THIS STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. Don't read if you haven't seen the movie yet.
This is just a little something I needed to help myself survive after seeing Infinity War. These are short oneshots, and I might update every once and awhile. Please enjoy and comment what you think! - LowTide1322
(Disclaimer)
"Barry!"
Barry Allen stumbled backwards after receiving a sonic blast from DeVoe, aka the Thinker. As he collapsed to the ground, he barely heard Vibe shout his name before he fell through another pocket dimension. It was different this time, though; the portal was emitting six colors of light that flashed so brightly he almost thought he could have been in the Speed Force.
He was brought back to reality when his back collided with the forest floor beneath him. Wait, forest floor? he thought to himself. He sat up with a groan, clutching his chest where the sonic blast had hit him.
Well, shit.
Yet again, the Flash was in another unfamiliar universe. Barry squinted, taking in his surroundings. The forest that surrounded him gave off a golden light, and many of the leaves tumbled off of the branches that held them. If he wasn't lost on another earth, he might have enjoyed the sight before him.
He removed his hood; better that if he ran into people, they'd see his face. Barry continued to walk straight ahead, hoping that maybe he would run into somebody who could help him figure out where exactly he was. Strange enough, the more steps he took, the more electric he could feel the air become. It wasn't like the Speed Force that coursed through his veins, but more erratic, pulsing almost as fast as his own heart.
Quite literally in a flash of lightning, Barry was dangling above the ground, grabbed by the throat and lifted by a man with a red cape and two different colored eyes. What was this guy? Kryptonian? He had the super strength and red cape, maybe he was one of Kara's distant cousin's doppelgänger?
Struggling to breathe, Barry choked out, "Who… 're you?"
"Where is Thanos?" the man demanded. His voice shook, like he was on the brink of screaming. Okay, so this guy was definitely pissed off at whoever this "Thanos" was.
Barry phased through the man's grip and dropped to the ground, coughing uncontrollably. He rubbed his neck, but at least the pain slowly began to subside. Good thing he had regenerative healing.
"Look, I have no idea who 'Thanos' is, okay? I came here on accident through a portal, I'm from another dimension, another earth. My name is Barry Allen, and I'm not here to hurt anyone. So please, no more strangling," he said quickly. The man seemed to flinch at the word "strangling", but Barry didn't press further.
He hesitated, looking Barry up and down and decided whether or not he could be a threat. He lowered his axe and reached down to help the Flash stand.
"I am Thor, son of Odin. I'm sorry, Barry Allen, but you should return to whatever remains of your realm. If the infinity stones' influence have reached your home…"
"Wait, what—?"
"Thor! We gotta stick together, alright?" came a voice from behind "Thor". Barry tried to see where the voice was coming from, but couldn't see anyone it belonged to.
His eyes wandered to the ground beside Thor, and there was a talking raccoon. Okay, now he'd seen everything.
The raccoon spoke again, calling to someone behind it. "He's over here. And, uh, there's some lightning bolt kid here, too."
"I'm the Flash, and I'm the fastest man alive!" Barry corrected, "And I'm not a kid."
The raccoon gave him an incredulous look as another bearded man with a star on his chest jogged up to them along with a blonde-haired woman, a bald woman with a spear, and a man with ragged clothing.
"Where did you come from, kid?" The man with the star on his suit stepped forward, completely ignoring Barry's previous statement.
"I fell through a portal in a fight against a man with the most evil mind. It was...different than the other times this has happened. There were these colors, only six—"
"What do you mean 'other times'?" The blonde woman asked.
"I run so fast that I can vibrate at different frequencies and open breaches to other universes and through time. I didn't cause this portal, though. These infinity stones you mentioned...how many are there?" Barry asked. There had to be some sort of correlation between the portal opening in Central City to take Barry here of all places. Events like this didn't seem to happen on accident anymore.
"Six," Thor responded. "You say you have the ability to travel through time? You could even go back in time?" he questioned urgently, rushing forward and clapping a hand on Barry's shoulder.
"No. Well, technically yes, but I'm not allowed to," he replied. Barry certainly had had enough of time travel. He didn't need another Savitar incident, and he knew it wouldn't matter what earth he was on for him to cause an aberration.
"You must."
