Chapter Text
Julian's blackouts
He wakes up on the floor of his bathroom with no idea what he last did. There's a vague memory of brushing his teeth. Running a tongue over them, he doesn't taste the mintiness he should find there.
It isn't like before, no glowy artifacts freaking him out to blame his passing out on. It isn't any less disconcerting. He could have hit his head if he was unlucky. No harm done though (he assumes).
Getting up the courage he goes to a doctor for a check-up – everything's essentially fine. His blood pressure is a tad high, quite possibly his nerves about the ordeal.
It happens again.
He comes to standing in an alley in the dead of night. Not passed out, not this time. He needs another explanation he hasn't got for what the hell is going on with him. Clenching his fists they feel strange, the sensation wrong. Looking down at his hands shows a shock of skin glinting wet in the scant light of the moon above. He moves under a street light to see better, letting out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding in when he confirms it’s not blood.
Why would it be blood? he scoffs at himself. He knows though that's what he's been fearful of each time. As if the lack of literal blood on his hands is some proof that things will be okay.
There wasn't blood before, in India, and things were decidedly not okay then either. But it's a marker for how bad it could get, one that he clings to, hoping whatever he has potentially done it isn't violent. It could always be worse.
He won't let himself think of how many things he is capable that wouldn't leave a mark, at least not on him.
Moving to CC
There are many good reasons for him to move to Central City. For starters, people who have inexplicable blackouts aren't exactly weird considering a sizeable portion of the city's inhabitants have superpowers. Becoming the CSI specialist for metahuman cases sounds like a nice change from him feeling like the odd duck.
Not knowing why he has the blackouts or what he might be doing each time, if anything, makes him worried that the longer he stays in one place the more likely something... unpleasant will crop up - something like what happened at the dig site. He tries to bury that thought any time it pops up. He wouldn't ever admit it out loud but he's running scared, skittering across America under the guise of better job offers - career advancement he tells people.
There's another, deeper, undercurrent to it. An unconscious pull that might have been obvious if he'd thought to chart his progress across a map. He's always been moving towards Central City. The decision clicks with him, lightens the load on his shoulders. And he can't see past his plentiful excuses to the real reason: relief at continuing his path of least resistance towards its inevitable conclusion.
Meeting Barry
From the moment they meet, Barry Allen grates on him.
His voice is cheerful – too cheerful Julian rationalises. He looks happy, which Julian should not begrudge but it rankles him irrationally. Barry acts like he owns the lab Julian is assigned to as well, behaving as if he's graciously allowing Julian to share what is his instead of doing what he's told.
Within five minutes, Julian knows he can't stand Barry. He suppresses a groan at what he's gotten himself into. Grin and bear it. He wants this job, wants to be here.
To everyone else, Barry is a stand-up guy; Julian's problem mainly turns out to be that Barry stands up and buggers off a dozen times a day. Sometimes he simply turns around to find Barry vanished, no explanation given.
Once Julian realises how casually – disrespectfully - Barry treats his work and hours he doesn't bother trying to shake his annoyance. It's clear Barry has no regard for punctuality, nor following protocol about breaks or food in the workspaces.
It's veritably easy to hate him when Julian racks up all the rules he's broken. That's so much easier than re-examining why it was so effortless to hate Barry in the first place. Because in a sense it doesn't feel like he's just met Barry, but Julian isn't one to believe in past lives, that wouldn't fit with his stringent scientific perspective. Neither does his dislike of Barry entirely fit with how he usually reacts to such situations. Normally he has it in him to be less of a stickler about the rules in aid of departmental harmony, but not this time. He can't let go of the anger, rising up inside at the sight of the man. So instead he bends the facts to his view.
Questioning his sister's illness/death
They never talked in any detail about Emma's delusions. It was hush hush in the family, him and his parents receiving pitying looks from most of his other relatives. His parents got her special care, the best they said - kept her safe, secreted away. Busy with his dissertation, he could only visit occasionally. She would fluctuate between seeming perfectly normal - talking about the tennis or her latest read - and looking past him, through him, babbling fragments that made little sense.
After she got worse, after she died, no one talked about what had happened at all. They considered it a tragedy - it was - her taken so young. They brushed it off as unfortunate, unexplainable.
Many years later, after he's seen much to expand his worldview to include the impossible, he realises he never considered what happened. He got lost in grief, and then his work, and there were no easy answers. Now he reconsiders why - he thinks back on how strong she was, how long she held onto her clarity. He tries to recollect what she used to say...
