16. Heartfelt Anticipation

Barry fidgeted in the stiff wooden chair, alternating between checking the cheap plastic digital watch on his left wrist and looking out of the window he was seated beside. There were still three minutes until eleven, but he had already been there for half an hour, and every minute he waited only increased his anxiety a little more. The collared, short-sleeve shirt he was wearing wasn't helping either, and despite it being mid-April and him having already discarded his jacket on the seat beside him, it still felt somewhat stuffy.

It wasn't even that he feared being stood up—his original memories had no experience with that, period, and his new self hadn't ever had that happen to him—considering it was Kara, but there was still a growing knot of tension regardless. Just normal nerves, perhaps. The fear of uncertainty creeping into his bones. He could feel his heart pounding in anticipation as he tried to remember all of the conversation starters from his newer set of memories in addition to the ones he had found online the night before. His hands cupped the now-cold coffee in front of him that he had been sipping on since he had arrived, and he looked back out the window, eyes searching for her.

The bell above the front door of Dan's rang as it opened, and his head whipped around to see. He had done that countless times already, though it had never been her. Except this time, it was. His heart leapt as he saw her walk in, eyes darting around before settling on him with recognition. A smile appeared on her face, mirroring the one that had blossomed on his.

It occurred to Barry in that moment that he hadn't ever seen Kara outside of her Supergirl outfit or the rags of her imprisonment, but she was dressed like, for lack of a better way to describe it, a completely normal, Earth-born human. To match the mid-April weather, she had a light-blue denim jacket over a plain white tank top shirt, along with dark skinny jeans that ran down to her slightly worn pair of Chucks. Her hair was styled outward more than usual, such that it framed her face rather than falling on it like it sometimes had in the heat of battle.

All in all, she would not have looked out of place at one of his two-hundred person lectures, blending in perfectly among a sea of college students. He wondered if she had flown over in that outfit, or whether her Supergirl suit was stored somewhere else. Unlike him, of course, she and Clark didn't have the immediate worry of incredible amounts of friction creating a veritable firestorm around them whenever they exceeded a nominally fast speed; the wonders of Kryptonian biology versus the Speed Force, which Barry frankly still didn't understand well enough for his own liking even after traveling between times and worlds through it.

"Kara," Barry greeted, quickly standing and striding over to her to close the gap. And then he realized that he wasn't sure if she liked hugs or whether it would've been appropriate to do so on a first date, but before he could make a decision, she made it for him by pulling him into a warm embrace. He didn't remember Kara being a hugger, but then again, he supposed there were many things he didn't know about her, and especially not this Kara who had spent far longer in human society than ever before. Like when she had carried him around the world, her embrace was strong—far firmer than he'd have expected out of a woman her size—but largely gentle, keeping him still but not uncomfortably so.

Once again, he was reminded that Kara was, at the end of a day, a person that he felt like he knew much better than he really did. The intensity of their shared experiences in such a relatively short period of time had contributed to that. He had saved her from prison, and she had returned the favor twice within the same day. Within a handful of weeks, they had fought alongside each other against Zod and his invasion of Earth twice, which would've been rather insane to think about out of context. And now they were both publicly declared members of the Justice League, the foremost defenders of Earth.

Except, through all of that, they had gotten very little time to actually talk to each other. Fighting alongside one another was good and all, but it was no replacement for truly getting to know someone heart-to-heart. All the fighting did was make it so that they knew how to complement each other and to trust one another with watching their backs. Barry didn't want to get better at fighting alongside Kara; he wanted to get to know her better.

Kara's hug loosened and they stepped slightly apart. "Hello, Barry. How are you doing?"

"Just fine, yeah," he smiled and replied. "Not much, just some small-fry crime-fighting and whatnot." He glanced over at the shop's counter. "Uh, did you want to grab a coffee first?"

Her eyes flicked over to the menu, written in chalk, that hung above the barista's head. "Sure."

Project confidence, Barry thought to himself, and confidence would be imbued within him.

His second thought was that it just sounded like a meaningless mantra.

"What do you want?" he offered. "I'll get it for you this time."

Kara shot him a look. "I have money. I can pay for it myself."

Barry swallowed. "I insist. Call me old-fashioned, but I still like to pay on the first date. I think it shows that I'm committed to this. Plus, my dad would never let me hear the end of it if I didn't at least insist."

She blinked as if in thought. Finally, she said, "Fine. But I will pay for the next time."

