Author's Notes: Hello, everyone! I will respond to all of your comments on my other fics, and then I'm diving into a trio of fics.
I hope you enjoy this! Up next on the fic writing agenda: "Rebel," a standalone 2.16 spec fic.
It doesn't seem real.
Barry puts a hand against the cooling metal of the speed cannon, feeling a powerful ache in his chest that has nothing to do with Zoom's fists. He can't bring himself to take the suit off, opting only to keep the cowl down. He has to be prepared; being too slow is what cost him so dearly the first time. It doesn't seem proper to hang up the suit when he knows he might be needed, so he keeps it on. Accepts his responsibilities.
It doesn't seem possible to Barry that in just forty eight hours, he traveled to another world. He talked to his mom – and watched Joe die. He spoke with his doppelganger, a high-energy, eager-to-please version of himself who echoed the work-driven person Barry once was, traveling to Starling City on a whim to maybe solve a decades' old case, worshipping the science he buried himself in, scarcely aware of the life passing him by in the pursuit of his craft.
The dust has settled, but nothing is right. Zoom is still at large. An Iris on another world grieves for her father alongside a Barry who Joe tolerated at best. Killer Frost worked with them, but Cisco's double is dead; Ronnie's, too. It leaves him feeling sick, how many people end up dead because of their association with him, regardless of their original intentions. Ronnie was a criminal on Earth-2, but he didn't deserve to die for it.
And now Jay is gone, too.
Barry doesn't know what to do.
He tries to hear the softest electricity the world knows, to listen in on the murmurs of another universe, to confirm the unspeakable or give him a means to undo it.
Jay's alive. He has to be.
His first reaction is reflexive: I'm-going-after-him. Never mind that he wouldn't last thirty seconds on his own against Zoom. He doesn't need to. If he can distract Zoom long enough, then Jay can cross the breach and close it and Barry can –
Well, Barry can do what he was supposed to do the first time.
Die.
He won't go down without a fight. He refuses to let go of everything, of every sunrise he hasn't seen and every hug he hasn't had, every conversation he hasn't spoken and every moment he hasn't lived. Beyond the nostalgic cravings of his own heart, he fight for them: for another day with Joe and Iris, Caitlin and Cisco. He fights for the chance to see Oliver, Felicity, and Dig again, catch up with Thea and Roy. He fights for every opportunity to expand their superheroic family.
Above all, he fights for himself, for his future.
But he has a present. Things he can do now.
Things he has to do.
And first and foremost is the echoing ultimatum of: I can't anyone else die.
The flat line of Joe's heart rate monitor haunts him.
He steps back, staring at the matrix and trying to figure out how to reopen the breach between their worlds, the connections he worked tirelessly to destroy.
Footsteps announce Harrison's arrival. "Allen."
Barry doesn't move, stiff and sore and heartsick.
"It's over. Let it go."
No.
"There's nothing you can do."
He shouldn't have died.
Barry doesn't cry. He can't. Grieving means accepting the unacceptable.
All he can accept is: I-have-to-save-him.
"He's dead," Harrison reiterates harshly.
Barry finally turns to look at him. "He's not dead," he says quietly, sandpaper worn, wondering how many more mountains he can climb tonight before he collapses. Even the aching pain in his chest is inferior to the way his heart hurts.
Harrison looks tired, too, but it's a different tired. The kind acquired by watching too many people die and not being able to save them. "He's dead," he repeats bluntly. "The faster you accept that, the faster you can move on."
Move on. The mere notion of it astounds him. "I know you hated him," he begins quietly, heatedly, stepping forward and crossing the chasm between them. "You two made it very clear that feeling was mutual." Pausing three feet in front of him, Barry finishes harshly, "But that gives you no right to tell me how to feel about him."
"Jay was a failed mentor," Harrison says. The caustic nature of the remark surprises Barry, violating the subconscious compulsion: speak no ill of the dead. "A crippled speedster, a man who ran away from his problems instead of confronting them and condemned millions of people to die because of it."
