A/N: Had this done halfway after finishing the previous chapters. So thought I'd finish it before going on my hiatus. I hadn't partially completed Out into the Light, or A New Life, after the previous chapters. So new chapters for those stories would be coming back at the end of my two-month hiatus. Cheers.
The West Household, ten minutes later.
It had been a little over ten minutes since Iris waked back into the house. She was holding her drink and talking to Caitlin and Wally, while Joe was talking with Cisco. While Iris was listening to what Caitlin was telling Wally as she explained about Barry becoming the Flash, Iris looked back at the front door as she felt a tug in her chest. She knew how upset Barry was at the loss of his father, and coupled with the murder of his murder, and the fact that two of his mentors… the fake Harrison Wells, or Eobard Thawne, and Hunter Zoloman betrayed him. She knew that it may have been too much for Barry, and that he probably wanted some time to himself.
So she looked away from the door, and laughed at something Caitlin had said. But the tug in her heart kept on pulling, as if it was trying to tell her something. That something was wrong. Excusing herself before heading for the door, Iris opened it and looked out into the empty porch. There was a slight chill in the air while the trees swayed, and the leaves rustled because of the gentle breeze. Iris crossed her arms over her chest to keep herself warm as she stepped out onto the porch, and then sat down on the stairs that led to the front lawn.
'So this is what it's going to be like dating a superhero,' thought Iris as a smile developed on her face, 'it's been a long time coming, Barry. We're destined to be together. Just.. just come home to me.'
It was a few minutes later that Iris, who up to that point was sitting alone on the porch stairs, was joined by Caitlin and the others. With Caitlin handing the young woman a cup of hot Apple Cider, while the others sat on the porch with their legs hanging off the edge, she then sat with Iris together on the stairs.
After an hour of everyone talking about their adventures and heartbreaks that year, followed by a mini-memorial of Henry, Cisco asked the question that was in the back of everyone's minds.
"I guessed that Barry's out somewhere running off his grief," said Cisco while he looked out at the empty street with cars parked on either side, "but hasn't it been a bit too long? Shouldn't we be contacting him or…"
"He just lost his dad, Cisco," frowned Caitlin.
"I know," said Cisco while waving his hands about and saying that he didn't mean it in a criticizing way, "all I'm saying is that even after he's faced the worst days of his life being the Flash, he's always back with us. Talking it over with us. And it's been more than an hour."
"It's going to be alright," said Joe with a bit of uncertainty on his voice as he and Iris looked at each other. He then repeated himself as he turned to Caitlin, and then at Cisco, and Wally.
"Maybe he just wants to be alone?" asked Wally while Cisco and Caitlin looked at each other worried. Except for Wally, everyone on the porch knew Barry well enough that they knew he wouldn't be away from them for this long. At best, he would come back and then grieve in private; that was what they knew was the best part of Barry Allen… that despite how down he got, he would still think of the people who cared about him. He knew enough not to worry them, and not to worry Iris.
That was the thought going through Iris' head. It was the fact that the both of them loved each other. Iris knew in her heart that he wouldn't leave her alone, that he would come back because she was still in the world. Iris knew that no matter how much bleak things would get, Barry would never up and leave.
Everyone looked at each other, the air was suddenly thick with worry. It was then that everyone got up onto their feet and took out their phones. All Wally could do was just looked around at t eh people around him, not knowing what to tell them.
"I'll call Barry," said Joe as he dialled his phone while putting his hand up, signalling everyone to hold off calling the young man. Joe then placed his phone on his ear while looking at Wally, and then at Iris, "maybe Wally's right, and he just wants to be alone."
"The subscriber you have called is out of the calling area?" Joe said to himself as he looked at his phone's screen after hearing the computerized voice, which indicated that Barry could be in an area with no cell phone reception. Joe looked up and around at Cisco, who was looking on worried.
"Maybe Barry just doesn't want to talk to us?" asked Caitlin, "I mean, he ran all the way to Nanda Parbat last year before the whole confrontation with fake Wells, so… maybe he's running over the ocean to an isolated island so that he can be alone with his thoughts?"
