Author's Notes: Right off the bat - so excited to bring this fic to you guys! I'm expecting maybe 6-8 chapters. We're going to see more members of the Justice League in the next chapter.
Also: Oliver Queen is still alive. Just not in this chapter (he's presumed dead). But he'll be back soon; hang in there.
Last but not least: enjoy!
Zoom doesn't go away. And neither does the world Barry condemned to suffer at his hands.
He shouldn't lone-wolf his plan, but he doesn't know how to justify his actions to either Caitlin or Cisco.
You cannot go back there.
I wanna stop Zoom just as much as you do, but dude – this isn't the way.
It's not about Zoom, Barry thinks, suiting up. It's about protecting Jay's legacy. He doesn't have a choice; he took the Flash from Earth-2. The void Jay's death leaves behind? Is unacceptable to Barry. He has to go back. No matter what the consequences are.
I'm coming home, he promises, looking around the cortex. The room is awash in soft pastels, yellow, orange, incandescent pink, reflecting a rising sun. It's Earth-1's final petition for him to abandon the plan: a breathtakingly beautiful spring morning.
Come home.
The persuasiveness of the argument almost stops him. Instead, he walks the length of Star Labs (one last time) before reaching the speed cannon.
Stepping up confidently to the control panel, he unclips the emblem from his suit, pulling out a microchip and inserting it into the belly of the main drive. The others don't know it, but he built in a contingency plan. In the event one of us is trapped on Earth-2, I have to be able to go back.
The machine comes to life. And a wormhole amorphously coalesces in the space between the four rings.
Thank you, Felicity Smoak.
Barry steps up to the machine, examining the four rings, struck by an overwhelming gratitude for Felicity. She hasn't responded to his phone calls lately, but he knows how busy Oliver and she are, how often they're up against some of the worst criminals Star City has. The occupation is voluntary – as is Barry's – but neither feels entirely coercion-less, resulting in a lifetime of dedication to the service. Having a capacity to intervene breeds a compulsion to act: Barry can't sit idly by and, he knows, neither can Team Arrow.
Looking at the wormhole, Barry considers taking a gun with him. It wouldn't hurt; it might even be good insurance, in the event his speed is compromised. Joe taught both Iris and him how to use one. It's tempting, aware that they have guns that shoot far worse things than bullets in storage.
But an armed civilian would raise red flags; without the proper certifications, he could generate a lot of unwanted attention. Concealment isn't an option: his suit is designed to be skin-tight, economical. He would have to carry the pistol in hand for the duration of his visit or hook it to a belt.
In the end, he rules against bringing a weapon for one reason: he's seen what happens when a hero takes up a weapon in pursuit of justice. Oliver Queen is still a hero, but Barry doesn't know if he could accept the power as graciously, the status of vigilante as diplomatically. Being unarmed means his work naturally falls under a category of civilian intervention, a Good Samaritan ethic he can't break for the sake of being a little less likely to die on another world.
Feeling the arch of every ring to confirm its integrity, Barry steps back to admire the wormhole, wondering how long Felicity's chip will hold out before burning up. On the lower end: hours. On the higher end: weeks. Barry suspects the actual performance will be somewhere between six to ninety-six hours.
Not much time.
To help mitigate the possibility of being trapped on Earth-2, he has a twin microchip attached to his wrist, generating a continuous loop of nonsensical code to confirm its functionality. Its ability to hold up against Speed may be comparable to the original chip's ability to hold up to the strain of maintaining something as dynamic and powerful as a wormhole; once the twin chip's ability is compromised, Barry has to assume the original chip's system has been compromised, too. At that point, it's time to pack up and head home.
If you can.
Drawing in a deep, steeling breath, he steps up to the final tier separating him and the portal. There's a sense of finality to every breath, an echoing ultimatum in every heartbeat. Faster. The way the ground feels underneath the soles of his boot makes his throat tighten with longing, stilling him. He wants to be outside, in open air, taking his equivalent of a morning jog. He wants to go get coffee with Caitlin and Cisco, offering his input on The Walking Dead whenever it proves relevant (and he'll never understand how Caitlin isn't fascinated by the zombies even if, okay, human zombies are unlikely, isn't he unlikely, too?). He wants to show up to the precinct carrying a satchel full of too many folders, explaining to Singh that yes, he will have the reports ready as soon as possible, Flashing through a nine-hour process in forty-five minutes, collapsing into a chair with a satisfied smile as he looks at the stack of completed reports.
