Usual disclaimers apply.

Chapter Ten

A Study of Time

Barry watched Oliver's face as the other man concentrated very hard. He tried equally hard not to laugh. He decided it would be best for their friendship if he did not inform Oliver that his concentration face looked an awful lot like pouting with his eyes closed. John probably would've had no problem telling Oliver what he looked like, but since they were conducting this test in Oliver's apartment, Diggle wasn't present. After another minute, Oliver grunted and opened his eyes.

"It's not working."

"Well we've only been at it, oh, an hour," Barry looked at his watch in surprise, then hurried on to his next train of thought; "Maybe you should try learning meditation, from what I've read it's geared towards reaching a state consciousness that is between waking, sleeping, and dreaming."

"I really doubt a higher state of consciousness is going to help me intentionally jump through time. Face it Barry, this isn't working. Maybe I'm not meant to control this ability; future you certainly hasn't hinted that I learn to stop myself from traveling," Oliver paced across his front room in frustration, running a hand through his hair. Convincing Oliver to try different breathing techniques and mental exercises to see if he could force a time jump had been difficult. Barry firmly believed if they understood what caused Oliver's mind to jump in time, then he might be able to learn how to control his ability or at least influence it. Oliver, though, fought back every step of the way, too afraid to hope it seemed to Barry.

"We've only been testing different theories for a few weeks, Oliver, unlocking the secrets to your ability is going to take time," at that Oliver snorted and Barry grimaced at his poor choice of word but carried on; "Look at how much we've learned since we started studying your gift. We've tracked a steady growth in the time spans for which you travel. First, you could only visit the future or past for a few hours at a time, but now we've seen you last nearly two whole days. That tells us the longer you have this ability, the longer you're able to jump. In a few decades, you'll probably be able to travel for weeks in various times before returning to your present."

"Which is hardly a comforting thought Barry."

"It's just a theory, not a prove fact, yet. Unlike the correlation between your age and how far in time you can jump. Thanks to the details your journals and older-selves have provided, we can say for certain that the older you get, the further forward and backward in time you travel. When you first started jumping, you couldn't go more than three years into the future. Right now, you can travel nearly a decade and by the time you turn forty, you'll be able to revisit the glory days of being twenty."

Barry had built up a time map, as he liked to call it, and tracked the years Oliver jumped, and those his older-selves reported being able to jump, to narrow down a more exact equation to model his ability's growth. Figuring out how long Oliver could spend in any time period was a little harder to do as he didn't always have access to a clock right away and rarely remembered the exact minute he left.

"And thanks to you, I now know that my mind must be at rest to initiate a jump, though I had suspected as much. But I also now know that when my mind jumps while I rest, that mind controls when the jump ends. Which is why I can jump in the middle of a day into the future and even go to sleep and wake again in that period before returning to my correct year, because I'm not the mind in control, but a displaced one. I just wish I knew how to control my mind before I jump, to not have to wait twenty years to experience a first date instead of reading about it."

"With my track record of first dates, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing," Barry tried to lighten the mood, but Oliver was settling into a full-on brood. Barry kind of wished Diggle were here now, the older man had more experience at dealing with a broody Oliver and knew how to get him out of it faster than Barry did. "The brain is a complex machine and yours does something extraordinary, Oliver. Maybe what you need to understand your gift is the help of a neuroscientist or a theoretical physicist."

"Barry," Oliver shook his head with a deeper frown; "I know you trust your friends and foster father, but I don't want Caitlin or Cisco, and definitely not Wells, knowing my secret. At least, not if I have an actual choice in the matter."

"You'd like them Oliver, once you got to know them. Well, Harry's a bit of an acquired taste, but they are good people who would want to help you, not use you. But I respect your wishes and I won't tell them anything about you. If you're okay with it though, would you mind me posing some completely theoretical questions to them? It could help us come up with new ideas on how to study and train your gift."

"Let me think about it," Oliver replied, then quirked a smile; "Do I even want to know how you'd casually bring that up in a conversation?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you," Barry deadpanned; "Hey, I've got a couple hours left before my train leaves, think we can beat Iris and Felicity's high score on Call of Duty: Zombies?"

"Of course, we can."

They tried and failed to beat Felicity and Iris's high score that day, but they came close the next time they played. Then the women went and beat their own high score at which point Barry and Oliver accepted defeat.

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