Standing alone on top of Jitters, Barry pulls out his phone and takes Oliver up on a promise.
"Barry, now isn't a good—"
"Please."
Oliver exhales hard. "Can you make it quick?"
"I gave Zoom my speed."
There's a long pause. Barry hears Oliver sit down, feeling an entire universe still for a moment. Then, slowly, Oliver repeats, "You gave him your speed."
Barry presses a fist against his forehead. "He took Wally – Joe's son. It was my Speed or Wally's life."
Oliver's sigh is almost like an apology. "What's your play here?" he asks.
Barry drops his fist and stares at his own trembling fingers. He thinks back to the first time he saw his hand vibrate so quickly it blurred and feels a lump in his throat so heavy he can barely speak. At last he manages in a hoarse, broken undertone, "I don't have one."
Oliver says, "Fuck, Barry." It isn't a rebuke; it's an acknowledgment of the unfixable, the insurmountable. The knowledge that even Oliver has no ready answer strangles Barry, pushing him up against a wall and crushing his throat. But that knowledge cannot rid Oliver's voice of its strength when he speaks. "How bad is it?"
"Bad."
He thinks about Caitlin, her hesitant response to his questions. How bad is it?
Bad. If you didn't heal so quickly I'd be very worried.
Tears come, but the emotion doesn't. "I need help," he admits, and it cracks, because he shouldn't need it, he can't need it, and Oliver's Barry is almost gentle.
After a moment, Oliver continues, "I can have Felicity try to track her, if you think that would help."
Barry swallows, nods, feeling a surge of gratitude in his chest. "It would. Thank you."
"I'm sorry I can't be more helpful."
"It's okay."
It's not – Barry knows it, Oliver knows it – but Oliver's voice is calm and steady as he speaks. "I learned something on the island," he explains. "The only way to stay alive is to keep moving forward. If you want to get Caitlin and your Speed back, then you need to start thinking about ways to do that, Barry. Caitlin is gone. Your Speed is gone. If you want them back, you're going to have to fight for them."
Barry rubs the back of his neck lightly with his free hand. The skin is tender – being slammed up against the metal at super speed and crushed in Zoom's demonically powerful grip don't do him any favors – but it isn't unbearable. Over time Barry has learned that almost everything is bearable – even the most excruciating pain, like the raw, inescapable sense of where's-Eddie that he gets every time he walks into the precinct. It's been a year but it still feels like he could walk in any day and see him; his subsequent absence makes Barry's chest ache.
I'm sorry, he thinks to that ghost who isn't listening, to the memory of Eddie.
"Barry." Oliver sounds tired. Barry thinks he should hang up, but he can't bring himself to.
So he says instead, "I'm here."
"It's going to be okay."
Barry has to put his hand over his mouth for a moment, trying to hold himself together. "I made a mistake," he admits, and the emotions are catching up with the tears, now, "and I don't know how to fix it."
"Prioritize," Oliver suggests. "What is the most important thing to you right now?"
"Getting Caitlin back," Barry replies without hesitation.
He can almost see Oliver nod. "Then that's what you need to focus on. Worry about your Speed second."
Worry about your Speed second.
He doesn't know how to not think about his Speed – his lack thereof – when his entire worldview is dependent on it. His Speed is not just important to him. He is his Speed. Without it, he isn't human: he's a dead speedster.
The Flash is gone. Cisco was wrong: Barry didn't become human. He always was. But The Flash wasn't, and without it Barry isn't whole anymore. That Other presence is gone. The granite in his lungs and thunder in his heart is still and silent. The lightning-under-his-skin that reached out affectionately to those he loved and destroyed those who tried to hurt him is unreachable.
Part of him has died and the purgatorial otherness of being human is unbearable. He doesn't want to be human. He doesn't even want to be alive without The Flash, who is he without The Flash?
You're just a young man who was struck by lightning.
Oliver says, "Barry" and he is trying so, so hard not to sob because it never chose me, I didn't deserve to be a hero, and now people are going to die for it.
Instead, he draws in a shaking breath. "Yeah. I'm here."
"I have made terrible mistakes. Unforgivable mistakes. But my team is my family. I can't change what happened, but I have to keep moving forward. When they need me, I will be there. You need to take care of your team, Barry. They're your family. You can't change what happened, but you need to keep moving forward."
