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They say the colors can take up to thirty-two hours to have affect. Once, in Calcutta, there was even an incident where it took forty-eight.
Thirty two hours after you meet the fullest version of your soulmate.
Barry’s always hated that part, the way it seemed like the world was waiting until your soulmate was done cooking, like microwave popcorn or something, but, nevertheless, that’s the way it works.
Except, he doesn’t actually know how it works, because all he knows is one moment he can’t see color, just his floating chemicals and then there’s a searing pain through him and he blacks out and there’s a period of unconsciousness and he wakes up to a totally different world.
(And it’s not just because of the metahumans he doesn’t know about yet). Because suddenly the world is no longer in black and white.
Because the colors he’s been told about for all of his life, and especially by his mother, who could describe all of them in such vividity, are suddenly abundant and all around him and he can’t figure out why. And then he’s told he’s been out for months. So there’s months and months of missing time and he could’ve encountered his soulmate in any of them.
There’s Caitlin, but her colors have faded ever since the particle accelerator explosion, and she’s fairly clear about the fact that they are fading quickly when she accidentally tells him to look at the blue light when it’s clearly purple.
There’s Cisco, but he hasn’t met his soulmate yet, which he often talks about, and his eyes get wide with wonder and his smile gets wide with questions when Barry comments that the friction-proof suit is red. Barry hopes he meets his soulmate soon; they’ll probably be charmed by Cisco’s energetic attitude towards the whole affair.
And then there’s Iris, but when she tells him she still didn’t start seeing color even after she met Eddie that night, and not after he asked her out either, and she seems only a bit disappointed about this, so it can’t be Iris either, and that hurts him too much inside because he’s hopelessly in love with her, but he can’t do anything about it. So he lets it be. Tries not to think about it. He has super speed to deal with, after all.
But then Felicity shows up in his lab and he remembers that he met her, like met the real her, the works-with-oliver-queen-aka-the-arrow her within about twenty four hours of him falling into his coma, and he wonders if it could possibly be her.
Maybe that’s why she came as soon as she knew that he’d woken up.
And she knows about his speed, there’s that too. So maybe he’s “done” now, maybe him becoming the streak is what made him that way, maybe her learning about his new powers is what made her realize, maybe she can see in colors now.
And she can. She mentions it off-handedly as they’re walking through the city, commenting on how she thought her dress might be too bright of a pink, and he realizes she can see color too and he wonders once again if his soulmate is Felicity Smoak.
And it would make sense, because she fits him in every way possible, in every way that he would clash with Iris. They’re two puzzle pieces that the universe has made to perfectly fit together, and it is so reasonable and easy and amazing.
No worries about secret identities or danger.
No worries about bad lies and other things tearing them apart.
But he knows her too well for this.
There’s a sadness behind her bright smile that makes him think of Central City itself, because she’s so happy and sunny on the outside, but hiding a dark greatness within, and he knows it must have something to do with Oliver Queen, because she’s barely mentioned him the whole time she’s been here, and it leaves him racking his brain to remember if she’d mentioned anything about colors during his time in Starling.
He wonders if maybe her soulmate isn’t in this city, but it’s sister one.
They don’t clarify it for each other either, on the train, but he can’t fight the desire to kiss her and so she does, and it feels right, like the other half of him is coming together, but it doesn’t feel magical or like a fairytale or anything like he thought it would.
So he’s left confused.
And doesn’t mention soulmates again until Team Arrow comes to Central City and Caitlin mentions something to Felicity about colors being the only thing to stop the guy she will eventually dub as “Rainbow Raider” and then adding that it would only have effects on those who have already discovered their soulmates.
Immediately, Felicity turns to him and asks him if he can see color, just in case, and he tells her the truth, avoiding the chorus of voices in his head that are telling him that it has to be her. He gives her the story of how he woke up from the coma able to see colors and she’s absolutely fascinated.
“I’ve been able to see colors since last winter. Never been sure if it was because Oliver finally donned his mask or because I met you.” She reveals to him, and he can see her mind working towards who his soulmate could be, working towards her.
Apparently, the universe has decided that they should be together.
And when he gets an arrow in the back the next day he thinks it might have something to do with Oliver Queen’s insane amounts of jealousy, because there’s no way Felicity kept from her team that she may have found her soulmate.
They don’t talk about it while she’s in Central City.
Especially not when Iris cuts off all contact with the Flash. Especially not when Barry reveals to her in a large hit of anger and jealousy that he’s been able to see colors since he woke up and didn’t tell her.
He thinks maybe it’s a good thing Felicity is his soulmate. If Iris was his soulmate he wouldn’t fit with her like two puzzle pieces; he would fit with her the way the sky fits with the earth: unperfectly, always clashing like two great, legendary, cosmic forces, with only the occasional bolt of lightning to bring them together.
He isn’t great enough to deserve a poetic love like that one. And Felicity is perfectly perfect for him, after all.
They talk about it right before he leaves Starling, both of them ignoring their obvious feelings for other people, and she’s the one to kiss him this time; pushing him against the wall in the alley outside Verdant and standing on tip toes even in her heels. And it feels right. Not earth-shattering, not life-changing, but right, which makes rational, scientific sense; perfect for them.
And maybe they both know that they’re not in love with each other yet, but they’ll get there eventually, and so she leaves a warm lipstick mark on his collar and whispers to him that she’s sure Iris will see it
“I see you had fun in Starling.” Iris comments when she sees it.