His smile couldn't be bigger. If his heart leapt any more than it already had, it could compete for the Men's Vault at the Olympics. Not only had she acquiesced in letting him pay – which would resolve any argument about that – but she had tacitly hinted at the idea of a second date.

He just hoped that he wasn't getting too ahead of himself, considering their first date had only gone on for about thirty seconds.

"Hi there," the barista—John, his name tag read—greeted them. "Name, and separate or together?"

"Together, and the name's Barry," Barry replied.

"Great. What can I get you two?"

Barry glanced at Kara, who seemed to understand. "I will order the…" her eyes flicked quickly across the chalkboard menu, "Milky Way."

"Sounds good, that's a popular choice." The barista tapped on his point-of-sale system a few times before looking up at Barry. "And you?"

Unfortunately, he also had been wanting to order the Milky Way – espresso, hot cocoa, caramel, and malt sounded like a pretty decent drink to him, especially compared to the cheap, plain black coffee he had ordered earlier. He wasn't sure if he was overthinking it already but ordering the same thing as Kara felt derivative at best. He didn't want to just seem like a bandwagoner who ordered whatever the popular thing was or didn't have much of a taste for coffee on his own.

That part was true—Barry was an avid instant coffee drinker, owing to his perennial lateness to his job at the Crime Lab in the past world—but still. It wasn't a particularly attractive thing he liked to advertise on coffee dates.

"Um," Barry intoned, trying to buy time as his eyes flitted across the eclectic collection of names that Dan's had for all of their drinks. "I… will… have the Ginger Cherry Blossom." He almost regretted it as he said it. Cherries – he liked as an A-tier fruit. Coffee – he was perfectly fine with. Ginger – he basically never ate outside of Chinese takeout. The flavor of cherries and ginger in coffee? That just seemed like a mistake from the get-go.

John clearly agreed, his face curling into a frown. "Huh, I don't think I've ever seen anyone order that before, and I've been working here for a couple years now." He looked at Barry. "Congrats, man. I hope I still remember how to make it."

Barry didn't share that hope. He pulled out his credit card from the wallet he kept in his back pocket. John took it, swiped, and then flipped the POS system to Barry for tips. For his part, Barry squinted as he saw the options ranging from twenty percent to thirty percent before quickly tapping on the custom option and depositing a flat two-dollar tip – good enough for a twelve-dollar order, he'd say. Though based on the expression John had after he flipped the system back to face him, the barista disagreed with that assessment.

"I'll have your orders out in just a sec," John flatly said.

"Let's grab a seat, then," Barry suggested, turning to Kara. She nodded and followed him back to where his now-empty coffee cup still sat beside his jacket. As she took a seat opposite him, it finally began to set in for Barry that he was on a date with Kara, and looking at her, his mind started to just blank. All of past dates he had gone on with Iris and the studying he had done the night before seemed to go to waste.

What were those steps he had read online to keeping the conversation going, again?

Meaningful questions that didn't just end in yes or no answers. Figuring out what she was interested in and steering it that way. Balancing the conversation so it wasn't just her or him talking all the time. Not coming off as unflattering in the conversation.

Or perhaps playing it by ear and hoping for the best was the move. He didn't know, which in and of itself was somewhat infuriating. Unpredictability had always left Barry on edge; it was something that he didn't like in the slightest, but unfortunately it had been one of the few constants in his life. His parents, his school, his superpowers – they had all been curveballs,

"So," Barry began, already cursing himself for thinking that the Internet could teach him anything other than embarrassment, "how's life been with the Kents?"

"It has been good," Kara said, her hands under the table as she sat with a straight back in her chair. That was another thing that stood out to Barry; apparently, he had never seen Kara sit before, but that wasn't something he'd have thought about were it not for the situation in front of him. "The Kents have been very generous and kind in letting me stay with them. And I have learned much about the farm in my time there." She seemed to stare into the distance for a moment. "They have treated me like family."

"Well, in a way, you kind of are family to them," Barry replied. "I mean, your cousin is their son, so that makes you basically their niece."

"I suppose so," she quietly responded. Her eyes flicked to him. "They do remind me of my aunt and uncle – Clark's parents on Krypton."

"What were they like?" he softly asked, sensing a mild undercurrent of tension in the topic.

