The most difficult revelation is not "there are monsters in this world;" it's "you are one of them."
Barry asks his future self, "What's wrong with you?"
His doppelganger smirks. "Where do you want me to start?"
"You killed Iris." Barry can't breathe, stepping forward, staring at his doppelganger. "You – you killed Iris."
The half-blinded Barry lurches closer, radiating heat. Even from a distance, it burns. Barry steps back and his doppel pursues, forcing it upon him, like a fire encroaching, too close. Barry Flashes and his doppel pins him to a tree. A claw digs deep into his chest. "You're so breakable," he muses, curling his hand until the claw slices through.
Barry shoves back hard and his doppel resists, pushing forward and drawing a scream from him. "God, I just want to kill you," his doppelganger snarls. "I just – you're so fucking full of it, you know?"
"You don't – you don't have to—"
"Do this? I really, really do."
"No." Barry gasps, tearing away, and his doppel pursues, maintaining the exact same distance. Staring at him with that terrible face and those terrible eyes. "No. Kill me if you have to. But don't touch her. Or them."
"They're all going to die." His doppel says it in a dull tone, decided, eyes glowing red. "Everyone you know and love is replaceable. You are replaceable. I – I'm the one. I'm the winner. I'm the survivor. I'm the last man standing, I'm the fastest man alive, and you will bow before me."
"No." It's all Barry can say. "I won't. You're not a god. You're a man. You're a monster."
"I'm you!" his doppelganger roars, shattering something between them, and Barry grunts in pain as he's thrown back a hundred feet, his doppel Flashing there to watch before he hits the ground. "We're the same person. We're both Barry Allen. But I survived, and you won't. None of you will. Eobard tried to kill us? He failed. But I'll destroy every Barry Allen there ever was."
"You're a sociopath."
"I'm a survivor," his doppel growls, kicking him hard. "I have endured tortures you can't imagine, you won't have time to fathom, because I am going to put you down, Barry Allen, and you will never rise again." Emphatic kicks cumulate in broken ribs; Barry phases to avoid another blow. His doppel reaches down and, mid-phase, grabs him hard around the neck, lifting him into the air. "Humor me," he says, those dead, lifeless eyes fixed on him. "Why should I spare your life?"
"Because we're better than this." His doppel drops him, disgusted, and Barry can only gasp against the pavement.
"No," his doppel echoes. "We never were."
With one last parting kick, his doppel vanishes.
For an unmarked time, Barry lies on his side, breathing shallowly. Eventually, he feels the Speed Force shift, preceding Wally's arrival, and through the warbling, tunneling darkness he hears a car pull up alongside him a second before Joe steps out of it, engine still hot. "Barry!" he barks, and Barry forces himself to his knees.
In a tight, hurting voice, he insists, "I'm okay."
"What the hell were you thinking?"
Wally already has an arm around Barry's shoulder, helping him up. He asks in a low voice, "Savitar?"
"I know who he is." Barry cringes when Wally hauls him a step closer to the car, crumpling inward.
Wally hoists him back upright and requests, "Dad."
Barry coughs, and it's hot, and copper, and enough to stop Joe's rant in its tracks. "All right," he says, gruff but concerned, stepping up on Barry's opposite side. "We got you."
"Barry." Iris sounds sad, somewhere nearby but not close enough to touch. Too far.
She asks simply, "What happened?"
Barry wants to answer, opens his mouth to respond, but the world capsizes first, and darkness entombs him in situ.
. o .
Coming to draped over the couch in Joe's living room, Barry blinks at the ceiling.
Iris asks, "Who is he?"
"Savitar," Barry slurs, stupid and slow, before finishing, "I'm Savitar."
"That seems improbable." Iris passes him a protein bar, one of the many they keep on reserve in the pantry. It's a haul to eat in real-time, but he can't Flash; his tanks are too low. Keeping abreast of Savitar and Killer Frost is exhausting.
Joe asks, "How could you be both Savitar and yourself? Is this like a Speed mirage?"
"Close." Barry grimaces and forces himself to sit up. "It's – me. A time remnant."
"Like Zoom," Wally chimes in.
Barry nods once. "Like Zoom."
"Damn." Joe exhales. "I thought we'd seen enough time remnants for five lifetimes."
Barry smiles humorlessly. "Honestly, I'm starting to think they don't go away."