However, the sound of uncertainty in Caitlin's voice revealed her worry about not knowing where Barry was at that moment. Iris then asked Caitlin if that was what she really believed, that Barry was somewhere on an island without his friends. Wordlessly, and even though she knew that she could be right, Caitlin… as well as Cisco, shook their heads.
"I can use the STAR Labs satellite to track Barry's suit," said Cisco, who wanted to believe Caitlin, that all Barry wanted to be was alone. But he also knew that Barry would have at least known to call them and say that he just wanted to be left alone for a while before he left the country. It was then that the five of them piled into two cars and headed back to STAR Labs in a hurry.
It would be several minutes later that the group rushed into the Cortex where Cisco sat down behind the main console with Caitlin by his side, both of them typing furiously on their keyboards while Iris, Joe, and Wally stood behind them. Joe looked over at the worried face on his daughter, and placed a hand on her shoulder. The both of them looked at each other, Iris with tears in her eyes, while Joe wordlessly signalled that everything was going to be alright.
"This is no good," whispered a worried Cisco as Joe, Wally, and Iris looked at him. But before they could say anything, Cisco pointed towards Caitlin and asked her if she had anything.
"Nothing," came the reply as the two scientists looked at each other.
"Guys?" asked Joe.
Caitlin and Cisco looked at each other for a few more seconds before turning to face the West family.
"We can't find him," said Caitlin who looked at Iris' distraught face. Before anyone could say anything else, Cisco told the West's that they were trying to get a lock onto the GPS in Barry's suit.
"We're getting nothing," said Cisco, "we'd have a signal even if he was running, we made the GPS chip so that even when he's running super-fast, we could still track him. If he put the suit anywhere… I mean if he went anywhere without the suit, then we'd get a signal that's standing still… but we have nothing."
"What's that mean?" asked Wally.
"It means we don't know where Barry is," said Caitlin as Iris placed a hand over her mouth while releasing a gasp.
"But we'll find him, Iris," said Joe as he gently squeezed her shoulder before pulling her in for a hug, "we'll find him."
With Iris' back to them, Caitlin and Cisco were looking up at Joe and Wally. Caitlin then suggested that they call Felicity, and ask her to task the Palmer Technologies satellite to help in the search for Barry. While Joe nodded his head as Wally comforted his sister, Caitlin and Cisco swivelled their seats back towards the console, but not before looking at each other with worry on their faces.
They knew that if they still couldn't find Barry, then there was a list of other possibilities. But none of those possibilities weren't good at all since it would mean he wasn't on this Earth anymore.
Sunnydale, California, 2120 hours.
Barry had tried.
Not once. Not Twice. But multiple times to open a breach into the Speed Force. Panting, he needed to take a break, so he ran all the way to Central City. His hope was that he could get his bearings while trying to decided what to do. One option he had was to confront Eobard Thawne, also known as the fake Harrison Wells, and tell him that he knew the truth about who he was. But Barry also knew that would mean changing the future to one where he may not become the Flash. As he continued to run, Barry thought of all the likely scenarios and then suddenly skidded to a stop with a look of shock on his face.
He was standing outside the city limits of what should have been Central City. But there was no Central City, he was staring at a small town of twenty thousand people as he took a few steps back in shock.
"No, no, no," said Barry as he sped into the city, his yellow lightning trailing behind him while he ran through each street hoping that this was a nightmare. He then ran back to the city limits and stopped. He was shaking his head in disbelief before he turned and zoomed off towards Star City. As he ran, Barry already had a bad feeling in his heart as he recalled what Dawn had told him earlier.
That she never heard of Central City.
Shaking his head, Barry then remembered her telling him that she didn't know every single city in the country… so it was understandable if she hadn't heard about it. After all, the particle accelerator was what put Central City's name into the national consciousness.