He wants to live another day here; he wants to be Barry Allen again.
Standing in front of the wormhole, Barry looks into the unseen universe and lets the Flash take over.
And with one unhesitating step, Flash enters the tunnel separating two worlds.
. o .
It's quiet.
It's hours until sunrise here, so Flash expects it, but he still takes note of the way leaves susurrate in a light wind, a few cars humming lethargically across the streets. He's standing outside the precinct, shadowed by a tangle of trees, watchful. A disconcerting sense of stillness pervades, lending a funereal air to the place. It leaves Flash with a vague sense of being the last to know of a death in the family; everyone else pays their respects by staying in, memorializing the deceased, while he sacrilegiously wanders the streets.
Flash shakes the thought off. He will not be responsible for any of their deaths. He cannot, or else he'll let Barry's grief interfere with his plans.
Scanning his surroundings, he takes off. He doesn't have a plan, but he knows where he needs to go: Star Labs.
Wells said he knew who Zoom was. I created Zoom. Maybe he had a record of other metahumans, too.
He knew Sand Demon. Dr. Light. King Shark.
Flash needs to know more about them – where they are, what they have done – to form a plan. No better place to start than the origin.
Zero, zero, he thinks, wondering how far off the mark he is. Everything is different here, right down to the vibrational frequencies. The slight shift interrupts his connection to the Speed Force; it requires more effort. Knots tighten in his stomach at the thought that being on Earth-2 disrupts his speed, making him slower; if Zoom was that fast on Earth-1. . . .
He pushes the thought aside. It won't help him here.
He has to pause to regain his bearings, disoriented by the dark and new city. Everything has a different signature: louder and quieter than he expects, muffling the silent cues, exaggerating the white noise. Running blind means running blind, with the possibility of running into buildings or even other people.
Flashing to the top of a building, Flash looks out into the city, frowning. This isn't right.
Then he hears a familiar voice quiver, "Who the hell are you?"
In the reflective surface of a window, he sees her: posture strong, assertive, familiar friendliness gone. She has a gun pointed at his back, and it's clearly nontraditional – God only knows what it fires. Flash stands very still, projecting innocence and friendliness, feeling the shoulders of his assailant relax infinitesimally as a result.
Then pain explodes across his back.
A shout rips out of his throat as fire knifes into the center of his spine, an acrimonious, horrible pain which almost brings him to his knees. He's fast – tearing out the arrowhead almost before it's finished hitting his skin – but it still stings, rendering him a little breathless when he speaks, heavy, metallic. "I'm not here to hurt you."
"Right, so you're just here for the scenery," Felicity Smoak says, voice shaking, but she doesn't back down. If anything, the fear gives her strength, propelling her closer and giving her a reason to crowd his quarters. Take him out before he can return the favor.
Needing to diffuse the situation, he says, "I'm here to help." Turning slowly – keeping his hands up in what he hopes is a universal don't shoot signal – Flash stares.
She doesn't wear a hood, but the green suit and bow are unmistakable. Her stance arrests his attention, experienced, undeterred. Flash misjudged how close she was: she's standing eighteen feet away, near the edge of the roof, projecting her voice with a confidence which betrays her perceived fear. She's surprised, but it's fading fast; his surprise is disarming, growing with exposure.
"Where's Oliver?" he asks without meaning to.
He catches the second arrow – barely. It flies with a lot more speed than he's used to; the proximity to his ribcage makes him suck in a shallow breath, aware of his pounding heart inches away. Too close.
"Who the hell are you?" she repeats, almost shouting.
"A friend," he replies, "of Oliver's."
She gets off two shots this time; arm and leg, shoulder and shin. He ducks the shoulder shot and narrowly avoids getting nailed with the second arrow, Flashing in front of her and taking the bow away.
"I'm not here to hurt you," he says quietly, laying the bow down twenty yards away and Flashing back in front of her.
The Starling City vigilante doesn't move, her expression unreadable behind the mask.
It's only when she shifts back, ever-so-slightly, that he's struck by a realization.
She's afraid of me.
"I know Oliver Queen," he repeats, because it seems to breakthrough to her, deliberately taking a step back, putting space between them. He feels powerful – towering over her, Arrow versus Flash, the ordinary pitted against the extraordinary – but he tries to reign the authority in. Hunch his shoulders a little, open his palms at his sides, anything to appear less like him. Like Zoom. "We're friends."