It isn't too hard with Cisco's help to get access to Emma's medical records, NHS and private. Cisco comments about it being weird, especially with her long dead, but he doesn't refuse.
Julian scours the notes, listens to the session recordings obsessively. He looks for sense where he thought there was none. There are things she says that make it hard to swallow with the implications. Was she Savitar's first victim? Was she strong, resistant, where he was not? Or is he just looking for a false meaning in the stream of consciousness that is captured there.
The worst thing about it all is, there are still no easy answers. He will never know definitively.
Finding out about Savitar's origins
Barry is Savitar. It sounds absurd to him; as time travel does as a whole.
Another Barry, in his head. A Barry puppeteering him across time, across dimensions. From the bloody Speedforce.
Because of that damned stone he was intent to dig up. Momentarily he blames himself before he remembers he never had a real chance against those kinds of pseudo-mystical forces. Savitar is to blame.
It's weird to think of Savitar as Barry. Not the Barry he knows, but clearly if Savitar knows what they will do, he shares Barry's memories – Savitar knew him. He had the advantage, playing on Julian's insecurities. Maneuvring him like a pawn.
He hates it. Of all the explanations possible it's the most infuriating. He had no choice.
But it's freeing to learn it too. He had no choice. It was never really him.
It wasn't your fault, Barry said, undoubtedly blaming himself.
Don't be so hard on yourself, Caitlin said, even as she struggled with her demon inside.
A part of him will probably always blame himself. Doubts about his willpower, how he could have faced up to the truth earlier. Now he has the evidence to strike back at those doubts.
3x15 using his connection to Savitar
When he disappears from his mind, it's like dropping into a void. One he's afraid he won't come back from as intended.
He has a place on the team and it isn't conditional on helping them contact Savitar, he can say no. Fear makes him want to – he does at first - panic rising at the thought of facing that cliff once more and the way they'll look at him, the mouthpiece for their doom. But ultimately he can't refuse. They need him, the only one who can get them answers about Savitar that they have remarkably few of so far.
As he closes his eyes his last thought is what he's been ruminating on lately. The potential he has inside, a possibility he's most scared of these days. What if I hurt them? Hurt the friends he didn't know he needed until they stood up for him... He's sure he could hurt them, or rather, Savitar could. Julian would be powerless to stop him, not aware of the hurt inflicted unless they tell him.
When he resurfaces, their faces are sad, angry: nothing new. Anything he's said unknowingly isn't the root cause. Savitar's words are only reminders, taunts.
The masks he's worn
He's worn a lot of masks already in his life.
Growing up he wore that of the dutiful son – taking on the role of the polite socialite, trying to behave properly. Yet his actions were incongruous with the attempt, they didn't add up right because he never figured out all the unspoken rules. He always slipped up and the mask would make a mockery of him.
He played at model student too, fighting through early years of divided focus and awkward group projects to get to the topic he truly cared about. The easiest mask to wear was that of confident researcher, not so far from the truth, simply exaggerated. Polishing up his enthusiasm, getting it in order, presentation key to getting the all important funding for his projects. He almost felt like he belonged there.
After Emma died his family broke apart and he sought another; finding refuge in the military. Utilising the visage of calm medic, he kept some order in the chaos of battle. He saved people, as close to being a hero as he felt he'd ever be. Until he saw her, begging him to finish the research he'd started years ago.
A darkness was cast over his life from that night on. He played the eager researcher again, but his sole goal was the stone. The illumination it provided casting further shadows into the corners of his mind. Who he was when he found it so far from who he wanted to be. A brother who had failed his sister. A coward who ran.
Then came the time hiding from his wretched destiny. Wearing the camouflage of a normal man, the expat wishing he were home – pretending to be anything more convenient, anything other than what he was. Panicked. Afraid of going home for discovery of what he might have done.
He knows nothing of his time as Alchemy. His actions revealed by the after effects – the husks. All Savitar leaves for him to find is the costume.
On Team Flash, his secret's out, it's the first time in years he hasn't felt like he's lying. They didn't like the person under the cloak he cast off, but it was a respite nevertheless. Eventually they warmed to him, once they grew to understand his ways and he theirs. He was barefaced after an age of wearing mask upon mask. Just Julian now. Prickly but on their side, and they on his.