The worry that was already gripping his heart squeezed tighter when he skidded to a stop outside the city limits of what should have been Star City. He was looking at the lights of a completely different city as he put his hands on the top of his head in disbelief. It was then he made the frightening realization that he was most likely on another Earth. Barry ran as fast as possible from his current location, and hoped against hope that he was on Kara Danvers' Earth. It had been the result of Kara adding to his speed as the both of them raced that formed the breach through the dimensional barrier p. Kara then flung Barry through, and he got home. While he hadn't told his friends about what happened that day due to the pressures of battling Zoom, he was going to once Zoom was taken care off. But then he brought Zoom back to Earth One, followed by what the media and Cisco dubbed the meta-pocalypse, and then came the murder of Henry Allen, and then the race against Zoom. Because of all of that happening, Barry never mentioned Kara to anyone. He still remembered the spunky blonde, and knew that she would do everything she could to help him get home.
However, it was for the third time that Barry's hopes were dashed. There was no National City.
There was no Central City.
There was no Star City.
"Where am I?" asked Barry to himself before he turned and ran back to where he arrived in this Earth, Sunnydale.
A few minutes later, as he stood in front of the sign that welcomed new visitors to Sunnydale, Barry could only hope that his friends would know that something was wrong. He knew that Cisco and Caitlin would try calling him, and then they would try tracking him using the STAR Labs satellite. And then, if that didn't work, he knew they would use the Palmer Technologies satellite. They would scour the Earth for him.
'Then Cisco would use his powers to contact Earth Two and ask Harry if I'm there,' thought Barry to himself as he looked despondently at the Sunnydale sign, 'and when they find I'm not there, Cisco would be able to find me the same way he found me using my burnt suit when I was stuck in the Speed Force. I just worry about Iris, I hope she understands that I didn't do this to hurt her. I just wanted to… to fill this hole in my heart. I hope… no.. I know she knows that we are destined to be together. We will find ourselves. Just like I know that by tomorrow Cisco would have found me, and we'll figure out a way to increase the flow of tachyons into my suit so that I could break the dimensional barrier on my own.'
In the meantime, Barry knew that he needed a place to hide out. At least until the next day.
'I'm not going to be staying here for long,' thought Barry to himself as he sped into the city and then ran up the side of the tallest building in Sunnydale. He was surprised that while there were people around, it was nowhere the number of people that he thought there would be for a city of thirty eight thousand. Shaking off the questions that he had in his mind. Barry took off his cowl and lay down on the hard floor of the roof. He looked up at the stars, and imagined that Iris was lying down next to him… the both of them looking up at the stars in the cloudless sky.
Sunnydale, California, 0730 hours.
With the hot California sun beating down on him, Barry opened his eyes and quickly threw an arm over them. Seeing spots while he closed his eyelids, Barry turned away from the sun and lay on his side. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand before getting up onto his feet, and then looked around. At first, he wondered why he was lying on the roof of a building; all he knew was that he needed to head home, change, and then go to work at the CCPD before meeting Iris.
It was Iris' name that brought a smile to Barry's face, a smile that vanished just as it appeared when the Flash realized where he was.
He was on another Earth far away from Iris, an Earth that had no Central City.
'Cisco hasn't been able to contact me yet?' thought Barry to himself as he walked towards the edge of the roof, and then looked down at the people who were making their way to work. Barry knew that there had to be another way to get of this Earth, that there had to be another way to open a dimensional breach. It was then that Barry bean to wonder as he paced the roof in his suit, 'I opened a breach into the Speed Force. Not a breach into the multi-verse. So how did I…'
Barry then looked up with his eyes wide open. He remembered Zolomon chasing after him, and then he remembered running fast.. faster than he had ever ran before.
'And then that breach opened in the Speed Force,' thought Barry to himself while shaking his head, 'it must have sent me to the past, on another Earth. Great, Barry… just great. Cisco hasn't contacted me yet.. but that doesn't mean that he won't. I need to walk a few steps back, breath in, calm down, and then think of a solution. The places that I know don't seem to exist in this Earth. But how about the people? Do Caitlin and Cisco exist? Does Joe exist? Iris and Wally? Harry? I need to find out.'
Taking a deep breath, Barry then ran down the side of the building and onto the street below. All the people he was running past could see was a blur of lightning, followed by a gust of wind. The young man continued running and he soon passed a store that made him do a double take while he was running. Everything, from Barry's perspective, had slowed down so he did manage to get a good look at the name of the store.