"Oliver's dead," Felicity says sharply, her voice breaking just the slightest on the word dead, and Flash's heart skips a beat.
He can't speak for a moment. Doesn't dare voice the genuine surge of fear he feels, standing in Starling City, wondering if Felicity is delivering real news to him. He hasn't heard from Oliver in days, hasn't seen him in weeks, and lacking confirmation of Oliver's wellbeing fills his chest with worry.
Not-your-Earth, Harrison Wells echoes, a universe away. Not-your-Oliver, not-your-Felicity.
Flash bows his head in contrition, giving voice to his genuine grief only once: "I'm sorry."
Felicity steps towards him, her mouth flat, her tone unapologetic. "He died years ago," she says. "Went down on the Gambit before any of this happened." When she walks towards him, it isn't fearful; it's accusatory. "Before the particle accelerator exploded," she repeats emphatically.
Flash doesn't know what to say, grunting instead when he feels something sink teeth into his shoulder, and there's a moment of surprise as he reaches back to pull out the tranq dart before he realizes how deep he's in.
He doesn't dare go out, fighting through the haze of fatigue, shaking hard to dispel as much of it as he can, but he doesn't have the rage necessary to burn it out, only panic that he's already slipping under. He can't even see his assailant, but he's on his knees, and a second dart sprouts from his opposite shoulder.
The last thing he hears before passing out is Dig's voice.
"Where the hell did Zoom find another speedster?"
And before he can voice his response – he didn't – he's gone.
. o .
Flash doesn't know how long he's out for, but the chip on his wrist burns a little – it must have been a while – and his mouth tastes like asphalt, dry, rough. There are restraints around his ankles, knees, wrists, elbows, and shoulders, pinning him to a hard metal table; he strains feebly against them, every ounce of strength gone.
He must not move enough to draw anyone's attention – voices murmur indistinctly to off to one side. It takes Flash a moment to hear them over the pounding in his head.
". . . hadn't mentioned Oliver, you would've put an arrow through him," Dig is saying. "Hell, we still should put an arrow in him. World could use a couple less speedsters."
"Maybe he's not a speedster," Roy says thoughtfully. "Maybe he's just a lunatic in a mask." It's hard for Flash to separate them from what he knows: Roy sounds like Roy. In the fuzziness of his brain, it's even more difficult to detach emotionally; his slack, useless mouth still wants to form the words.
Roy, it's me. It's Barry.
Dig.
Felicity.
"I've seen lunatics in masks before," Felicity says sharply. "He might be one, but he's also a speedster."
"So, what, you want me to kill him?" Roy retorts, and suddenly he's close, very close, and Flash gets the distinct impression that Roy has a knife in hand. Flash thinks, I can phase through the table but he doesn't know how fast he can do so, foggy and disconnected. As it stands, he waits, feeling his sluggish heart beating a little faster in his chest. "That what you want?" Roy insists.
He's close enough Barry could reach up, grab his arm, tell him, It's me. Roy always liked him, liked Cisco; they had a natural rapport. Roy wouldn't kill him.
He would kill the Flash.
And so Barry forces himself to speak, ignoring the crackling pain in his chest. He doesn't even know if it'll work – it's a different world – but he has to try. "Lian Yu," is all he says. "It means 'purgatory.' It's the island . . . Oliver was shipwrecked on five years ago."
Roy steps back, and Barry opens his eyes. It's the original foundry. And out of the corner of his eye, he can see Dig, Felicity, and Roy.
Team Arrow, he thinks.
It's unbalanced, and he can feel the tension between them: Dig seems ready to take care of the situation and call it a night, Felicity is visibly off-put, and Roy just blinks before exhaling hard.
"How the hell did you know that?" he can't help asking.
"He watches the news," Dig dismisses, derisive.
Felicity, though, says quietly, "The name of the island was never publicized." Stepping forward, she asks, "How did you know that?"
"I'm a friend of Oliver's," Barry says simply.
There's a moment when he thinks she might kill him, but then the straps on his shoulders and elbows fall away, permitting him to sit up.
It takes him a moment to get his bearings – the vertigo from the change in elevation almost knocks him out – but once he finds them, he draws in a deep breath and says, "You've heard of the Flash."
"Zoom killed him," Roy supplies, neutral, arms folded, while Felicity narrows her eyes.