"I was not as close with Lara Lor-Van, my aunt, as I was with my uncle, but what I remember of her was much like Martha," Kara explained. "She was motherly despite not being my mother, and the last thing that she made me promise was to look after Clark." She looked away for a moment.

"Jonathan, like Jor-El was, is a man of dreams," Kara continued, turning back to Barry. "He has vision and sees when others do not. Clark told me once that it was Jonathan that once told him about what Superman meant to the world. That Superman was a rock for the people of this world, unmoved by the tides of the time."

Barry had never heard such a thing from the Superman of his original world, and his curiosity was piqued. "What did he mean by that?"

Kara thought for a moment. "I believe Clark said that it was when he had first started being Superman. He was not very popular, and the people did not trust him. His unwillingness to kill the evildoers he was fighting against did not earn him favor in a world of chaos. But Jonathan told him, if I remember correctly, that despite people wanting easy answers to hard questions, Superman had to lead by example to show that there was a better way forward."

She breathed out heavily before continuing. "Before I left Krypton, Jor-El told me that I had to teach Clark the ideals of our house, the House of El. That I had to teach him to work for a better future." She smiled with sadness. "Despite… circumstances, I am beyond glad that Jonathan did what I could not. There could not have been a better father for Clark on Earth."

"Wow," Barry honestly replied. "I never knew that about Clark or his parents – both sets of them. That's really aspirational, but also heavy."

Kara frowned. "Heavy? Is there something wrong with the planet's gravitational pull for you?"

Barry blinked. "Uh, no, it's a—" He was cut off by laughter from her, which drew the attention of some of those around them, particularly the ones who were likely hard at work trying to finish their late assignments and whatnot, as she covered with her mouth with one hand and waved with her fingers at him with the other. The relative banality of the whole situation—a cultural reference, her laughter, her gestures—seemed so completely foreign on her. It was yet another change from the Kara that he had known.

"It is—" she started and stopped, finally containing her laughter, "it was something from an old movie that they showed me."

He smiled in good nature. "Right, yeah. I think I've seen that one." Barry also made sure to file away the fact that apparently Kara was a big fan of bad puns – that seemed like a potentially useful piece of trivia.

She was still finishing out the last of her laughter when Barry heard his name being called from the counter. "Wait a sec," he said to Kara. "I'll grab our drinks."

He jogged up to the counter, where two drinks were sitting and ready to go. Barry exhaled sharply through his nose when he picked up his cup – Berry's cup, if the name on the side was any indication. He glanced at John, but the barista in question was already preoccupied with another customer, so Barry simply shook his head and took both drinks back to their table.

"Thanks," Kara said as he handed her the drink in his left hand. "That was quick. The few times I have bought coffee in Smallville were much slower than that."

"I guess there's just a lot more people here," Barry commented, sitting back down and pulling off the lid from his cup. He blew gently on the steaming liquid. "Can't afford to go too slow, right?"

"Mm," Kara intoned in reply, already sipping on her hot drink. "This is very sweet. But enjoyably so."

"It's good that you like it." Barry looked down at the brown liquid in his cup, wondering exactly how much ginger had been added to an otherwise sweetened drink. Deciding to take the plunge, he drank a mouthful of it after blowing again, and the coffee only mildly scalded the inside of his mouth as he felt it flow over his tongue and down his throat.

Barry had to admit that it really wasn't all that bad. He could taste the notes in it – there was cherry, which was sweet. It meshed decently with the almost-chocolatey coffee flavor inside, a darker and fuller flavor. It was almost pleasant…

Then it hit. That aftertaste, which made Barry almost want to spit it out. What was that flavor? The ginger? He had eaten the occasional piece in his takeout from time to time and it wasn't that offensive. Yet, in a sea of cherry, cocoa, and chocolate notes, it stood out like an uninvited guest whose primary goal was to wreck the party and leave. Why would anyone want to add it in, and in the quantity that they had done so? His glare flicked back to John the barista, who he was now fifty-fifty on being a supervillain that had somehow found out that Barry was the Flash and apparently had an incredible weakness to ginger-based drinks. Perhaps the man had simply added extra ginger flavor into the drink out of spite.

Ginger in coffee felt like an unholy combination on his tongue, and the taste made him want to walk into a church for the first time in fifteen years—not exclusively on this Earth—to beg for forgiveness. There was certainly time to repent for the many sins that had brought him to this point. He had never tasted anything like the coffee before him, and that was certainly not a compliment either. Melancholy finally settled in – his hard-earned money had been wasted on a drink, and now that six dollars and change was gone forever.

