What you Need
You can't always get what you want
Iris is staring at the face of a man on a screen. He's serious, solemn, trying to find the right words to say—the words to capture a shadow of what can't be spoken, a few lines pulled from an infinite book of thoughts he's had about her, memories they've shared.
Tears roll down her cheeks. There was no closure for her when he left the world. Just blankness on the end of a gunshot. No long goodbye, no letting go. No time to try to gather up their time together and figure out what it meant.
She feels like a widow sometimes. The moment she'd accepted his proposal was it for her—she'd have taken her commitment to the grave. But now she has two rings: her own and a plain one made for a finger bigger than hers—but there's no one left to wear it.
But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.
She watches the video through three times before she finally turns it off. It takes until the third time for her to really hear what he says, for her mind to absorb all that he'd tried to convey. It's not a goodbye; the man who'd made the video hadn't possessed any inkling of his destiny. But that doesn't make it any less definitive. It's no small thing to hear, all at once, the kinds of words that most people take a lifetime to say.
It's enough. It's not goodbye; maybe it's better. There's no desperation to it, no hint of sadness. It's as pure as Eddie himself, and it's the thing she's been waiting for all along, she realizes, though she didn't know how to describe it.
Iris has no idea what it cost to put that video in her hands, but that's not the only part that eludes her. She's been swimming in a sea of grief, confused, not knowing what she needed to be able to swim to shore. She has no idea that Eddie's message exists because there's someone who knows her better than she knows herself, who figured out the answer to the equation she couldn't solve.
At this exact, magic, ordinarily moment, Iris West exists in a space right between the memories of a past with a man she can never have and a future with a man who's exactly what she needs.
You can't always get what you want
Time travel seems like the coolest thing in the world until you actually do it. It's not the danger of discovery or the awkwardness of trying to be his past self that Barry minds most. It's the problem of feeling like a ghost, like the real him is invisible because he can't effect change. It's like having the knowledge of a god and not being able to use it.
He cannot save Eddie any more than he could save his mother, and he can't warn the colleagues who have become family that their leader is their enemy. It feels like cruelty, like a scientist letting lab mice run themselves to death in a predetermined maze. His entire life is spent helping people; it is as much his destiny as it is his vocation. But this feels like the opposite, like hoarding his knowledge and not sharing it with the people who need it most.
The problem is, he's a scientist, and he trusts his team. Changing time is a terrifying risk. He forces himself to remember all the academic reasons he can't afford to say the things his heart is screaming at him to tell.
But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.
Remembering his team's advice makes his thoughts flit over to Iris, to her supportive smile, to the warmth of her encouragement. And to her sadness. He would never expect her to forget Eddie, but it's like there's a piece missing that won't let her complete the puzzle and move beyond their life together. The goodbye was too rushed, and she needed time to process her emotions—time she never got to have.
So Barry changes something in the past after all, because the risk is worth the reward. He films a video filled with the words Iris needs to hear—words have always meant the world to her, and these are like a goodbye, but better, because they're not sad or painful.
"Barry." Iris's voice calls through his closed door.
"Come in. I thought you left a long time again." He puts his bookmark in his novel and sits up on the edge of his bed.
"I—decided to watch a couple more times, and I just wanted to say thanks for giving this to me now. It was really great timing." She stands on tiptoe and wraps her arms around his neck, and he holds her tightly for a long time.
"Good night, Barry." She leaves with a smile on her face.
He's smiling too as he gets back under his bedcovers. She has no idea that he traveled through time to bring her this video at this exact moment, but she doesn't need to know. All that matters is that it worked, that the thing he chose to change was the thing she needed most. That even if he couldn't save everyone, he could do one tiny, huge thing.
You can't always get what you want
It's the only time in his life Joe West has ever wished he could go back in time. He's not one for flouting the laws of the universe, and he'd be thrilled to wake up one day and find that the whole idea of metahumans had mysteriously vanished into a void, never to return. He'd drive Barry to work every day. They would be father and son, working on cases, just like before.
But time is different. If he could only go back to the day Francine disappeared from rehab, he would go there, find her, put his arms around her and promise to stay close, no matter what. He would take her for a pregnancy test, hold her hand while they got the news about Wally.
And he would be a dad, no matter what happened after that. He would hold his baby son, teach a little boy to throw a football, watch his children fight and forgive each other. Barry would have a brother and a sister and a mother, even more stability than he and Iris had ever been able to give him.
Nothing is perfect, but he'd—make some things right.
But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.
Sitting around the dinner table, looking at his three children, his wish begins to slip away. It's taken them blood, sweat, and tears to reach this moment, but they are all here, alive and well. And love is tangible in the room, like another person at the table.
Maybe, if he could change everything, it wouldn't have turned out the way he'd hoped. Nothing is perfect; nothing can be.
The present is where he lives, a present with a daughter putting herself back together, a hero son, and a boy who needs him more than he's felt needed in a long time. Identity does not come from perfection, from the absence of struggle. Iris, Barry, Wally—and Joe himself—are composites of the deep sadness and deep joy their lives have contained.
Wishing for a past that can never be is a wish that recedes, gradually, replaced in his mind by the comforting awareness of the beauty of the present in all its imperfection. A present in which each of the people at his table is exactly what the other people around it need.