"Jay didn't run away," Barry snaps. "He was stranded—"
"Do you honestly think," Harrison says, very quietly, "that if I was able to cross the breaches on my own, he would not be able to? Allen." He steps forward, close enough to hit. "He could have gone home. There were fifty-two doors. He choose to stay here and hide."
"What were you doing?" Barry counters, low, storm-warning territory. "When you were here instead of rescuing your daughter, what were you doing? Or are you going to tell me you came and stayed for the scenery?"
For a moment, Harrison's jaw tightens hard enough Barry hears it crack. Then he says stiffly, "I was here because there is not a single person in my world who is capable of stopping Zoom except the man in front of me, a man who has not realized the extraordinary gift he has been given and condemns everything – everything I am fighting for to death." Looking him in the eye, Harrison says, very seriously, "We're fighting a war, Allen. Remember that. There will be casualties. All that matters is stopping Zoom before he becomes unstoppable."
For the past eight hours, all that has been running through his mind is Jay, Jay, I have to find him, I have to rescue him, I can reopen the breach, I can go back, I can save him.
For the first time, it occurs to him that there are worse things.
"If you die," Harrison says, quiet, deadly, "we all do."
"You sound a lot like him," Barry admits in an undertone, walking towards the speed cannon again and staring into it. He can almost see those red eyes, hear the muffled thunder of electricity, the brilliant yellow of the suit blazed across the backs of his eyelids. "He believed in making necessary sacrifices."
Harrison doesn't say anything. Barry knows why.
"I can't accept that," he says, putting a hand against the chilled metal of one of the arches. "I'm not going to let other people die if I can stop it. If there is any way."
"Allen." Harrison's voice dips into an almost kind timbre, soft, heavy. "It's over. Jay is gone. Zoom killed him."
Barry thinks, It's not over. As long as he has the Speed Force, then he retains one potent ability: I can go back in time.
He doesn't tell Harrison. Can't bring himself to. It's a secret too dark to contemplate, a selfishness too terrible to name.
What would happen if you did? Who would you lose?
He can't answer it. Doesn't want to think about it: whose heart would flat line, whose presence would vanish from his life.
There's always a tradeoff.
Whatever tragedy you think you've averted, Harrison Wells rasped, cornering him in the particle accelerator chamber after he put Mark Mardon away, time will find a way to replace it and trust me, Barry . . . the next time? Could be much worse.
"Let this go," Harrison advises calmly, and for a moment Barry hears that paternal, breathtakingly familiar tone, the one that accompanied him across the pages of Wells' biography and was there the night when Harrison Wells announced to the world that the particle accelerator would change the future.
He wasn't wrong.
It's strange to him that it's been two years since that night.
Of course, for him, nine months of that time is gone. For nine months, the only two memories he has are: 1) reeling in rain-slicked chains to close the leaking skylights in his lab at the precinct and 2) waking up to Poker Face and two people he's never met, terrified and confused.
For him, it's only been fifteen months. Fifteen months since strange reports of metahumans became a calling to him: we've got to do something.
Fifteen months since he went after Clyde Mardon, knowing fully well that he could die.
Ever since that moment, it's never been about playing it safe. Taking the easiest route would be simple; all he would have to do is not act. But there are dangerous people who are like him and someone has to stop them from hurting other people, and he is the only one equipped to do that.
The only one with the capacity and the desire to take on the extraordinary and win.
Looking at the speed cannon, Barry wonders when he stopped winning.
And it all comes back to one person.
Zoom.
Dr. Light warned him. You can't stop Zoom.
Without hesitation, he looked her in the eye and said, Yes, I can.
Barry looks at the speed cannon and feels a different emotion. A compulsion, somewhere between I will hunt you down and I'm coming after my friends.
"It's not over," he tells Harrison firmly. "Not until we stop Zoom."
Harrison steps forward, and for a moment Barry can almost hear him gliding across the floor in his wheelchair. Then he says, "The breaches are closed."