He swallowed, pushing the last bit of coffee that had stubbornly stuck around down as he deeply inhaled and exhaled. All that was left was the pungent aftertaste, lingering like an unwanted memory. There was nothing more to it. There was nothing else he could do other than smile and sip on it for however long the date went. The stages of grief had come and gone, and Barry was all that was left.

He finally noticed that Kara had been staring at him with a strange look.

"That was an unusual series of expressions your face just made," she remarked, taking another sip of her own drink. "I assume that the drink you ordered was not quite what you had expected. May I?"

"You sure?" Barry grimaced. She nodded. "Okay, don't say I didn't warn you, though."

He passed the open cup to her, and she promptly drank a mouthful – he assumed that the whole "being Kryptonian" thing made her basically immune to the idea of a burned mouth, which was a superpower he wished he could have.

Kara's face contorted as the flavor hit, her eyes widening as she spat it back out into the disposable coffee cup.

"Who could have conceived of such a thing?" she whispered. "The flavors are… wrong."

He nodded. "Uh-huh. I guess there was a reason why no one was buying it."

She looked back down at the cup that she had regurgitated the coffee back into. "I am sorry for spitting it back in, though I suspect you were not going to drink anymore of it." Her eyes fell upon the empty coffee cup that Barry had been nursing before she had arrived. "Is that yours?"

"Yeah," Barry replied, "but it's empty."

"Perfect." Kara's hand reached out and grabbed it, and she popped the lid off of her own drink before pouring half of it into his previous cup. She then replaced the lid onto the drink-that-shall-not-be-named and discreetly placed it onto an empty table nearby. "Here," she offered, handing him back his cup. "An equitable solution."

"You don't have to."

"I insist," she stated, slightly shaking the cup enough to cause the liquid inside to ripple. "It is good. Trust me."

Barry bit his lower lip. This was not an auspicious start to the date. "Well, how can I say no, then?" He reached for the cup and took it from her, bringing it to his lips. The rich aroma was readily apparent, and he took a small sip. The almost-overwhelming sweetness of it burst out in his mouth like fireworks on the Fourth of July, and his lips curled up slightly.

"It's good," he noted. "Really sweet, like you said, but not to the point where it'd be overpowering or nauseating."

"Mmhm," she hummed. "I wish that the coffee shops in Smallville would have drinks like this. The closest was Ma's—I mean, Martha's—hot cocoa. That, on a cold winter night wrapped up in blankets beside the fireplace, is a blessing."

"That sounds really nice," Barry wistfully replied. And it was. With just a few words, she had painted a warm, homely feeling of domestic relaxation, like something out of a fairy tale or perhaps a made-for-television movie. There was even a certain nostalgia in there for something that he had never personally experienced in recent memory. "I wish I had gotten to try some of that during the Christmas party last year, but unfortunately I think I was too late to get any."

She smiled. "Only because Arthur drank too much. I am sure that Martha will make more next year." Her smile seemed to fade just a little at that.

"So," Barry began, sensing the momentum of the conversation begin to fade, "how have you liked Smallville? I know that you said it wasn't exactly the center of the world."

"I was more teasing Clark about that," Kara admitted. "Smallville is small, but it is also big in its own way. I have gotten to know the people of the town better than I ever did those around me on Kandor. Size is not everything."

Barry almost spat out a little bit of his drink. He supposed double entendres were still out of her wheelhouse.

"The Kents bring me many places around town," Kara continued, seemingly not noticing anything out of the ordinary. "On Sundays, they go to church, which I have learned is a religious institution on this world. I do not quite understand their belief, but I have read the holy book there." She shrugged. "It is interesting enough. Are you a member of that faith?"

Barry cleared his throat. His memories diverged on that topic, at least as far as his parents went. Another change from how his world used to be. He decided that speaking about his original world would be more genuine rather than speaking about the memories he had inherited. "My dad is, uh, Jewish, though he doesn't really practice. Oh, and Judaism is kinda like the original that Christianity started from, if you didn't know."

"I do," Kara replied.

"My mom…" Barry continued. "She… was religious. Pretty devout. Didn't just go one day of the week or anything. When both my parents were still, um, around, they brought me to church on Sundays." He pursed his lips. "My dad, in this world, is apparently the religious one now, but I haven't really gone back since she died."

