Dear Future Me

by trufflemores

'Wally asked me why I write these notes to myself. "To inspire hope," I told him. But really, I do it for one reason: To know that I'm alive.'

Author's Notes: Unfortunately, ffnet has no "strike-through" option. I would recommend checking out this fic on AO3 for the full effect. I bracketed and removed the italics for the strike-thru remarks here.

Regardless, enjoy!

Postmarked: April 24, 2024.

Dear Past Me,

Let me begin by saying that everyone we loved five years ago is still alive.

I'm writing to you because I saw an article about ten years ago that said I was going to die tomorrow. I can't change that, but I figured it couldn't hurt to leave a note here. The Speed Force safekeeps these things – when you ask it to. (Be very, very careful what you ask the Speed Force to do.)

In real time – whatever that means – it's only eight-thirty in the morning. (I'm already drinking the last cup of coffee I'll ever have. Seems strange to write it down.) For the sake of the multiverse, I can't tell you much: I'm wearing a red-and-blue plaid button-down and a dark-wash pair of jeans. The shoes I'm wearing are about four years old, but I suspect they're still on your horizon. Something to look forward to; these are the best pair of shoes we've ever had.

What else can I say? It's misting outside. I didn't see the sunrise this morning, which is a bummer, because according to the article I (die around 1:30 in the morning) disappear before sunrise. Exact words: "Late last night." That's tonight. Weird, huh?

Yeah. It's weird to me, too, and I've had almost ten years to get used to the idea. I figured that whatever version of me finds this, at least I'll feel better knowing you got a few years to think about this. To reflect about what it means.

Here's the deal, Past Flash. We're not going to make it out of this one.

You have from the moment you are reading this until 1:30 AM on April 25, 2024 to live.

I used to think it would be useful to know when I was going to die. I could prepare for it. If I knew I had ninety years in front of me, I could have fucked around for fifty, gotten my shit together at sixty, and finally lived a wild bohemian lifestyle as a withered speedster at the glorious young age of eighty-five.

Instead, I learned that I had less than ten years to live. And that changed things.

See, my timetables – our timetables – accounted for us living at least forty years. Marry, have kids, die in a blaze of glory. That was the pessimistic outlook. Optimistically, I hoped to live a lot longer. We didn't know what the upper limit looked like because we had no idea what speedster lifespans looked like. Guess I'll never find out.

For some reason thirty-five just isn't enough.

I miss being alive already.

So, other than depressing the hell out of you – sorry for that, by the way – why am I writing this?

Because I want you to know that however short my life is, or your life isn't, the good we do matters.

I'm still going to work today. Fourteen years, and I'm still a CSI. I wouldn't change it. I'm glad my desk is starting to be permanently stained with coffee cup marks and my own disorganized tangle of folders and half-finished reports. It looks lived-in. If I'm lucky, maybe it'll fossilize. It would be one of the few things that'll remain once I walk out.

My footprints will not hold up long in the dust.

Because you're a scientist you'll appreciate that if I walked on the moon, my footprints would linger until someone else came along and disturbed them. On the moon, there are no substantial erosive processes. Time stands still. There is no life.

Life is transient. We are transient.

I got to walk. Maybe my steps didn't linger long enough, and I certainly won't linger long enough, but I got to be here. And I got to run.

Who knows: by sending this to the Speed Force, I may in fact be creating my own lunar footprints.

You might ask, "Why didn't I fight? Why didn't I resist oblivion with every fiber of my being?"

My answer is simple: I will fight. I will resist oblivion with every fiber of my being. And if I am lucky, I will be that one Barry that escapes, that makes it out.

But it's a coin toss. And I don't know if I'm on the winning side.

Presuming this finds you within the past eight years, then I know – if you're anything like me, which is a big assumption as well – that you know about time remnants. I made it this far, but other versions of me did not.

Tomorrow, one of us will die. Tomorrow, both of us will die. Tomorrow, neither of us will die.

Either way, I am bound for the gallows, and I could keep my chin up and pretend that I don't care if I'm the one who dies in a blaze of premature glory at age thirty-five, but I do care.I care a lot, because I'm still selfish enough to want to wake up tomorrow.

I just realized that I'll never fall asleep again.

Or, rather, I'll only fall asleep one more time.

"Penultimate."The second-to-last.

I slept well. I'd like to think that's a good sign.

Parting remarks: (God that sounds final.) Hug your family. Thank Singh in person. Laugh over something stupid. Take selfies with your friends. Leave the assignments unfinished. Go to the beach. Read a few pages of that book you're halfway through.

Live. For every second you get.

You truly do not know when it's going to end. But it's been a good run, and I hope to see you on the other side.

One of us will.

. o .

Postmarked: May 23, 2017

Dear Future Me,

I finally know how you feel.

It's 5:13 AM. I have until 8:48 PM to stop Savitar. Or he will kill Iris. (I can't believe I let it get this far.)

You said "Everyone we loved five years ago is still alive."

Who dies?

Who dies between this moment and two years from now?

(The sun is starting to rise. It's beautiful. You deserved this.)

Let me know. If you can.

I need to run. I can't catch my breath sitting still.

. o .

Postmarked: March 18, 2046

Dear Past Me,

I guess I'm the one.