“Yeah,” he replies, suddenly self-conscious about Felicity’s markings all over his neck. “It was pretty great.”
“Great.” She responds, her voice getting a little high, and Barry pushes the thought out of his mind for a week.
But then he tells himself that maybe if he reveals his feelings to Iris it’ll help him let go so he can finally fall in love with his soulmate. So he does. And it’s awkward but understanding and he gives her the only ring he thinks he’ll ever get to give her and she doesn’t break up with Eddie, but that’s okay, because her soulmate is someone else, and they’re out there, and he has Felicity and he’s supposed to feel fulfilled by that.
Maybe the media has over-romanticized this whole soulmate thing for him.
When Felicity calls him to cry to him over the phone because he guesses he’s sort of her boyfriend now, if anything more than her best friend, to tell him that Oliver Queen is dead and he races over to comfort her, and knows he should feel relief when she tells him that she’s in so much pain and secretly she’d thought her colors would disappear but they didn’t, even though he told her he loved her before he left, but instead all he feels is a quiet and cold sense that there’s something inherently wrong with the world.
Maybe it’s just because Oliver is gone.
It turns out he isn’t gone.
It turns out he’s been alive the whole time and the nagging thought in the back of Barry’s mind that Oliver Queen learned how to see the color in the world when he met Felicity Smoak is a constant buzz that he tries to ignore as he and Felicity have fun.
And they go on dates together in both Central and Starling, and she kisses him while they know Iris is watching and everything is going oh-so-right but not oh-so-perfect because one night, when they’re lying next to each other on his bed and watching a doctor who re-run, she tells him she doesn’t think they’re in love with each other yet and he can’t help but agree.
Then there’s the too-awkward double date, and the kiss with Iris and Barry knows he should feel guilty about it, but doesn’t, because they don’t really love each other yet and is it really cheating if you go back in time and undo it?
He wonders sometimes if Iris could see color in that timeline after she found out he was the Flash. He didn’t ask.
And he stupidly tries to break up with Felicity and she tells him okay with this sad smile, like she doesn’t really believe him, and he tries to tell Iris how she feels and then ends up feeling thoroughly beaten by life, but somehow still ends up going to John Diggle’s wedding with Felicity.
So at the wedding they dance and kiss and she catches the bouquet and once again it feels like the universe is telling him ‘this is it, this is the girl, there’s no one else,’ like it’s telling both of them to settle down and have a suburban house with a white picket fence and 2.5 genius children. Except neither of their lives have ever been that simple. But they get back together anyway, because what else are they supposed to do?
He breaks up with her next time she visits Central City, when she’s with Ray but talks about Oliver and this smile lights up the room when she mentions her first meeting with the ex-billionaire, and they’re both okay with it, because who really needs a soulmate anyway when you can be truly in love with someone else?
But he doesn’t make a move on Iris when she loses Eddie, instead bringing him into the whole Flash crusade, and he has more important things to worry about than love, like Dr. Wells being the Reverse Flash, and tries not to think about Felicity and Iris when Cisco comes back from Starling City with the great news that the first color he could see was the golden highlights of Laurel Lance’s hair. Tries not to think about it when Caitlin remembers a new name for a color almost immediately after her weekly video-chats with Ronnie. Tries not to think about it when Dr. Wells reveals himself as not-really-Dr.-Wells-at-all, and complains a bit about how hard it was to pretend to have had and lost a soulmate in Tess Morgan when he himself has never been in love.
There’s a spark, just a touch of a stroke of lightning from his fingertips to Iris’ when he runs away from her that night on the bridge, and he thinks it feels familiar but can’t pinpoint what, just that he knows with it comes a deepening of his color and, for the first time since he woke up, he imagines once more that Iris West could be his soulmate.
And it’s confirmed for him when she storms into STAR Labs later and, confronts him about being the Flash and tells him that she knew because their hands have sparked that way before, that they did when he was in his coma, and his brain starts racing, making him think about maybe that was what did it, maybe that was what made him see colors, but it’s too late now because Eddie is proposing and Iris is terminally upset with all of them and he just wasn’t fast enough to figure it out.
Later she makes a comment that she’d always wondered what color the suit was, had known it must’ve been some shade of red because of the type of gray it looked to her, but not understood what a brilliant scarlet it was until that night on the bridge. (Its too bad I didn’t know, she’ll tease later, I could’ve called you the scarlet speedster instead of the red blur).
And when Felicity calls in a panic, saying her colors have started fading, and she’s afraid it has something to do with Oliver, because he’s joined the League of Assassins, he’s there for her.
And when Iris does eventually confront Eddie about his plans to propose to her she says she knows he’s not her soulmate, and that Barry’s touch made her see color, but “screw the future anyways,” Felicity is there for him.
And when the words “Oliver Queen is dead” cause black and white to completely absorb Felicity’s crystalline sky eyes for a second before going back to dull fades of the color spectrum when his sister shoots him with an arrow, he is there for her.
And when it is finally revealed that he is Iris’ soulmate but she is still furious with him for lying to her, Felicity is there for him, saying that Iris will come around.
And he thinks he may have yet found a soulmate in the wonderful, blonde ray of sunshine that he has chosen as a best friend. A perfectly perfect one. Just also perfectly platonic. But the lines between them have always been blurred anyways