Kara seemed to sense the tension in him, and she placed one hand on his. Her hand was warm and strangely soft, though he supposed that even farm labor wasn't likely to create callouses on the skin of a Kryptonian.

"Did, uh, Krypton have any religions?" Barry finally asked, ending the moment. He took another sip of his drink, and she withdrew her hand.

Kara seemed to think for a moment. "In the past, there was the Cult of Rao. Rao was Krypton's star, and many Kryptonians worshipped it as a deity. By the time I was born, this had become a minority belief. Zod and his people were professed worshippers of Rao. They called themselves the Sword of Rao." Her gaze became unfocused. "Faora, though, was a true believer. She believed that Rao gave life to everything on Krypton and was fascinated by it. I did not believe in it. Nor did my parents or aunt and uncle."

Sun worship was a familiar enough concept to Barry, though it seemed oddly quaint compared to the advanced technology that Kryptonians had possessed before their planet's destruction. They fell silent for a little bit after that, enjoying their drinks in relative quiet.

"How about you, Barry?" Kara finally asked. "How have you been recently?"

How had he been? Barry honestly didn't know. "So-so, I'd say," he confessed. "It's been like autopilot for the past few weeks. The semester's just about done, so I'm about to graduate, for what that's worth."

"I believe congratulations are in order, then."

"Thanks." Barry faintly smiled. "Though honestly, I'm not sure if that's a big deal or not. Barry here had things more on lock than I did. Now I want to go to law school, which is crazy."

"Why is that?"

"Well, in my original world, I became a forensic scientist. That's what I wanted to do because of what happened with my parents. I felt like…" he gripped his cup tightly, "if there was just some evidence, some physical evidence, that could've exonerated my dad, then he wouldn't have spent all of those years in prison for something he didn't do. Here, all of that was the same, except instead of wanting to find that kind of evidence, I've apparently chosen the legal defense route instead. The grades and exam scores are certainly there for it."

Kara looked at him quizzically. "Is there anything wrong with this profession?"

"I mean, not really? Lawyers don't have a great reputation, but I can understand why going into criminal defense makes sense. It even feels right to me, which feels weird by itself." He paused. "I think that the split is what's doing my head in. Were it not for some things changing, either path would have seemed completely plausible. It's like I'm not really me anymore, or at least not fully the same Barry Henry Allen that I was."

"I feel the same," Kara revealed. "My memories of Krypton are much the same, but this Kara," she gestured down at herself with both hands, "never faced the imprisonment and torture that I did." She frowned. "If I was the one that faced that time to begin with."

The conversation seemed to be heading toward a darker place than Barry preferred, and Kara seemed to sense that too, so she shook her head. "So, what are your plans after this graduation?" she asked.

"Apparently, I'm just about locked in for another three years of schooling," Barry sighed. "So between two lifetimes, that's a solid ten-ish years in higher ed. My brain's going to be fried after this."

"We could always trade places," Kara offered, the faintest impression of a grin beginning to appear on her face. "You can help Jonathan and Martha with this year's harvest, and I will sit for your exams and schooling."

"Somehow, I don't think my classmates would believe that Barry Allen is an attractive woman," Barry said, before rapidly blinking. "I mean, uh…"

She raised an eyebrow with a smile. "I will accept the compliment. You are good looking, yourself. Both versions of you." She tilted her head. "It is strange since your appearances are not very alike, but in many ways, I can see similarities regardless."

Barry absentmindedly touched his own face. "Huh. It took me months to get used to seeing this face and blond hair in the mirror every morning."

"Have you ever thought about how it is that I," she waved her hand in front of her face, "look the same but you do not? That is a strange series of events."

"I talked with Bruce about it before," Barry said, seeing her eyes narrow slightly at the mention of the man's name. "The working theory is that multiversal mechanics are complicated at best, and that whatever happened to pull you, me, and Zod into this world wasn't a straightforward 'hopping between universes' kind of thing." He leaned back in his wooden chair. "More likely than not, you and Zod got pulled about as directly as can be from the past world. That's the only explanation that makes sense."

She blinked in clear confusion. "That does not make sense."

Barry nodded in acquiescence. "Fair. But that's all we have to go on for now."

Kara nodded. "I will admit," she changed topics, "that your schooling sounds interesting to me. Kandor did not have institutionalized learning by the time I was born. Instead, children were expected to learn on their own, with cyclical assessments to test proficiency. Of course, the process of genetic imprinting meant that everyone's profession was chosen before birth. It is still a little hard to imagine a world where that is not so."