"I told you I can't. Messing with the timeline creates aberrations that could end up making things worse. I have a lot of experience in that department, trust me."
"Thanos killed half of the universe. I don't think things could get any worse," the blonde spoke again.
For a moment, Barry's vision swam. What had he gotten himself into? "Even if I did go back to help you, I don't know what happened, I don't know any of you, and I'm not too eager to go head-to-head with a mass murderer. I have my own that I still have to deal with." Barry sighed. DeVoe was still at large and could have already taken over STAR Labs as soon as the Flash fell through the breach. Iris could be in danger…
Iris. His thoughts turned towards his wife. She wouldn't hesitate to help these people, even if she had to put her own life on the line to do it. She'd want Barry to be the hero, to be selfless, just as he'd always been.
"But...you said there are six infinity stones? Are they blue, purple, red, orange, yellow and green?" The group before him nodded. "Then I think—I think I'm supposed to be here."
"Maybe there was some kind of fail-safe within the stones," the man with the torn clothes spoke. "I'm Bruce, by the way." Barry gave him a nod of acknowledgement, and Bruce continued, "I think you might be the key to undoing this whole mess. Everyone who was killed by the stones could be brought back…"
"And my people," Thor added.
Bruce turned to him, "I don't think it's that simple—"
"Thanos was never meant to have the space stone, so if he never got it then he'd never have attacked our ship!"
"That's all dependent on Loki! If he never took the Tesseract in the first place—"
"Do not speak of my brother as if he were a traitor." Thor's face was now mere inches from Bruce's. The air crackled with electricity once again, and the hairs on the back of Barry's neck stood upright.
He recognized the look on Thor's face. He'd seen it on his own when he visited his future self in 2024: pure anguish. Even though he'd almost choked Barry to death a few minutes earlier, he felt a sort of camaraderie with Thor. Maybe it was the lightning, or maybe it was that from just looking at him, he could tell he'd known suffering just as the Flash had.
"Loki…? I thought he was Asgard's prisoner?" the man with the star on his uniform spoke up again.
"No," Thor replied, stepping away from Bruce. "Loki died trying to defeat Thanos. He died as—as my brother, a son of Odin. He saved me," his voice broke slightly, but he cleared his throat. "It is time I save him."
Barry didn't know that these people were what was left of the Avengers, and didn't understand the history behind what had happened in New York six years ago. If he did, the confusion on all of their faces would have made sense. They always had thought of Loki as the villain, no goals except global domination. But now, they realized he was much more complex than that. Bruce had told them that Thanos was the one who'd sent Loki six years ago, and part of the Asgardian's intense motivation could have been for his own life. He was just like any of the rest of them, and it took them up until now to realize this.
"I'm so sorry, Thor," the blonde mumbled. Not that anyone else could notice, but her eyes had begun to water ever so slightly. She didn't want to accept how broken they all were, but it was starting to become more and more evident.
Thor plastered a smile on his face to help hide the agony that pulsated through him that threatened to spread to his face. "It matters not. It was all in vain, now."
"I'll go back," Barry said suddenly. Everyone in the group's heads snapped towards him. "I'll stop this before it even begins." He turned towards Thor and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I'll save your brother too. If I were given the chance to right my wrongs and save the ones I love, I would do it in a heartbeat. You all need help, and it would be selfish of me not to give it."
Thor's smile slowly became more genuine. "Thank you, friend."
The group introduced themselves, and Barry learned that the man with the star-suit was Steve, the blonde was Natasha, the raccoon was Rocket, and the woman with the spear was Okoye.
"Well, kid, where do we start?" Steve asked.
Barry rolled his eyes. "I told you, don't call me 'kid'. I'm an adult who has saved the entire multiverse before, mind you. I also have a wife, and I don't think she'd appreciate you calling me that."
"Too late, he's gonna call you that from now on," Rocket said. "Guy's 90 years old, so everyone seems like a baby to him."
"He's right," Natasha added with a smirk.
Barry laughed, and the small group started to smile. All the horrors they'd just witnessed would be wiped away, and Thanos would lose. They might have just lost the battle, but they sure as hell were going to win this war.
Of course, a little interdimensional help from the Flash, with a dash of fate, brought them all together in the first place to fix the terrible results of the Infinity War.
Shit was about to get crazy.