"I used to work with him," Barry explains. "We were partners." Even facing the doppelgangers of some of the most dangerous people alive on Jay's world, the surreality of Jay's death hits him hard. Barry can't understand how he's not there. He's-coming-home is wishful thinking, but Barry can't destroy it. The need for Jay's death not to be permanent is too strong.
"He was my friend," Barry continues, "and Zoom killed him."
Grief transitions to rage, voice slipping into a metallic warble as Flash says, "I've been in the shadows for a long time, but with him gone – someone has to protect the city. And I can."
"You and what army?" Roy asks, skepticism unmistakable.
Barry looks at the three of them – fractured, pieced together under the wrong circumstances – and he still sees a powerful team. A team which took him out without breaking a sweat; which could have killed him in seconds, had they so chosen. And none of them even have super powers.
Roy's right. He needs an army.
He needs help.
"I'm working on it," he says.
Diggle huffs, unamused. "The Flash couldn't protect Central City," he says, and Barry wonders what Starling City is like if Central City is so imperiled. Starling's crime rates have always been notoriously higher; something about the exceptional dichotomy of billionaires and below-poverty liners draws it out. Picturing it under Zoom's influence gives Barry chills. "Now we're supposed to believe Kid Flash can do the job?" Dig continues, uninterrupted.
Barry can't help but puff up a little at that. It's all too crisp in his memory: Wow, he looks way better in the shirt.
"I don't need you to believe in me," Flash intones, stifling the jealousy, "but I need you to let me go."
Roy says, "What, so you can turn us over to Zoom?"
Valid concern. "I'm not working for him."
"Funny," Roy says, stepping forward again. He doesn't sound amused. "My trust in the 'good will of humanity' is lacking these days."
"Do you trust the CCPD?"
Roy smirks. "About as far as I can throw them."
Undeterred, Flash says, "Call them. Ask for Detective West."
He doesn't know what time it is – the foundry is always dark – but no one says, It's too early.
Losing time fast, he thinks.
Then Dig walks forward, holding out a ringing phone towards him, and Barry focuses on sounding calm despite the pounding head behind his eyes.
"Hello?" It's on speaker.
Hearing her voice is more soothing than Barry expects; he relaxes, saying softly, "Iris."
"Barry? What's wrong?"
He picks his words very carefully. "I have some friends in Starling City who need to talk to you."
Confused, but obliging, Iris replies, "Okay."
Seeing an opportunity, Roy speaks. "So the CCPD is working with speedsters now, huh? Or did you all just give up and decide to work for Zoom?"
"How else do we fight Zoom than with people like him?" Iris retorts smoothly. Barry wonders if she's had this argument before, defending a different Flash. It makes something in his chest warm to think about it: that on both Earths, she's drawn towards protecting the city. Not just inwardly, but outwardly as well: projecting that optimism, reiterating that the Flash is a hero working with them, not against them. "The Flash gave his aid willingly."
"And he died," Roy finishes bluntly. "Zoom left his body in front of City Hall."
Barry's jaw hurts. He can see himself, all too well, in that same position. Had that night gone a little differently.
"Zoom is powerful," Iris presses. "Flash couldn't stop him, but that doesn't mean no one can. And if anyone stands a chance against him, it's another speedster."
Without another word, Dig hangs up. "So," he says, and there's an unfriendly tone in his voice, "Barry." He pulls off Barry's cowl, Barry's wrists flexing slightly against his restraints, too slow to stop him.
Even with the mask off, the panic never comes.
They already know. They're my friends.
Not these versions.
"What brings you to Starling City?" Diggle finishes.
Barry inhales slowly.
Oh, this is gonna be fun.
. o .
He tells them what they need to know.
What's your name?
Barry Allen.
How'd you get here?
It's a long story. (Bow up. No-nonsense.) -which I will abbreviate.
After a long, argumentative hour, he gives them what he hopes is a convincing lie: in the particle accelerator explosion, he was given his powers, just like the Flash; unlike the Flash, he chose to lie low; but with the Flash gone, he's out of the shadows looking to continue his work. He came to Starling City after catching wind of Zoom's presence, scanned the area, didn't find much, ended up on a rooftop as part of his patrol, at which point Felicity put an arrow in him.
He can't bring himself to tell them about Earth-1 or being from another universe. They barely believe his thinly veiled lies; they'd kill him if they thought he was giving an elaborate cover story to hide his true intentions.
Roy finally unstraps Barry's wrists, letting him work his way out of the remaining restraints. Barry's cold and stiff – not to mention ravenously hungry – but he doesn't voice his discomfort, grateful just to be on his two feet again. Diggle keeps a close eye on him; Barry tries not to appear overwhelmingly speedster-like in the suit, needing to distinguish himself from Zoom.