"Ha," Barry chuckled. "Like half of my classmates in undergrad didn't even know what major they wanted. I myself swapped once as well. It's pretty common on Earth, or at least in America."

"Curious," Kara noted. "Perhaps I should visit sometime and see what these classes and majors are like. The experience could be enlightening."

"Well, the big lectures are actually pretty dry. There's like two hundred people or more sometimes, and the lecturer—" He stopped when he felt his phone buzz. The vibrating pattern of his phone in his pocket made him whip it out instantly. It was the specific pattern that Bruce had coded for Justice League-related alerts. His eyes quickly scanned over the text of the alert.

"What is it?" Kara asked.

"It's Lois," Barry said, already halfway out of his seat. He grabbed his empty cup. "She needs help."

"It is okay," Kara replied simply, also standing up with her empty cup in hand. "Let us go."

"Um, I don't know if you brought your suit, and I could probably handle this myself if you've got—"

"I brought my skinsuit," Kara said, tossing her cup into a nearby trashcan. Barry did the same. "I left it on the roof of the building." She slipped out of the door, easily holding it open for Barry to do the same with a quick thanks. The street was almost empty, with the nearest pedestrians heading away rather than toward them.

"Meet you there, then?"

Kara grinned. "I will race you."

"Don't say that," Barry warned. "If you want a race, you'll get a race, and I never lose those."

"Did you not lose a race to Clark just a few weeks ago?"

Barry scoffed. "That was for charity, Kara. And it was a tie. If I'm racing you, I'm going to do it for real."

Kara's response was to fly up. Barry rolled his eyes and entered the Speed Force, feeling that electric surge of speed course through him. In a flash, he had replaced his clothes with the suit stored in his ring, making sure that Kara was indeed looking up and not downwards at him. Faster than the blink of an eye, he was already halfway up the low-rise brownstone building that Dan's was housed in. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kara's gaze shift over to him. He half-turned, waving at her with a big smile on his face, as he zoomed past her to the flat roof of the brownstone. A half-second later, and she was there too, a clear second place for a race that had only taken about a second in total to begin with.

If he had his full speed—the speed that he had at Pozharnov and used to run over a decade backwards in time with—the difference in time would've been even more stark.

"You are fast," Kara commented, picking up a small non-descript black backpack that had been leaning against the brick railing that enclosed the rooftop. "I never realized how fast you were."

"That's not actually my full speed," Barry responded. "I haven't been able to go as fast as I could since getting to this world. And," he held up a bundle of the clothes he had been wearing just moments prior, "any faster and I would've lost all of this."

She nodded, pulling off her jacket to reveal bare arms and shoulders. Her tank top seemed rather revealing without the jacket on, and Barry quickly spun around as he realized that she was changing clothes. "Uh, I'll let you change."

"I am finished."

His head half-turned to see Kara standing in her Supergirl outfit already, red cape billowing slightly in the breeze.

"Did you want to hold onto those clothes, or do you want to just keep them in my bag?" Kara offered, gesturing at the bundle he was holding onto.

"Oh, thanks," he quickly said, handing it to her. She hastily folded the clothes and slipped them into her backpack.

"Now," Kara said, turning back to Barry, "where is Lois?"

To Be Continued

Notes:

After discussing with some readers, I've realized that Charlie Hunnam was a bit of a miscast for Barry Allen, so I'm doing my first "recast" for the part. Feel free to leave comments discussing it or suggesting recasts for other characters if you feel that any of them have been miscast.

It's also worth noting here that the new castings are meant to be largely instructive in terms of general appearance and not particularly important in specific characteristics. For example, the Barry Allen of this universe is blond with blue eyes, but beyond that, physical descriptors from the casting choice aren't particularly important (I might describe him as "broad shouldered" or "fit" from time to time, but that's usually relative and not much more than a generic descriptor).

On the other hand, returning castings (Michael Keaton, Michael Shannon, Sasha Calle, etc.) are important in that they are connecting to preexisting continuities. I suppose there's nothing wrong with headcanoning the entirety of, say, Man of Steel with a different actor as Zod and then carrying said actor into this story, but that general idea is that these are familiar faces returning in a new world, so the specific casting for those characters actually does matter to a degree.

Casting:

Barry Allen: Lucas Till (X-Men: First Class)