfort to try and combat the pain. He knew without it, it would be agonizing. He could sense the pain that wasn't present - the potential was there, yet it itself was not.
They were there trying to protect him from the prison, yet they were the prison. The Speed Force was a place and an entity and so much more.
It favored him for reasons he was not aware of, but thankful for. He wasn't supposed to be here - this cage had been built by him, not for him - but he had to because there simply was no other way. They regretted this outcome, yet everyone knew it was inevitable.
Savitar was dead, but Barry himself was Savitar in a way. He was the next logical prisoner. It was his punishment for Flashpoint. For Savitar. For…everything. Playing with speed like he was some god. He was a hero, but one that needed to be humbled. This was the reckoning.
He had learned quickly that his vision was unreliable in the vortex of smoke and electricity. For reasons not known to him, gone was the familiar scenery that had greeted him each time he entered the Speed Force.
A whirlwind of lightning and smoke crackled and blew around him, encasing him completely. Every single part of him longed for reach out and touch the electricity surrounding him in order to feed the addiction. Unfortunately, he was immobile, bound by forces unseen. It wasn't the familiar orange red color that trailed behind him when he ran, or even the blue that Zoom had. It was a stark white, bold and bright as it mixed in with the dark smoky clouds.
His vision blurred and blackened as pain increased and decreased with no rhyme nor reason. He saw visions - snapshots of memories and things that either had yet to happen, or simply didn't. They were all from the Flash, he noticed detachedly, but it made sense. Barry Allen wasn't the one in the Speed Force, the Flash was. Barry Allen was some scientist who got struck by lightning, the Flash was the speedster who harnessed that lightning and turned it into pure speed.
There were moments where his visions were different. Where the others would fade away, but still Wally or Jesse (or both of them) would remain. They would seem more real then - more corporeal in a way. He'd see them through the clouds and hear their voice over the crackling and thunder around him, but they wouldn't really see him. They'd look and call his name, but he would not reply. Could not. He was paralyzed, encased completely to the point where even the smallest movement was too much.
It didn't matter. They never saw him. Even if he could move, he doubted that that would change.
No. He was trapped. Trapped with the Speed Force, in the Speed Force, by the Speed Force.
He wasn't bored, per say, because it was a stretch in itself to say he was conscious. He was, just not entirely. He was stuck in a dreamlike state, being pushed around in his own mind. He reacted to the immediate environment around him - yelled and winced and whimpered from the pain, stared at the forms of his his friends when they appeared, tried to ignore the ache when they inevitably disappeared - but his mind was dealing with too much stimuli to properly remember anything besides hazy memories of lightening and fading feelings of broken hope.
Because of this, he wasn't exactly able to place when his visions began to change. When they stopped being memories or snippets of days never lived, and started being just events that had no place in time. It would be him running freely through the streets of Central, faster than ever, before he'd be back in the Speed Force before he even went a few miles. He'd snap back instead of gradually coming out of it, and somehow the pain shooting through him would dig deeper into his nerves than before, yet he'd feel better. Stronger. More awake. Aware. His memory would get stronger, and he'd feel more grounded.
Over time these visions completely replaced his old ones. They became powerful, giving him a newfound sense of clarity when he had them. Thought returned.
What is this? He found himself wondering as he ran through Central City, so fast that everyone around him was little more than a statue. He was fast, but without purpose. Without direction. He had a distinct feeling that he was missing someone - that there was something or someone he should be moving toward.
He shook that thought away quickly. Well, everything he did was classified as quick now. There was no one and nothing he should be heading to. It didn't make sense. He was speed, and speed didn't need a direction. It was ignorant in orientation, and merely cared about quantity.
Quantity. Magnitude. Orientation. Direction. Speed. Distance over time. Scalar. Vector.
He knew these words. Understood them. He had learned them long ago in a time that was now fuzzy to him.
Why did he feel like there was someone he learned them with?
Someone crucial to his very existence?