The one who made it, the one who survived, the one who raced back in time and changed our lives forever.

When I went back, there were two options that night. One was peace. The other was war.

I am the war.

I'm sixty-seven years old now. I like to include that. It feels like a tribute to the other versions of me who didn't make it here. Gratitude. Relief.

The time stream is not a mirror, Barry. It's a portal. It shows you two lives: the one where the disaster happened and you died, and the one where the disaster can still be diverted and you, the future you who shouldn't have escaped, broke free. Part of you – all of you – died because in that universe you couldn't escape. You were the mirror image. Your existence depended solely on your future self traveling back in time.

We never forgot the coma, so I needn't describe how real that felt. It's like that: your whole sense of reality is perfect, unbroken, right up until the moment when you realize you were, all along, a shadow for some grander, higher order being who broke free.

It doesn't make sense. It may never. But that's how it happens. One sinks, the other swims. You cannot change which one you are, any more than I can undo the changes that have been made to the timelines. (Timelines: plural.)

We shouldn't be able to do what we do.I think that's part of the reason why the time wraiths—

[indecipherable scratched-out words]

Sorry about that. I shouldn't – that's one of those golden rules. "Don't cause a divergence."

What's a divergence?

You've studied physics.You know parent-daughter universe theory: for every action, not only is there an equal and opposite reaction; there is an equal and opposite action. For every yes, there is a no. It's a binary system on a cosmic scale: I do one thing, a different version of me on some incalculably distant world does the opposite. Every single action we ever take plays out somewhere, in different permutations.

A divergence is like flipping the switch the wrong way. You're supposed to follow the tracks forward. If you switch course, then you risk a collision, derailment, an explosion, veering off course forever. You risk tragedy. Because the original course, wherever it was meant to take you, was stable. The train wasn't going to derail itself.

You can try to reset it to how things were, but you'll never get back on the original track. There's already a train there, plugging away. That's the hardest part to swallow; you're in both places. You split the train in half. There's a time remnant – you – on the train that never switched course, and if that train was destined to hit a wall, that time remnant dies.

There's also a different time remnant – still, fundamentally, you – that is on the split train, the opposite action.

You don't know which time remnant you are – crash-and-burn or switch-and-survive – until the moment comes. And then you either cannot move, or you mustmove, and the universe splits with that action.

That is how I got here. I was the Barry that ran. But I was also the Barry that burned to death in a blinding flash of white light.

Let that sink in for forty years. It'll start to make more sense.

My advice? Stay the course or even Speed Force cannot help you.

Or live, in spite of that. Persist, even when you must leave something irreplaceable behind. Keep going.

Dare to disagree with destiny.

. o .

Postmarked: August 2, 2016

Dear Past Me,

Don't do it.

Don't do it don't do it don't do it.

Tie yourself to the wall, handcuff your wrist to the floor, just don't—

[blacked out text]

. o .

Postmarked: May 4, 2016

Dear Future Me,

I just got your message.

You – someone like you – warned me before, when I went to save Mom the first time. You held up a hand and shook your head and I listened.

(God I wish I had listened.)

It's only been three months. Why do I feel so much older?

One thing I've learned: I can't trade places with you. Any of you.

This is my life. I have to live with it now.

I'm gonna make it right.

I'm going to make you proud.

(I have to hope that's worth something.)

. o .

Postmarked: March 19, 2000

Dear Past Me,

I'm sorry I couldn't save both of you.

Joe will take good care of you.

. o .

Postmarked: May 28, 2017

Dear Future Me,

I forgive you.

Because we saved her.

We saved Iris.

(I'm willing to risk the wrath of a time wraith to say that.)

. o .

Postmarked: April 25, 2024

Dear Past Me,

I found your letter back when you were the Future Me. I found your lunar footprints.

My options are pretty straightforward. I can listen, and follow, and suffer. Or I can risk and run and rewrite the future.

Nothing is set in stone.

I've spent half my life chasing the impossible. Trying to fix the past. Undoing my mistakes.

I can't say I'll be successful this time. I truly don't know.

But one thing has stuck with me for all of my life

I have to try.

. o .

Postmarked: March 20, 2046

Dear Future Me,

I figured out that thing you couldn't tell me.

I escaped the time wraiths, but the claws that cut our leg to the bone never healed properly.

We don't walk as easily. My hip hurts a lot. I'm older than I should be. I can't run as fast.

I never needed to. Wally is fast, and Jesse is quick.

I am strong.

We'll endure. Cheers to us, and our families.

. o .

Postmarked: January 14, 2079

Dear Past/Future Me,

I'm not living the wild bohemian lifestyle you envisioned. And it took me two years of torture to realize your note – "five years from now" – was you trying to be generous. You should have said ten, but how could you have known I would discover your letter so soon?

I don't run as fast, and I carry with me the lives of so many others it's hard to believe I wrote these letters. When I come here, the Speed Force brings them to me, and it's almost like I get to meet you.

Except I am you. We're the same people. Person.

Weird, huh?

Wally asked me why I write these notes to myself.

"To inspire hope," I told him.

But really, I do it for one reason:

To know that I'm alive.Wherever I am, however I fall – I am alive, right now, and I will stay that way.

I'm ninety-years-old today.

Happy birthday.

Here's to many, many more.