Barry thinks, I can't run anymore. Even getting up here was a struggle – he walks slow even-for-a-normal-person. His Speed is gone. I can't move forward without it.
But he did it once.
Never again, he'd promised himself, standing in front of the wheelchair and feeling the ache in his chest, how close he came to never standing again.
I can still walk, Barry thinks, walking to the edge of that rooftop and staring out into the world. I can keep moving.
But he feels lost, like he's on borrowed time, and maybe Felicity was right because the lightning changed him: does anyone know how much? There was synchronicity between his two worlds: I'm a time traveler, a dimension hopper, a speedster, a hero, a CSI, a son. Without The Flash – without the lightning, without Speed – he is less than half of those things.
He doesn't know when my name is Barry Allen fell second to and I am the fastest man alive, but the echoing silence in his mind cannot be filled by just-Barry anymore.
He is fully human – but he's fully Speed Force, too.
Without it – he's not just-human, he's a dead speedster.
Reaching up to rub his face, Barry feels insubstantial. Tired in a way that aches, that feels six-feet-under, that doesn't let anything else share its space. Cold.
He thinks, I spent almost five years on an inhospitable island, Barry. I don't get cold.
"I have things that I need to take care of," the real Oliver says apologetically, drawing him back to the presence of his own heartbeat and the warmth of an early-summer breeze tracing patterns against his skin, reminders that he may feel entombed but the coffin isn't real. "I can't fix this one for you, Barry. I never could: this is your life. But your team is your family and I can't help you, but they can. Let them."
Barry thinks, I'm still alive. I can still escape. I can still survive.
But does he even want to?
He thinks, Caitlin.
He thinks, Cisco, Joe, Dad, Wally, Harry.
He thinks, Iris.
They aren't there because of The Flash. They're there because of Barry.
"I have to leave now," Oliver tells him. "But if I'm unreachable, you can try Dig or Felicity. We're . . . in the middle of something and I can't promise that I'll make the time, but I'll try to."
Overwhelmed that someone like Oliver Queen even acknowledges his existence, let alone cares about him, makes it hard to speak. Barry still manages it. "Thank you, Ollie."
"You're welcome, Barry." Oliver's parting words are, "Good luck."
Alone again with the city which does not even know its hero has taken a permanent leave, Barry pockets his phone, leaning against the banister and staring out at the sky, feeling exhausted but better, like the pain of acknowledging his crisis is easier than leaving it silent, festering. Oliver doesn't know everything – doesn't know what happened on Earth-2, doesn't know about Eobard Thawne, doesn't know about half of the defining features of The Flash's life.
But he knows Barry. He knows just-Barry, who tripped over his own feet, arrived ten minutes late to a crime scene, and introduced himself (drenched in approximately five gallons of street-water) with a cocky smile hiding a nervous need to be accepted to one of Starling City's most powerful individuals. He knows just-Barry, who lied about why he was there, who lied about his autonomy, who lied about himself because reality just wasn't going to cut what he needed. He knows just-Barry, who obligingly danced with Felicity on Oliver's behalf and was carded at the bar (twice; for real?).
He knows just-Barry, who saved his life. He knows just-Barry, who fell off the map for nine months. And he knows just-Barry, who woke up from a coma and ran six hundred miles to visit.
The Flash was the heroic side of him, the saving-people-in-a-Flash side, but just-Barry is the person who fell in love with Iris, who watched The Wrath of Khan with Cisco, who sat with Caitlin until she fell asleep, who high-fived and hugged and ate donuts, all in perfect harmony with The Flash, which craved those heavy calories so it could run and-run-and-run.
All he wanted to do as The Flash was be The Flash, to never take off the mask, adopting more and more of that lifestyle until Barry Allen faded.
Sitting back with his life, Barry realizes that in spite of everything, Oliver is still there for him. Cisco, Joe, Harry, Iris – they're still there. The Flash has no investment in Caitlin – it's lightning, all it craves is to be with the Speed Force – but Barry does, and no matter what it takes he will get her back, with or without The Flash.
Pushing him upright, Barry walks away from The Flash's vantage point. He walks away from those experiences, he walks away from that reality, he walks away from the possibility of that reality because Oliver is right.
Prioritize.
Caitlin comes first. Family comes first.
If it takes the rest of his life to find The Flash again, he'll keep trying, but for now – with Oliver's presence spiritually if not physically beside him – Barry walks away from The Flash's world and reenters his own.