Flash AU Season 3(Man of Steel Edition)

Summary: An alternate take on Season 3 that expands the Arrowverse into an entire new direction.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Prologue

As usual when Barry appears at superspeed there is the accompanying gust of wind that blows everything about.

"Noooo," Felicity whines as her neat pile of paperwork is ruined. She was down in the Foundry working. It doesn't take much of a guess to know who is responsible for this. She looks up, away to chew Barry out only to see him completely on edge, fidgeting and then he explodes with information.

"So I reset everything. I put everything back to the way that it was before. Except some things weren't the same any more. Not even a little bit."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. Take a breath," Felicity instructs him which he does. "You were talking way too fast. Yeah. What happened?" she asks her friend.

"I really screwed up, Felicity. And this time I don't know if I can fix it," Barry says.

"Yeah, that's not really clearing it up for me," Felicity snarks. She gets to her feet and drags a chair over before physically shoving Barry down into it. "Ok. Start again...at human speed this time."

Barry rubs his face. Where to begin? "After my dad died I couldn't...I couldn't deal with it. It was too much...so I decided to change it."

"Change it?" Felicity queries, not understanding.

"I went back in time and saved my mother."

"Y-You what? Your mother's alive?"

Barry shakes his head. "No. No. You see when I did that I created an alternate timeline...called Flashpoint apparently. It seemed like a paradise at first. My parents were both alive but it wasn't what it seemed. It turned out it was a bad place. A really bad place so I had to reset it. Change it back...but things are different. The world isn't the same as I remember it."

Felicity just looks at him. Barry can do amazing things but this is just incredible. "Okay, let me get this straight. You ran back in time?"

"Yeah."

"Stopped the Reverse-Flash from killing your mom and then lived in an alternate reality where both your parents were alive?"

"Yeah."

"And then you restored the timeline, came back to the moment you left, and noticed that things were different?"

"Exactly."

Does that just happen when you travel through time? Do things just change like that?"

"No, I mean, not like this. Not on... I don't know. I don't know Felicity. I don't know what I'm gonna do," Barry says with increasing desperation.

"Okay, why don't you just run me through... walk me through what happened? And we'll, uh, we'll try and figure it out. So, um, what was so bad about Flashpoint?"

"There was a guy there called Alchemy. He was like a cult leader...and he was, um...kinda like Damien Darhk. You know wanting to see the world burn."

"Charming," Felicity says with overflowing sarcasm.

"Not in the least. Unlike Darhk he succeeded."

"What?!"

"Alchemy...I couldn't stop him and to cut a long story short he basically started World War 3. I had 30 minutes before the warheads hit so I did the only thing I could. Let Thawne kill my mother and reset the timeline. Only as I said things have changed."

"Like what exactly?"

"It started almost immediately after I got back..."

Barry stood on the porch, trying to figure out what Thawne's words meant.

"There we go. Things are back to how they should be. Well, for me, anyway. For you..." Thawne chuckles... "Well, I guess you'll just have to wait and find out."

"What? What does that mean?" Barry asks.

The Reverse-Flash doesn't answer. Only says, "See you sometime soon, Flash."

What was Thawne meaning?

Barry shakes his head, renewed grief threatening to overwhelm him. His parents were gone..again. He turns and heads for the door...only for it to open just as he reaches for the knob. His eyes go wide.

"There you are, Bear. Are you ok?"

Barry's mouth hangs open. "E-Eddie?" he stammers at the sight of a very much alive and well Eddie Thawne. It's only later he will notice a certain gold ring on the man's left third finger.

"Why were you so surprised to see Eddie?" Felicity asks in puzzlement. "He is your brother-in-law...sorta yeah."

"No. No he's not...or he wasn't. Before."

"He and Iris weren't married?" Felicity thinks Barry means.

"No. Eddie wasn't..." he trails off.

"Eddie wasn't what? Blond? A police detective? Living in Central City? Oh gosh, was he actually the Green Arrow instead of Oliver?"

"Alive, Felicity! He wasn't alive!" Barry snaps without meaning to.

Felicity's eyes go wide. "How?" she asks, sounding breathless.

Barry slumps down, the guilt of that awful memory weighing on him like a mountain. "He died stopping the Reverse-Flash. He shot himself and because he was Thawne's ancestor that erased the Reverse-Flash from history."

"But that isn't what happened."

"No. Not in this timeline," Barry knows...well kinda. Not exactly how it happened because how can he ask without revealing everything?

"Well that's good isn't it? Eddie being alive is a good thing."