'The Magic Box,' thought Barry as his eyes shifted down to an older man who had the door open, 'must be souvenirs, or something. Or fake crystals balls, and those weird crystals.'
As he dashed past the Magic Box, the old man; Rupert Giles, re-instated Watcher, looked back while he was holding the door open when he felt a gust of wind from behind him. Looking around the surrounding area confused, Giles then shook his head and said that it was just his imagination playing with him. He then walked into the store, and prepared for that mornings business day.
In the meantime, Barry was running past a coffee shop, the Espresso Pump. As he was running by, Barry noticed that someone was using a laptop. Getting an idea in his head, the Flash changed direction, and then ran up the stairs at super speed. He weaved past two young women walking towards him and then onwards to the table where a young man was typing. Barry took the laptop and then ran off. He ran into an alleyway just behind the coffee shop while hearing the young man complaining that his laptop just vanished.
'Sorry', thought Barry to himself as he check the internet connection on the computer, and smiled when he found it still had a strong signal.
He then searched for Caitlin. With this being the age before the advent of Facebook, Barry had to search for information on his friends using other alternatives. And his face fell when there no results of a Caitlin Snow.
He found similar results for Cisco Ramone, Joe West, Iris West, Harrison Wells, Tess Morgan, Oliver Queen, Felicity Smoake. The alternate versions of the people he knew didn't exist on this Earth, and it was then that Barry realized how much trouble he really was in. He couldn't even find the alternate version of himself, his father, or Nora anywhere online. Shaking his head, Barry then cleared his search history before super speeding with the laptop, and then placed it on the table where the owner seemed to be arguing with one of the servers. After placing the laptop on the table, Barry then ran out of there.
'Ok, new plan,' thought Barry to himself as he ran around the city, 'the multiverse has billions, trillions, of alternate Earth's. And it could take Cisco a while to find me. In the meantime, I need to find a place to stay. And I need money. I remember that my Earth's cash didn't work in Kara's Earth, so I doubt that what I have will work here. So I need money, and that means a job. I also need a way to patch up my suit, can't have the Flash running around with strips of the suit hanging off. And I need something to wear as a civilian.'
Barry then ran into a store and took some clothes and a cap before running out. He silently apologized for having to steal the clothes that he had changed into, while he stuffed his suit into a bag that he 'borrowed' from the same store. Barry then flung it over his shoulder, and then ran onto another store, and took a map of the city. After he ran into an alleyway, he walked out of it while looking at the map. He made mental notes of what he needed to do before he could do anything else, at least until Cisco found him.
He had to live in this world.
Barry had been walking for an hour while he took in some of the city before stepping into the U.C. Sunnydale campus. He then made his way to the library with his cap drawn low on his face, to hide it from the security cameras while occasionally vibrating his face so that his face wasn't seen. He knew that he needed to be careful since what he needed to do was going to be risky. The young man found a row of unoccupied computers, and then he selected one that seemed to be facing slightly away from the security cameras.
Taking a seat, Barry looked at the computer screen and then smiled. The young man was already good at computers, and ever since he had seen Cisco and Felicity do their magic, Barry had retained some of that information which he built on by himself, to become an expert. He even had enough expertise to create an algorithm to find Livewire back on Kara's Earth, and he knew he needed to put that same information to use if he was going to have a life, no matter how temporary, in Sunnydale.
First of all, he needed to do some research this particular Earth, so he accessed the internet, and read as much news as he could about every major thing that had happened. Barry then accessed information of the city that he was in, Sunnydale.
And what he saw surprised him.
'For a city of this size,' Barry thought as he skimmed the reports online, 'there are a lot of homicides. This says that it's mostly gang related violence, some occult related gangs, and… is that right? Barbeque fork killers? What the hell? And that many graveyards?'
With a frown on his face, Barry then resolved to check things out at the morgue. He needed to know what was going on as long as he was stuck on this Earth. He then thought to himself that he needed to set up an identity before he went on trying to investigate some of these deaths as the Flash.