Someone...he was now missing?
There were a few times when he was running throughout the maze of concrete and high rise buildings when he felt the distinct sense of being chased. He never looked, but he could sense a lightning behind him that he felt a weird sense of nostalgia toward. It was incredibly familiar, yet he was still not aware enough to place it.
It didn't really matter. They could never catch him. He was more speed than person. Nothing stood in his way, because he moved so quickly that his very being just moved through it. Nothing could contain him. Nothing could hold him.
And then he would snap back to the Speed Force, pain rippling through his form as that sense of freedom was ripped away, yet he couldn't find it in himself to despair.
I was free then. I will be again. He'd tell himself. This place cannot hold me forever.
He did realize that the longer he remained, the less and less he could recall from before. Names faded to jumbles of letters that meant nothing. Voices became little more than white noise. Faces blended and mixed until they were unrecognizable.
Memories for freedom, it seemed. Past for the future.
(He didn't know how he felt about this exchange, since full thought and emotion had yet to return, but felt somewhere inside him that he wouldn't have been able to say how he felt even if he had all of his feelings back.)
The Speed Force - the one wrapped around him comfortingly, taking away some of the pain - became more conscious as well. Or maybe he was just now able to hear them better. They didn't speak in people he knew anymore, because now he didn't know anyone. Did he even know himself? He didn't think so.
The cage. The electricity seemed to say through crackles. It's breaking. Run, speedster, run while you can!
That repeated over and over, and he didn't know if it was a good thing or bad. He was, however, happy to obey the command.
Run. That was simple. Simple speed.
So he looked at the storm around him, and, moving in a way that he only had in his visions, ran through it.
Suddenly he was back in the city. But it was different. Clearer.
...Real?
It was jarring. It was frustrating. The world moved agonizingly slow around him. The pain was gone, which he appreciated, but the Speed Force was gone again. He felt lonely without that constant connection.
He also felt weak. But was that due to the connection being severed, or something else? His body was shaky, his head hurt, and every part of him felt exhausted.
But what was he to do? He had no direction. He had spent an unknown amount of time as the closest thing to pure speed as any human could hope to get, and now he had just been dropped off back in the physical world. Speed had no direction, yet now he must have one.
Think. He told himself. Slow down.
Slow down, that was it. He was completely corporeal now, which meant it did more harm than good to stand there at superspeed, electricity tendrils around him as he let his powers run freely. He needed to slow down. Lower the distance and increase the time. Match the speed of this world.
He did so, and the world came back to life around him. His powers did not like being suppressed - they had been allowed to run rampant for so long they were almost used to the freedom in a sense - but he kept them contained.
Now, what did he need?
Food. Water. His mind told him logically.
Direction. His heart whispered. Her.
He didn't know who 'her' was, but he also did. She was someone important. Important to the world? Possibly. Important to him? Definitely.
She was the direction he needed to run in, but he no longer knew enough about himself to know where to start. If he really concentrated he could produce a fuzzy face and what almost sounded like a name, but not quite.
How long had he been gone? Did he even know his own name?
(He tried to ignore the fact that the answer to that last question was a solid no.)
He slowly let his powers back as he let his feet guide him.
Her. Her.
I need to find her.
I need to find her.
I have to.
He moved methodically through the city, ignoring how weak he felt or how he knew he was slowly losing speed.
Then the one who chased him returned.
He nearly growled in frustration. He didn't have time for this! He needed to find her!
Let them catch you. He jerked in surprise as he felt the Speed Force softly whisper in his ear. Had he been wrong? We're they still connected. They will help.
He trusted the Speed Force's words without question, because what reason did they have to lie?
Besides, it wasn't as if he had anything left to lose.
He stopped moving horizontally, but refused to suppress his powers. He felt dizzy and weak, and a part of him was fearful that if he stopped then he'd be unable to start again.
There were two beings there. People. Speedsters. One male and one female. One dressed in yellow and one clad in red.
