Chapter Text
It is a summer day, unremarkable only in that he’s had them before and will have them again. The single sun is bright and warm on his shoulders, the sand soft and insistent between his toes. Barry’s supposed to be reading – he brought a textbook he’s been meaning to make corrections on for months. But instead, he’s watching the waves lap against the shore, listening to the sounds of Taako and Magnus attempt a chicken fight against Carey and Killian while Angus eggs them on in equal measure.
Lup lifts up on her elbows from where she’s tanning on the towel next to him. “You can go swim if you want,” she says, and her eyes are full of laughter. “Since it’s your favorite thing and all.”
She teased him mercilessly about that, about what he chose to record to help himself remember. “You hated swimming when we met!” she cried the first time she heard it, her shadowy lich form bent over the coin in the days after Story and Song. “You only started because you were too embarrassed to talk to me!”
Barry blushed and stammered, of course, but he didn’t mind. Her teasing meant her presence, and that was something he was never going to take for granted again. He just reached for her incorporeal hands, and once again contemplated blowing himself up so he could hold her properly.
“I’m good here,” he says, and nudges closer to her on the towel.
She laughs, but twists so she’s on her back and grinning up at him. “Just right there?” she asks. “You’re sure you don’t want to be a little closer?”
Well, he doesn’t need to be asked twice.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it, the feeling of Lup’s lips on his. That was true on the Starblaster, even after 53 years. But now… he’s lost her and forgotten her and found her all over again. Being able to touch her is like an everyday miracle.
She hums and sifts her fingers through his hair. She’s been like that, ever since the day of her freedom. Touching everything, seeming lost if she’s not wrapped in something soft. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night to her gripping his hand so hard he thinks it might bruise, blanket around her shoulders and pressed high against her cheeks like a cape.
Barry just pulls her close, on nights like that. He gets it. He has nightmares, too.
Today, though – today is lazy and painted in sunshine, and his heart is calm as he sinks into Lup. He could stay here all day.
Until something hits him in the back of the head.
Lup makes a surprised noise as Barry tips off her, just in time to see a massive beach ball bounce into the sand a few feet away. As it lands, Barry hears Taako shout, “Lulu! Stop corrupting Barold and come show Maggie how to be good at chicken!”
There is an indignant “Hey!” and a loud splash, followed a few seconds later by a Taako spluttering, “Good chicken partners don’t break the code, my dude, you never drop your top!”
Lup is laughing as Barry scrambles into a seated position. He rubs his hand on the back of his neck as he looks at her. “Probably should’ve seen that one coming, huh,” he says.
“Probably, yeah.” Lup makes a face in Taako’s direction. “He’s never going to leave us alone now.”
“Remind me why we like your brother again?”
“Gene pool, we’re stuck with him.” Lup sticks her tongue out at Taako again, then turns back to Barry and tilts her head. Her smile is devilish. “Should we see how uncomfortable we can make him before he breaks?”
“I mean –” and then he is cut off by Lup’s mouth on his, and he loses any thought of protest. This is good. He could live here now.
Until another beach ball hits him in the back.
“This is a family vacation!” Taako yells.
There is a small giggle, and Angus’s voice floats over. “Yeah, Miss Lup, it’s a family vacation!”
“That didn’t take much,” Barry mutters, and Lup grins at him.
“We’ll keep experimenting later,” she says, and then raises her voice to yell at Taako. “‘Ko, you cannot have corrupted tiny Ango so quickly. And you, boy genius, I thought you knew better than to listen to my brother!” She pushes to her feet, brushes sand off her thighs, and smiles down at Barry. Angus and Taako kick up sand on their way over, presumably to stop them from continuing the experimentation, and Barry can’t help but sigh. Especially as Lup adds loudly, “Hey, Ango, did I ever tell you that Barry won a sand-castle making contest in cycle 39?”
Angus tilts his head, pausing right at the edge of Barry’s towel. “I don’t remember hearing about that one in the Voidfish’s song…” he says uncertainly.
“What do you think, Bluejeans?” Lup asks, eyes sparkling as she nudges Barry with her toe. “Care to show off your prowess with beat up ocean rock and a bucket?”
Barry shakes his head, even as he gets to his feet. “First off,” he says, and tries not to get distracted as Lup’s grin widens, “it was not a sand castle making competition, it was an architecture school in a world that just happened to use sand as their building tool. And –”
“Nerd alert,” Lup whispers loudly to Angus, who breaks into a delighted grin.