Luckily, he doesn't put off electricity in violent streaks like Zoom and the Reverse Flash do. Keeping the cowl off further adds to his unaggressive position. Even Felicity seems more comfortable in the same space as him, no longer projecting fear into the space. It's hard to read, like picking up a conversation on another wavelength, but he can still tell it's there.
Diggle puts off a strongly protective vibe, putting himself directly beside Felicity or Roy, ready to step between Barry and either of them. Barry stays on his side of the room, keeping his hands in sight, his voice down, his entire posture submissive to their authority.
This is their territory, their foundry. Their home.
Tread lightly.
He can't tell who's in charge – without Oliver around, the triumvirate is incomplete. Diggle and Felicity are still around, and Roy is there, standing in for Oliver – but Roy's presence doesn't account for the shift because Roy isn't the Green Arrow.
Felicity is.
Barry can't stop looking at her, wanting to ask her everything. It's jarring to see her in a role where the line in the sand is clearly between them, but Barry tries not to let it put him off too much. He didn't come here to make friends. He came here to fill a power vacuum before Zoom takes it.
Not fix the broken triumvirate.
Even though it's not his-Oliver, it's still Oliver, and this is still Felicity, Diggle, and Roy, and it hurts to think that Oliver is dead to them. They've picked up the pieces, moved on, somehow found a way to keep living their lives even with the absence in their midst – but Barry can feel the quiet ache of that absence with every movement, every counter cooler to the touch, every gesture sharper than before.
Abruptly, Diggle asks, "How fast are you?"
Barry turns, surprised. "I haven't reached my top speed yet," he says automatically. He can feel it, too, how the Speed Force tries to crush him at times, raw, enthusiastic, untamable. Wells once told him that there was no upper limit on his speed, that he could run at the speed of light – and Barry, topping out just over six hundred miles per hour at the time, had quietly stowed that idea as a curio to revisit when it sounded less insane.
Traveling between worlds and dimensions, he has to admit it no longer sounds improbable.
"Faster than Zoom?" Diggle presses.
Barry doesn't respond right away. Roy tchs.
Opening his mouth to respond, Barry gets as far as, "I'll stop him" before the chip on his wrist begins to burn.
Keep moving.
"I have to go," he tells them, almost apologetically, resisting the urge to hug them. At least Felicity. Dig and Roy, too, but this is Felicity, the first person who was ever kind to him in Starling City. The one who proverbially put her foot in the door when Oliver tried to slam it in his face. She's supposed to be on his team – she is on his team, she made the chip burning against his skin – but she doesn't look at him like he's anything other than a stranger.
Worse: a speedster.
Diggle says gruffly, "Go."
Barry wonders where the compliance came from – considers arguing about it, ruling against it.
He spares one last look for the remains of Team Arrow before Flashing to the door, vanishing out of sight seconds later.
. o .
Once Barry's gone, Roy turns to look at Felicity and Diggle and asks, "Why did we let him go? You do know he could go back to Zoom, right?"
In response, Felicity wordlessly picks up a laptop, turning it so he can see a black screen with a pulsing red dot near the center, moving steadily across a grid of streets.
"If he does," Dig says, no-nonsense, "we planted an explosive under his emblem. Remote trigger. Microfiber. Virtually undetectable. Unless he sets off a metal detector and scans the whole suit, he won't find it."
Roy arches both eyebrows, impressed. "How do we know if he actually meets with Zoom?" he presses.
Tapping away at the laptop, Felicity says without looking up, "Do you know how much electricity that guy puts off? You could find him beneath a mile of concrete. We can track him."
To demonstrate, she pulls up a grid of Central City, this time filled with streaks – "Prior locations," she elaborates. "This is where he is right now." And she points to a dot, slightly brighter than the prior lines, far off the city limits.
Roy leans closer to look at the screen, silent for a moment. At last, he asks slowly, "How do we know if he's turning himself in or fighting Zoom?"
Diggle's expression doesn't change as he says simply, "We don't."
The implication is clear. The explosive isn't meant to be a deterrent.
It's something much worse. Bait.
"Wow," Roy says, and he sounds genuinely impressed. "That's both awful and genius."
"What's one less speedster in the world?" Felicity echoes, tapping away at the keys.
And Roy thinks, Safer.
. o .