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He’s still not entirely sure how it happened.
He remembers fighting against some kind of patchwork creature, a horror ripped straight from his nightmares with far too many limbs and teeth. He thinks the creature’s maker was also nearby – yes, he was there, watching the fight with fever-bright eyes and a terrifying intensity. The details are still blurry, but he knows there was some kind of wormhole involved and it’s most likely the reason he’s floating out in space.
Lost.
He would be more worried about the memory loss, but he thinks the concussion he probably has is the reason for it. Either that or the blood loss. He assumes that why he hasn’t started panicking about the situation he’s in either, he can’t concentrate on it long enough for the terror to sink in.
A faint buzzing starts up in his right ear. He isn’t sure if it’s just dizziness or if someone is trying to contact him. He tries to take a deep breath in, but something in his chest causes a wave of pain so strong his vision goes dark for a second. As he struggles his way back into a state of consciousness once again, he realizes that he can hear a voice near his ear.
“—Lantern! Blue Lantern! Can you hear me? It’s ----” the transmission cuts out for a second, “of the Green Lantern Corps. If you can hear me, I need you to respond. Blue Lantern! Blue-”
“I-” He coughs, “I can hear you.”
His voice is weak, but it’s heard by the Green Lantern on the other side, “Oh thank fuck. Are you alright?”
Is he alright? Probably not, considering the dull ache pulsating through his torso. His limbs are also unnaturally numb – to the point he checks to make sure they’re all there. His legs are fine, but when he glances at his right arm, he can tell it’s definitely broken with the way it’s twisted. Then there’s the blood loss and concussion, which all put his current state at ‘injured’.
He thinks he zones out for a while, as when he snaps to attention it’s to the Green Lantern’s seemingly sudden calls.
“Blue Lantern! Blue Lantern! Did we lose connection? Blue Lantern!”
“I’m-I’m here.”
“Name, home sector and species, Lantern.”
“Barry Allen. Sector 2814. Human.”
“Fragile.” He’s not sure he was meant to hear that, but the Lantern continues “Status report.”
“Concussion. Blood loss. Broken right arm. Possible broken ribs. Numbness in the limbs. I don’t know if I have to check for anything else.”
“Shit.” It sounds faint, like the Green Lantern moved the ring away, before coming into focus again, “Can you heal yourself?”
“Not sure. I’ll try.”
The blue glow that surrounds Barry glows brighter, washing away the pain from his chest. His ring chooses this moment to speak.
“Charge at 10 percent.”
He groans. The other Lantern seems to hear this.
“Lantern Allen? Is there an issue?”
“Think I’ve mostly healed my ribs.” Barry coughs, “Battery at 10 percent.”
“Great, just great.” The Green Lantern mutters. “Okay, look – I’m going to disconnect to stop any more of your battery getting drained. We’ll track you down, just try not to move around too much. Anything you want to ask before you go dark?”
“Did you stop it?”
“It?”
“That… creature.”
The Lantern’s voice seems to soften, “Yeah, that issue’s solved. Don’t let yourself fall asleep, alright?”
The buzzing stops. Barry closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. No pain. Good. However, his exhale is a bit too harsh, sparking a jolt of pain in his chest. A stupid action, for sure, but as the gravity of the situation starts to sink in he can’t bring himself to care.
He’s all alone now.
Barry slowly opens his eyes. The universe is splayed out around him, infinite. Stars sparkle and twinkle as far as he can see. Asteroids far away fling by at speeds so high they look like shooting stars. Interstellar clouds and planetary nebulae cover the sky as works of art painted a cosmos we can never truly understand. He isn’t sure there can’t ever be enough words to describe the sight, or how… insignificant it makes him feel.
The Overview effect. That’s what he thinks it’s called on Earth. When astronauts travel to space and realize how fragile the Earth is. How… inconsequential everything they’ve ever experienced is compared to the universe. It’s an odd feeling, melting through his chest like warm, spiced honey. Even after visiting space so often, it still hasn’t quite disappeared from his mind. And it’s sights like these that bring it back to full force.
He… misses Earth.
Misses the sun’s warmth. Misses the blue of the ocean. Misses the forests of trees. Misses the sounds of a busy street. Misses his not always carefully conducted experiments. Misses the flower shop across his apartment. Misses the burrito place on 9th street. Misses his home. Misses Flash-
Ah. Flash.