Barry sighs like he’s trying to be long-suffering, but he’s sure it just comes across fond. “Come on, Angus,” he says. “I’ll teach you about alien sand architecture.”
“That would be great, Mr. Bluejeans, sir! I have so many questions!”
He keeps chattering as they walk down the beach, leaving Lup to hook her arm around Taako’s neck and attempt a noogie. The sound of their slapping disappears into the waves as they get farther away. Barry is getting better at this, he thinks, at leaving her. It barely makes him panic at all now, six months later.
He is trying to organize Angus’s questions in a way he can answer them when he notices a figure, sitting alone with their toes buried in the sand. Once he realizes who it is, Barry makes a decision very quickly. “Hey, Angus?”
“Yessir?”
“Give me a minute, would you?” At Angus’s sound of affirmation, Barry sets off in the sand toward Lucretia.
He comes up to her quietly, his feet barely whispering in the sand. Now that he can remember, all the multiclassing he did is coming to good use. Her eyes are down, fixed on her toes as they wiggle further into the beach. She doesn’t look up as he settles next to her.
“So,” Barry says after a moment, “Lup told Angus I’m an expert in building alien sand castles.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lucretia’s mouth tip up at the corners. “What did you tell him?”
Barry stretches out his legs. “Well, I said it was an architecture school that just happened to use sand, but I probably forgot to mention a few key pieces.”
“Like the fact that you practiced with a plastic bucket and bright green shovel you made Taako transmute for you before giving your master’s presentation.” She is smiling now.
“And that I had help,” Barry points out, and Lucretia ducks her head. She doesn’t seem to want him to see the smile, which is fighting its way off her face. But it’s true. Lucretia was right there with him that year, measuring and sketching and offering suggestions. It was because of her that he learned how to draw an actual blueprint.
Barry digs his hands into the sand. “We miss you, Luce.”
Lucretia lets out a short, pained laugh. “You don’t.”
“We do.” Barry shifts so he’s facing her, ignores the fact that she’s still looking at her knees. “It might not be the same, but hey.” He nudges her shoulder. “We still need you.”
When Lucretia finally looks at him, her eyes are swimming. “Barry. You don’t, and that’s okay. I… I did a dramatic thing.” Her voice breaks, and she tucks her elbows around her knees, tugging them closer. “I don’t regret it. It was the right thing at the time, but I… I understand if you’re mad at me. If everyone is still mad at me.”
Barry lets his eyes track down the beach, to where Taako and Lup are laughing together. Lup sees him looking and starts jumping up and down, waving enthusiastically, before Magnus dunks her in the water. Taako sees who he is sitting with and turns away, so deliberately there’s no doubt of his intention.
Barry sighs. “I think there’s going to be some anger for a while,” he says carefully, “but a while doesn’t mean forever. Even if things are never exactly what they were, they’ll get better. And Luce –” he pauses, nudges her again with his shoulder – “we’re family. I love you, and nothing is going to change that.”
She blinks a few times, opens her mouth, then shuts it again. Barry hesitates, then puts a hand on her shoulder and uses it to push himself to his feet. When standing, his hand is still extended. “Want to help me and Angus make a sand Bureau? We need you for the details.”
Lucretia looks at his hand for a moment, then grabs it and hauls herself to her feet.
And as they step down the beach together, toward Angus’s beaming smile, sand unspools beneath Barry’s feet. It feels the same as it did so many years ago, gritty and soft and shifting under his toes, and promises the same – infinite possibilities. Infinite ways to explore.
He and Lucretia will laugh at Angus’s attempt to make sand castles and teach him what they know about the architecture of other worlds. Later that night, Barry will sit around a bonfire, Lup settled in his lap, and eat fantasy s’mores off sticky fingers. He will bury his face in Lup’s hair and breathe deep while she laughs, wrapping himself in her warmth and her strength and finally – finally – her joy. He will surround himself with his family, finally safe and brilliantly expanded, and soak up the comfort they’ve earned after so many years of running.
And the waves will crash in the background, pushing and pulling in a steady pattern he can match to his heartbeat. The pattern, he knows, as Lup tucks her head against his neck and closes her eyes, that will make up the rest of his life.
There are worse ways to spend the next hundred years.