"Here we go," whispered Barry as he went on to creating a worm that would surreptitiously infect multiple databases with his identity. As he was typing furiously on the keyboard, Barry thought about the story he had to come up with as a cover, 'born in the year… yeah… that'll be the same since I don't exist on this Earth. My blood type, my Social Security number, my degrees, my occupation, my colleges; some of those would have to be changed. Then I have to input a few more things… and then… and then my name.'
Thanks to the speed at which Barry's mind processed information, the young man managed to complete a highly complex digital worm in under four hours, with him occasionally looking over the screen to make sure that there was no one onto him. Barry then pressed one final button before leaning back on his seat.
'And Barry Allen lives.' Barry thought to himself as he slung his bag over his back while watching the worm being uploaded into the internet. Once it was uploaded, Barry stood up, 'Felicity would be so proud of me. But I have a feeling that Joe would probably ground me.'
Barry then cleared everything off the computer before leaving the library. As he walked down the stairs into the hot, sunny day, Barry turned to his left and continued walking. He looked at all the people around him before he walked past a redhead, a brown haired young man, and two blondes who were walking alongside them . With his cap low over his face, he didn't notice the look that one of them had given him as he walked past.
"Buffy, are you gonna be patrolling to find this speed demon?" asked the redhead who was looking at one of the blondes, "I think I have a spell that'll slow him down before you send him back to whatever demon dimension he came from."
"But… but…" said the other blonde as she looked at Barry walk away into a crowd of people.
"Tara?" asked the redhead who turned and narrowed her eyes, hoping to catch sight of what her girlfriend had seen, "you see something?"
That was a question that Tara couldn't answer as Buffy and Xander looked at her as well. After finding Dawn the previous night at the playground, they had returned to the Summers home. It was there, after the search party returned, that Dawn had told Buffy, Tara, and the others about the mysterious red suited man who ran out of a blue hued breach. While Dawn believed that the man didn't mean them any harm, especially since he seemed to want to protect her, Buffy didn't feel the same way. She reminded Dawn that the only thing they had seen portals open into were hell dimensions.
"Do I have to remind you about Acathla?" asked Buffy. And Dawn was about to say something while holding onto her mother before Buffy sighed at the expression on Dawn's face. She then said that they'll need to find this 'demon' and question him.
Back in the present day, Tara lost sight of the young man whose aura seemed to have yellow lighting crackling along his body. His face was hidden by the shadow caused by the lip of the cap he was wearing, so she hadn't gotten a good look at his face. But Tara could tell that the feeing she got off him when he passed them wasn't that of an evil person.
In fact, under the crackling yellow energy that seemed to travel around his body and aura, Tara felt sadness, loneliness, but there was also warmth. She also saw a mixture of emotions that confused her coming off the young man who had gone out of her sight. However, most importantly, Tara could tell from his aura that the young man was a human.
But then again, she remembered what Dawn had told them. She remembered Buffy chuckling as Dawn told them about the mysterious man in a red suit with a lightning bolt on his chest. That he came through a portal; which made Giles, Buffy, Willow, and Xander believe that it was some sort of human looking demon. It was Willow who added that it could simply be a good demon, with Buffy saying that either way.. they needed to know what it was.
So when Tara saw the yellow lightning crackling on the young man's aura, she wondered if he could be the one who came through the portal. But the young man, at least from what she could tell, wasn't a demon. But there was no proof of that fact.
"Tara?" asked Barry.
"Baby?"
"I.. I just thought I saw someone from home, Willow," lied Tara as she looked at the redhead, and then at the direction the mysterious young man had gone.
"Your family?" asked Buffy as she looked around, as did Willow and Xander, "again?"
"No," said Tara, unsure of what to make of the young man, "ummm… maybe I was just seeing things. So… we… we were taking about Buffy going on patrol?"
As Buffy and Willow started to talk again about the 'demon', Tara occasionally looked back as they continued to walk towards the second exit of the university. They had to meet with Giles at the Magic Box; now they had two things to deal with… the speed demon, and Glory.
TBC