His best friend. His closest friend. Someone he’d never think he would get close to, but is glad that he has nonetheless. He’s on friendly terms with the reformed Central City Rogues, but they’re a close knit group that have known each other for long enough that he always feels like an outsider.
But being with Flash is… comfortable, in a way he can’t quite describe. They click together seamlessly, slotting into the gaps in each other’s lives so easily that it took him a while to realize how close they’d become.
A gleaming suit. A Hollywood smile. A bursting laugh. Barry wonders how he’s doing.
But the buzz of the comm disrupts his thoughts.
“Lantern Allen? Can you hear me?” It was the same Green Lantern.
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
“We’ve narrowed your sector down but we can’t get a reading for your specific position.”
“Do you need me to send a signal?”
“It’s one option, but it might be a battery intensive one. We’ll have to manually track down the signal and we aren’t sure how long that could take.”
“What’s your suggestion, then?”
“You’re in the area of sector 1024. The GL Corps recently tried to launch an emergency contact system in the region. By any chance can you spot an asteroid belt?”
Barry can’t see any from his current position, but he tries to spin around. When he’s almost 180 degrees from his original position, a line of asteroids come into view.
“Yes.”
“Great. Can you see any specific asteroids that faintly glow?”
“Green?”
“Yeah. Those are our markers. If they’re activated, we can almost instantly make wormholes to the location.”
It doesn’t take him long to spot one. “I can see one. You want me to fly over there?”
“If you think you can.”
“It doesn’t seem to be moving too fast.” He evaluates, “But the other asteroids might be a bit of a problem to navigate through.”
The voice hesitates, “It’s your call in the end, Lantern. We can try the locator or the emergency contact. Both put you at risk.”
Barry has been on the opposite side of a search mission before. In that case, the Green Lantern was too injured and had put out a locator for others to come find her. At the end, she was rescued in the nick of time. A minute later and her battery would have died out. It was at 23 % when that search had started.
His is at 9%.
He can’t waste any time waiting around.
“I’m heading towards the contact.”
“Alright.” The voice seems relieved at his choice, “See you on the flipside, Lantern Allen.” The buzz in his ear stops again, signaling an end to the communications.
The glowing asteroid hasn’t seemed to move far during his conversation (Good), but that’s more likely due to how far he is from the belt (Not as good).
He takes a moment to steel himself, before he goes flying towards the target.
It’s easy enough to get near the belt, but the closer he gets, the more he realizes that he’s underestimated the size of these asteroids. The one closest to him is easily thrice his height, and just as wide. But it isn’t the time to get distracted with this new obstacle - his dwindling battery still hangs over his head like a guillotine.
He follows the glow, ducking under the asteroid in front of him and speeding up to get closer. It’s moving much faster than he expected, but he thinks it shouldn’t be much of a problem when his ring speaks again.
“Charge at 5 percent.”
That… was much quicker than he was expecting. He’s not sure what’s draining the battery so fast, but when he’s so close to the emergency flare he thinks it would be a waste of time to investigate it.
He weaves through the asteroids in front of him as deftly as he can, ignoring the pinch of pain in his torso every time he moves. The contact is almost at his hand’s reach now, he just needs to stretch his uninjured arm far enough to-
‘Shit’
Barry cries out in pain as one of the asteroids slams into his body. The world swims in front of his eyes, and he tries to tamp down on the sudden bout of nausea he starts to experience. A sharp throbbing emanates through his chest, and each gasping breath he takes just increases the pain. There’s no chance his ribs haven’t been re-broken by the asteroid.
Static starts to creep into his vison as he tries to stay conscious. He’s still close enough to the emergency flare to see its glow, but his injuries have flared up too much to be sure he can still reach it.
He tries to follow the glow, ignoring the screaming pain in his chest. The dizziness makes it hard to be sure he going the right way. He just keeps flying and flying and flying and flying-
He can’t be sure if it’s been minutes or hours. The darkness slowly takes over his vison, inch by terrifying inch. But he knows that if he passes out now, there’s no chance for him to get out of this alive-
In a split second, the green glow in his vison is seemingly taken over by the familiar blue of his ring.
He still can’t see well enough to be able to tell what it is, but when a hand grasps his uninjured arm and starts to pull him along an idea starts forming in his mind.
The hand navigates him through the field gently, with only a few rough turns to avoid fast travelling asteroids. In almost no time at all, he’s laid down on the top of the asteroid. Barry’s vision has cleared up just enough by now to spot some of the details of his mystery savior. The suit they’re wearing is… familiar, somehow, but he thinks it looks odd in all blue. He's almost sure there should be some gold-
Ah.
