Archive of Our Own

“But we don’t have to time to wait for a year for them to finish the bridge,” Wally said.

“We don’t have to,” Cisco said. “Think-”

“Forth dimensionally, right,” Wally said. “It doesn’t exist now, but it will exist when we get back to the future.”

“Exactly. We just have to hit eighty-eight miles an hour before we reach the end of the line.”

“What about the train?”

“That will fall into the ravine. I’m almost sad we’re going to miss it.”

A shout came from the distance and they both turned. A carriage was out of control, heading for the cliff edge.

“Great Scott, come on, Dante!”

He kicked his horse and galloped towards the carriage.

“I still can’t believe he named his horse after his brother.”

Wally raced after him.

He caught up in time to see the carriage tumbling down the cliff, the horses barely scraping the ground, and a lanky man in Cisco’s arms. He gazed up at Cisco with wide-eyes, awestruck.

“You saved my life,” he said. “How can I ever thank you?”

“It’s what any decent person would do,” Cisco said. Wally gulped. This was not good.

“I’m Bartholomew Allen. Barry.”

“Oh. Um. Francisco Ramon. Cisco, call me Cisco. I mean. I would like for you to call me Cisco. If you want.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Cisco,” Barry said. “I’m lucky you were here. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, to repay you...”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’d like to.”

“Then maybe you can let me walk you home?”

Barry smiled and nodded.

Wally pulled out the photograph he’d taken in the eighties before travelling back to find Cisco. He’d found out who Iris was- a however many great aunt of his who’d found him after he’d hidden the DeLorean and taken him back to the West Family Farm- and now Barry...

He had to get Cisco out of town by Monday.

“Cisco,” Wally said. “You lied to him. You know you’re not going to be seeing lots of him.”

“Well, I might check on him tomorrow. Mister Allen did nearly end up at the bottom of Allen Ravine. Huh, I wonder when they renamed it.”

“1889, after some school teacher-” Wally cut himself off and both he and Cisco looked back at the house. “They named it after the teacher who fell in.”

“I think we just changed history.”

“It’s probably going to be fine,” Wally said. “Right?”

“Wally, you, Jenna, and Joanie were nearly erased from existence when we went back to the eighties." Cisco ran his hand through his hair. "And we saw what happened when Zoloman gave himself the almanac.”

“But we fixed that. We did fix that, didn’t we? He killed Dad, Cisco, and Cecile didn’t know me, Mom’s sick, I can’t lose them too. And Linda-”

“You burnt it, that should have set our timeline right. Joe will be fine, Linda will wake up and hopefully think all this was a dream. But Mister Allen... We don’t know what saving his life will do. I should never have invented that thing. Once we get back to 2018, we have to destroy it.”

“Agreed,” Wally said. “And until then, you have to stay away from Mister Allen and my Aunt Iris.”

“And you need to stop calling her Aunt Iris, she thinks you’re Max Mercury, a traveller from Keystone. Which doesn’t exist yet.”

“1889 is the year she disappeared. It’s an old family story, no one knows what happened to her. Dad thinks she met a man her father didn’t approve of.” He looked down at the photograph. “’Forever in our hearts, Iris and Barry’, that does sound like Dad was right. So maybe today wasn’t the day he was supposed to fall in the ravine. Maybe he has to meet Iris first, fall in love, then he dies, and she leaves. So we didn’t change history. But that means he’ll die still, he seems nice. Maybe he just faked his death and ran away with Aunt Iris, that’s a much better story. What do you think, Cisco? Cisco?”

He was gazing back at the house. Wally could see a lit candle by one of the windows.

“Cisco,” Wally said. “We’re stuck in the past a hundred years before you’re born and we’re leaving before Monday. You know you can’t, don’t you?”

“I know,” Cisco said. He sighed. “We should get back to town before it gets too dark.”