"What do you mean?"
But he's too tired, too sore, too sick to his stomach to explain. "Do you have any more of these?" he asks unnecessarily, holding up the wrapper.
"Here." Wally Flashes an entire box onto the coffee table.
Barry closes his eyes. "Thank you." Reaching gratefully for one, he exhales softly in pain, nibbling on it. "We have to call Cisco."
"Bar—" Joe begins.
Barry presses the panic button on the suit.
Cisco is there in eight point six seconds.
"What happened?" he asks, breach vanishing at his back, Vibe goggles on. "Was it –"
He hesitates to say her name. Barry understands; he hates saying it, too. "No. No, I –" he sits up, exhaling in pain. "I confronted him. Savitar. I know who he is."
Cisco waits. When the silence drags on too long, he asks in a thin voice, "Who is he?"
"Me." Cisco's shoulders relax. It's almost comforting, and quietly sickening, too. You thought this could happen? "One of my time remnants."
"Ah." That's all Cisco says. Iris sits on the couch beside Barry and drapes a light hand around his waist. It still hurts, but he doesn't tell her to let go. "Well. Damn. That explains a lot."
"And it completely botches our original plan," Barry agrees, looking around. "Unless you want to kill me."
"No," four voices chime in immediately, emphatically.
"Then we have to find another way," Barry affirms, voice steady even though he's reeling. "Besides, killing me won't have any effect on him. Eobard Thawne told me as much when I visited him a year ago, back when we were trying to figure out—" He tries to stand and falters, leaning back against Iris instead. "The Speed formula," he finishes, a touch out of breath.
Nothing you do will stop me.
Barry jerks, and looks around the room.
Cisco, Iris, Joe, Wally.
No Savitar.
I can hear your thoughts. Shouldn't have gotten so close, Barry.
In a deep, warning tone, Barry growls, "Get out of my head."
So you can kill me?You can't.
"Get out of my head!" he snaps.
You can't win.Give up.Or die trying.It won't change a thing.
The future is mine.
And then he's gone.
. o .
It's the best-worst idea they have.
"What if we can't get you back?" Iris asks quietly, tired, aching.
"You will," Barry assures, ribs still sore as he sits in the chair. "If he's following in my footsteps, then the best way to catch him off guard is to erase my tracks."
"I don't want to erase you," Iris murmurs, holding his face in her hands. "Okay? You come back to me, Barry Allen."
Barry closes his eyes, leaning into her hands. "I always will."
Whatever you're planning – it's not going to work.
"I'm ready," he tells Cisco.
"Brace yourself," Cisco warns.
A flash of white light consumes the rest.
. o .
Deep in the heart of the Speed Force, Savitar jerks.
The tether snaps and he staggers forward, catching himself before he falls and clambering out of his armored chest. He breathes cold night air into hot, feverish lungs, staring around the empty neighborhood. His body isn't strong enough to carry this much Speed, and his face shows it. He burned out his sight in one eye, exposed himself to toxic rays sufficiently often that his face started to dissolve. He looks like Speed Force would if Speed Force was buried for a few centuries and hauled back out to the land of the living.
Which, to be fair, is precisely what happened. And now he's going to kill the Barry who buried him alive.
He closes his good eye, feeling a terrible vindication that he remembers. There was a time before all of this when he still studied cases and found case study after case study regarding victims who weren't happier when their abusers were tortured. It wasn't in the human nature to appreciate suffering; retribution was an animal entanglement of justice, need, and revenge. Necessary but unwanted.
Holding onto necessity, Savitar opens his eye and stares at the multiverse, vision warped too badly to make out anything clearly on its own. The suit compensates for him. The suit does a lot for him, keeping him in less pain, reinforcing the disconnect.
In the end, Barry Allen died a long time ago.
Savitar is the creature who stayed alive past the point of wanting to and clawed his way to the surface again.
I'm a god, Savitar thinks, surveying his domain, universes at his fingertips, Speed in his veins. I won't ever let them hurt me again.
Even without Barry, he can still win.
Because he has nothing to lose.
What are you unwilling to lose, Barry Allen?
He knows. And he knows he will succeed in taking it all from him.
I'm the one.
The survivor.
Hero is a stretch, but "monster" suits him just fine. Let him be feared. If it lets him live, he can forgive it.
He can forgive anything that lets him live.