Both familiar. But that made sense, right? The familiarity came from their shared connection to the Speed Force.
That was it, right?
"Who are you?" The words vibrated in him inexplicably. When was the last time he heard words physically? It was crude, he thought detachedly, to communicate in a manner that was so slow.
Yet, if slow was the way of this world, then that meant he had to be slow. He had to. He had to to find her.
Yet, how could he answer?
"I don't know." He said, taking the large amount of time necessary to form the words, yet he still knew they came out much faster than the boy had spoken. He couldn't help it. He was speed by nature.
The girl put her hand on the boy's shoulder, and they shared words. He knew their actions and words held hidden meanings and emotions and history, yet he could not decipher it. He was too foreign to do so.
She then looked at him, "Do you have a name?" She asked, her voice quick. Very quick. He was grateful to hear the familiar speed. His patience was thin.
"Maybe," he confessed, reveling in the change of pace. "I don't know."
"Where are you from? Why are you here?" The boy asked, and the girl gave him a look.
"Speed Force," he told them. "I'm from the a Speed Force, and I'm here because they told me to run."
They wore expressions of shock on their faces, as well as more emotions he couldn't possibly interpret.
"Barry?" The boy said. His words were quiet, and back to being slow.
Barry? Barry? Was that him?
He shrugged, "Perhaps?" He tried, and he felt his speed jar slightly - his adrenaline was no longer able to completely compensate for his lack of energy - and it took him a moment to restart. "I have to keep going." He told them quickly. "I have to find her."
"Going? What do you-" The girl started, but he was already gone.
It wasn't his fault that physical communication was so slow.
He was aware of them behind him, yet they were not he was searching for. He moved quickly, desperation driving him.
He was unaware of exactly when he phased back into the Speed Force.
He was no longer back in the cage. He was no longer trapped.
Yet, he knew he was not completely free either.
Still, he reveled in the feeling of the Speed Force surrounding him. Pure energy and magnitude swirling around him. He felt a rush at the feeling of it, and detachedly wondered why he would ever want to leave.
This is not your place. The Speed Force said, and he knew the words were true.
After all, she was not there.
He was magnitude, and she was direction.
Barry. The name the other speedster spoke echoed in his mind, bouncing around loosely. Was that his name?
Did he even have one? He had been in the Speed Force, completely encased in pure speed and energy, for so long that he felt like he had been born from it. He might as well have been speed personified, from the way the lightning crackled just under every bit of his skin.
You must return. The Speed Force gently told him, having the same presence as the wind. You belong on the physical plane.
I belong here! He cried in argument, letting the Speed Force twist and encase him gently. He could not understand why it wanted him gone - he had become as much as a part of them as they had become a part of him.
No. They chided him gently, as if scolding a child. You have been here too long; you have forgotten who you used to be. Return, hero, and continue your life.
He attempted to argue further, but the thought of her entered his mind again. She was back on the physical world. She was there, and he belonged with her.
He sighed. Farewell. He called as he adjusted his course and began to speed up once more.
They did not reply, but it wasn't surprising. They would be with him as long as he had his speed, so it was not truly goodbye for them.
He focused back on the city he had briefly seen as he exited the Speed Force, and found himself more running the streets of it.
Where are you? He questioned his mind. Where should I be?
The lightning crackled loudly as if in reply, and he turned left. The Speed Force was guiding him, he realized as his feet moved of their own accord.
Thank you. He whispered, and felt it gently brush up against him in reply - faint and ghostly, but still present.
There was a large building in front of him, different from the other ones he had seen.
He did not need the Speed Force to tell him that this place should be familiar.
He raced inside, blowing past people without warning, before he skidded. He fell slightly, drained, and slid across the floor of the center room.
He looked around wildly as cries of surprise filled the room, until his eyes settled on someone who could have only been her. His direction.
He smiled.
She stared.
He breathed.
She blinked.
He remembered.
She ran.
"Barry?"
"Hello, Iris."