The last piece of the puzzle clicks into place, as his construct of the Flash fades away.
Before he can even start to think about… this, his ring speaks.
“Charge at 3 percent. Caution.”
Ah right. The emergency contact. Barry turns towards the green glow, stretching an arm out. It puts a strain on his broken ribs, but he manages to grab the flare and press it down.
Nothing happens.
Doubt starts to creep in. Did he activate it properly? Was it faulty? Was it even actually a flare he pressed? What went wrong-
His breaths start coming out in short bursts, and static begins to overwhelm his vision. There’s a ringing that has started in his ears, getting louder and louder and louder until he can’t hear anything else. With a sudden clarity, he knows he’s going to faint.
And there’s nothing he can do to stop it this time.
As the last of his vison goes dark, he sees a burst of green in the sky and hopes to whatever higher being out there that he wakes up after this.
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The soft blue lights are the first thing Barry notices as he regains consciousness. He’s been in here enough times to recognize it as the Blue Lantern Corps’ med bay for patients they’ve already healed. He glances at his right arm to check and sure enough, it’s been completely healed. It also doesn’t hurt to breathe again, so he’s positive his ribs are also fully healed.
There’s no one around that he can thank for the healing. There aren’t even any other patients in the room – something he wasn’t sure was even possible. The med bay is the quietest he’s ever seen it, but the oppressive silence is something he’s intimately familiar with.
He’s alone.
It’s not something he particularly likes, but he’s… gotten used to it after so many years. Gotten used to the cold wire it wraps around his insides, freezing him from the inside out. It’s been thawing more often lately, and it all can be credited to-
Flash.
Which brings him around to what he saw out there. His personal symbol of hope is now, without a doubt, the Flash.
It’s not good news.
He’s not oblivious. ‘The Flash’ as a hero is a sponsored figure, outwardly supported by the military – though we all know that’s the kinder word for ‘controlled’. Other than the fact that he was a great pilot, – a piece of information he definitely didn’t mean to reveal, judging by the split second of shock he saw on the other’s face at the time – Barry doesn’t know anything substantial about the man behind the mask.
He only knows the small things, like his burrito order or his favourite kind of pie – the kind of information that reassures Barry that they are still friends. He wouldn’t have ordinarily noticed it– just chalked it up to a need for privacy and left it at that. But Flash lowers his guard down when they’re alone together, allowing him to witness the other man’s occasional slip-ups – as well as his practiced cover-ups. It included the most innocuous pieces of information as well – Barry wouldn’t have noticed it at all if he hadn’t realized how skillfully Flash diverted his question about the speedster’s birthday. He might have wanted his privacy, but the whole situation was odd enough that the Lantern suspects a good amount of military interference to be involved.
And if the military stuck their noses there, who knows how tight their leash is?
He’s always had an eye for detail, especially so for things that are important to him. Even though Flash tries his best to cover it, exhaustion paints his actions in subtle, dark tones and a sense of urgency lurks beneath his skin. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that Barry is sure he doesn’t know about – but he does know that Flash is tangled in some kind of web that is quickly approaching its inevitable collapse.
And at the end… he can’t be sure they’ll be on the same side.
The door opens with a bang, startling him out of his thoughts. Two Blue Lanterns walk in, both unfamiliar to him. They wear twin apologetic expressions on their faces once they realize he’s already awake.
“Sorry, the door was jammed.” The taller one speaks, sheepish. “We didn’t think you were awake yet.”
“It happens.” He shrugs. “I was thinking it was odd that the med bay was empty.”
An awkward silence begins, the three lanterns in the room shuffling uncomfortably the entire time. The shorter lantern finally seems to run out of patience, and elbows the taller one. The latter looks confused for a second, before coming to some sort of realization.
“Oh! How’re you feeling?”
“Good. All my bones have been fixed.”
“Right.”
“Yeah.”
Another awkward silence threatens to start, but Barry speaks first.
“Not to be rude,” He scratches the back of his neck, “but do you need something?”
The shorter one speaks this time, voice sharp and regal, “We’d like to know anything you can remember about that wormhole you went through. The machine has been recovered, but we haven’t been able to figure it out. We were hoping that you’d be able to provide us with some sort of information.”
Ahh, that’s what this is about. With all thoughts about the Flash tucked back into the corner they were originally in, he begins to speak.