"Yeah. Of course it is."

"Well you don't sound happy," Felicity notes. Quite the opposite almost.

"It's...complicated."

"Try me."

"You know the last thing I did before travelling back to save my mom was?"

Felicity shakes her head.

"Iris and I were telling each other how we...loved each other."

"Oh!"

"I kissed her and then ran off and now I get back..."

"And she's happily married to Eddie," Felicity can begin to understand where Barry is at.

"You know what else, that's the 2nd time I've erased sharing a kiss with Iris."

"Yeah, I hate it when that happens...which is a thing that has never happened to me so I don't really know why I said that and please God, stop me talking," she babbles.

Barry manages a small smile. At least Felicity hadn't changed. "It's not all good Felicity and I don't just mean my love life."

Barry then goes on to tell her all the other things he has noticed that are different. Felicity in her manner then tries to summarise it all up. "So Cisco's brother is dead, Iris isn't talking to Joe because he lied over her mother still being alive, there's some mysterious metahuman activity involving skin husks and there's a new guy at work you don't know who hates you."

"Pretty much," Barry agrees with the surmise.

"Well that last one doesn't make any sense. Everyone likes Barry Allen. You're like pudding. Everyone likes pudding."

"Apparently not everyone," Barry laments thinking of Cisco and this new guy(new for him) at work; Julian Albert.

"I admit Barry there are some issues there."

"And what if there's more?" Barry asks.

"Well, has anything here changed?" Felicity asks him.

Barry looks around. "No," he says with a sigh. "I mean I think everything seems the same, I think."

"Good," Felicity says with more relief than she expected.

Barry moves over to her computer. "Can I use...hold on," he says.

"Uh..."

"I'll be real careful," he promises as he speed checks everything. "I got it, don't worry. I got it."

Despite his words Felicity is very worried about her precious computer.

"Yeah, I don't know...I mean, everything looks okay," Barry is starting to feel a little relief only to have it crushed. "Wait. Who's that young boy with Dig?"

"No way. He didn't have a kid before?"

"No, he had a kid," Barry says, his voice sounding more desperate by the second. "He has...he has a kid," he corrects himself. "Yeah, it was baby Sara."

"Baby John," Felicity corrects him.

"No. Are you..." Barry says, his voice croaking. What has he done?!

"Oh, my God. It really can affect us," Felicity says in shock as the true scale of what Barry has done finally hits her.

Barry gets up and strides away from the computer. "Okay, you know what? I don't wanna know any more," he says, wishing this was just a bad dream and he would wake up any second.

Felicity is about to say more, give her friend a sort of pep talk when they are joined by someone else. "Hey," the blond greets the figure.

Barry turns round and his eyes go wide. "L-Laurel?" he stammers at the sight of the woman whose very funeral he attended a few months back.

"Hi Barry. What brings you around?" the very much alive Dinah Laurel Lance, dressed in workout gear, inquires. She then frowns slightly as she notices his stunned expression. "Are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."

In a way he has. "I...Uh...um…" he struggles to formulate a response, still too stunned by the blond's apparent resurrection.

Felicity steps in and saves him. "Barry was just dropping by...for some help on a tricky case he's been working on," she makes up on the fly.

"Oh, need a good lawyer?" Laurel offers her services.

"Uh, no, I...I don't think so," Barry replies after a small hesitation.

Laurel shrugs. "If you change your mind I'll just be over there training," she says as she goes over and works the punching bag.

Barry just stands watching her. Something Felicity notices. "Ok, spill, what is wrong with you? Why are you gawking at Laurel so much?" she wonders.

"She's alive," the words just spill from his mouth.

"Of course she's alive," Felicity responds like he's an idiot before she catches on. "Wait. Are you saying she wasn't in the other timeline?"

"No. She wasn't," Barry confesses. "In the previous timeline, Darhk he killed her when he escaped from Iron Heights."

Felicity's brow puckers. "Stabbed her with an arrow?"

Barry looks at her intently, nodding slowly.

"Oh well that happened here too."

"But?" Barry feels there's one coming. Out of the corner of his eye he notices Laurel has quickly given up on the bag and is setting up a couple of coffee mugs on a table at the far side of the room.

"But she was only dead for like a minute. Then she woke up, screaming...and when I say screaming I mean…"

"SCREEE!"

Both Barry and Felicity move to cover their ears as they are assaulted by powerful sonic waves.

"Dammit!" Laurel curses loudly. "Still can't pinpoint it," she complains. The shattered remains of the two mugs now lie everywhere. That feels like an appropriate metaphor as far as Barry is concerned.