"Then we'll find another way."
Harrison doesn't laugh, but his voice carries a derisive edge, "I've already told you, there is no way to reopen the breaches—"
"Then we'll find another way," Barry repeats firmly, ending it.
Harrison sighs, and before Barry can say anything more, Cisco asks, "You two playing nice?"
"We're fine," Harrison quips, turning and walking out without another word.
"He's cheerful," Cisco observes, stepping up to Barry's side and sobering when he looks at the speed cannon.
Barry's voice is soft, almost not daring to say anything out loud; without Caitlin there, he feels strange, off-balance, like their team is compromised. "How much of that did you hear?"
Cisco says, "Enough."
Barry nods. Then, because it's Cisco, he admits, "He might be right. Maybe we should just leave it alone. If Zoom can't get here, then . . ." he's not my problem.
"We'll sleep on it," Cisco suggests, clasping him on the shoulder and releasing when Barry winces. "Sorry."
"It's fine." Truth be told, his lungs feel serrated, his head pounds, and he wants to sit down for a while, but he can't leave the speed cannon.
He can't leave Jay.
"How do you walk away?" he asks.
Cisco is quiet for a time, not saying anything. Barry almost thinks he won't have an answer at all, and then: "Because I know we're coming back. Or," he adds, tilting his head in a concessionary manner, "Zoom is. But this doesn't end here."
It doesn't end here.
The point resonates, taking the quiet, anguished side of him which has to do something and sedating it, reminding it that there are moral curves.
Some decisions are unambiguous.
Others are not.
Abandoning the gravesite of a friend falls clearly under not.
"Come on," Cisco encourages, bumping his shoulder lightly. "Let's go get a drink, okay?"
"You know alcohol doesn't work on me," Barry reminds him quietly.
"No," Cisco admits, "but it'll make you feel better."
. o .
And somehow, he's right.
The atmosphere, the presence of dozens of other people, even just the click of drinks on wooden countertops and the sharp taste of lemon – it feels like home.
There are clear differences between their worlds, including an indefinable freshness to the air on Earth-2. The scent lingers in his memory, pure and transfixing as if it contains an extra component than theirs; he'll never place it but it sticks with him like a gift from another lifetime. He traces his fingers over the tabletop and remembers the soft wood underneath his fingertips as he slid them rapturously across the surface of Iris' front door (our front door). He can hear in every clink of glasses the way technology clicked and whirred and hummed on Earth-2, making noises which did not populate the air in Central City: alien technology in a forested environment.
And he misses it, misses it like it is home to him – and it is.
Harrison was wrong.
They are my family. It is my world.
And Earth-2 Jay is their Jay, someone who mattered, someone who counted, someone whose death did not terminate at the doorstep between their worlds.
Lifting a glass of five hundred proof alcohol – thank you, Caitlin Snow – he says simply, "To Jay."
Cisco clinks glasses with him. "To Jay."
The alcohol doesn't numb the pain or render him insensate to the world, but it does give him a brief, world-shattering buzz. A tidal wave of joy sweeps over him, drowning him in something-like-Speed, and he relishes that Speed, savors every second of it, the way his world is, the way he is, strong and connected and alive.
It's more than a gift: it's a responsibility. It's a promise. It's an echo of something belonging to Jay but also which Jay belongs to.
Jay is dead. But the Speed Force is still alive.
And with it, Barry can keep him alive. He can keep the speedster presence in the world active. He can connect the two universes.
And when he thinks about it, the breadth of what he has, what he has to do, he actually smiles.
He's not Jay; he never will be. But he is The Flash.
And now, he gets to take care of two worlds.
It should terrify him – or, at the very least, worry him.
Instead, it brings him peace: a sense of rightness. Of carry-the-mantle. Of It doesn't end here.
Toasting to Jay and Jay's world, Barry resolves to fight for him. For what needs to be done.
For the job that isn't over.
For the people who have died because of me.
And the people who won't because of me.
The buzz wears off, but his resolve doesn't.