"A little warning next time!" Felicity complains as she rings her ears out.

"Sorry!" the blond shouts back. "Need to practice," she explains her reasons.

Felicity waves her off, having endured this for weeks already.

"She has powers," Barry gasps, as it sinks in that Laurel now has powers like her Earth 2 counterpart, Black Siren, that he fought months ago.

"Yeah. Go figure," Felicity says a little too casually.

"How?"

"Not sure. We think her 'death' triggered a metahuman gene none of us knew she possessed."

Barry slumps into a seat again, groaning. "I can't take much more of this."

Felicity can see just how distraught her friend is. She grabs the other chair, pulls it up right in front of him and sits down. "Look, Barry…"

"I've screwed up everyone's lives," he mutters.

"Yeah. You did," Felicity says, seeing no point in sugar coating it. "On the other hand you've told me that both Eddie and Laurel died before and now they're alive."

"Cisco's brother ain't. And baby Sara…" he trails off, guilt threatening to overwhelm him.

Felicity sighs. "Look, I'd be lying if I said I understood this time travel stuff. I mean how many paradoxes are you breaking right now?"

"Maybe I can fix this," he says more in hope than expectation.

"Ok, how?"

"By travelling back…"

"To when? And to do what?"

"I...don't know," his voice breaks and his face falls into his hands.

Felicity takes his hands into his own. "Barry. Look at me," she requests and when he does she can truly see the anguish in his eyes. "Yeah, you could travel back. Over and over I'm imagining but at what price? I don't mean to me or anyone else but to you? How many different timelines are you going to create until you get one that's just right? How many altered histories are you going to have to bear? How many times are you going to see people you love die, live and then die all over again? You can't sit there and promise me you can make something better, can you?"

"No."

"Barry, I know all about driving oneself insane, wishing you could fix things. Believe me I've made so many messes because of that impulse."

Barry looks at the bespectacled woman wondering exactly what she is referring to. Is this something else he's changed?

Felicity carries on. "What I've learned is that one of the most difficult things we ever have to accept is that sometimes we can't fix things no matter how much we may want to. That all we can do is accept it and keep moving forward. I think it's time you do the same. As you said you saw a timeline that was much worse than this one. Do you want to risk bringing that back? Or something, somehow even worse?"

"I know what you're saying makes sense but in my heart…"

Felicity smiles. "Yeah. That is so you're biggest weakness," she snarks.

Barry smiles appreciative of what is trying to do. "Thank you, Felicity."

"You ok, now?"

"Not yet," he says truthfully.

"Well if it helps I have this whole analogy about how you're like pudding," she jokes.

Barry can't help but laugh. Sometimes he forgets just how much he likes Felicity. He means there was one time he even considered her and him being something...more. "You mentioned that already," he points out.

"Oh, well I have others," she grins stupidly.

"I'm sure you do."

They are interrupted by a loud sound of someone clearing their throat. Laurel. "Am I interrupting?" she asks with a smirk.

It is only then that Barry and Felicity realise how close they are to each other. Both jump up awkwardly and comedically.

"No!" the two say together as they walk apart, Barry running his hand through his hair and Felicity straightening out her outfit.

It's all Laurel can do not to bust a gut laughing at the two of them. Though they were very close there for a moment, in deep conversation. She didn't eavesdrop on what was clearly a personal moment but you know, she thinks there was sparkage there.

"I should get back home. Got work to catch up on," Barry mentions.

"Uh huh," Felicity responds. "If you ever need to talk you know how to reach me," she offers.

"I will," Barry says, having a feeling he's going to need someone he can confide in before he can come to terms with his...hubris. "Anyway, good to see you Laurel," he says politely.

"And you Barry. See you…" she stops as the lights cut off.

"Oh come on!" Felicity exclaims, slightly furious. "There must have been an overload," she begins to mutter when suddenly there is a horrible screeching sound coming from all the monitors in the room.

"Uh, guys," Barry says, uncertainty in his voice as he points at the monitors now filled with static with the dark shadow of a face amidst it.

"My name is General Zod."

Author's Note: So yeah this is a slightly altered and extended version of Chapter 25 that plays into an idea I had of merging the Arrowverse with the DCEU and I figured the perfect moment would be just post-Flashpoint. Hell, you can blame the changes caused by Flashpoint if you want but I liked the idea of using the moment Barry is down in the Arrow Cave with Felicity for Zod's grand entrance. Also #Laureldeservedbetter. Anyway thanks to everyone who has previously written reviews.