Chapter Text
i
When Bart was younger, his parents would sit him on their laps and talk about how they met – about how their Timers both met zero, and at the point they knew. They talked about how exhilarating it was, to be speaking to the person you knew you’d fall in love with but you weren’t quite there yet.
They talked about how they both grew up tracing their Timers with their fingers, watching it count down closer and closer to zero.
Bart’s met lots of people in his life – lots of travellers, and other members of his camp, and almost all talk about the Timer they have resting on their arm, visible only to them. Some have already met their soulmate, their Timer frozen on zero. Some haven’t quite met theirs yet, their Timers still steadily counting down towards The Day. Some have always had zeros, those who have known their soulmate since birth. Some don’t have Timers, with no interest in romance.
Most ask about his Timer – how long is left on it? What day is it counting down towards? Bart just smiles and tells them “it’s a secret”. But he never, ever tells anyone the truth.
Because Bart is the only person he knows whose Timer is counting forwards.
ii
One day, Bart asks Nathaniel about his Timer. Nathaniel just sighs and contorts his face into one of sadness; it’s not something that Bart’s unused to, but it’s still upsetting to see.
“I never met them,” Nathaniel explains, closing his eyes as a grimace plays at the corner of his mouth. Bart watches with big eyes. “Before the Reach put me in that fucking suit, my Timer still had a couple of months left. By the time I snapped out of it, it was on zero.” He shakes his head. “I never even knew who they were. Fuck.”
Nathaniel makes a bitter sound that Bart’s used to. Bart’s had to get used to a lot of things, with Nathaniel – with the uncensored profanity, with his constant compensation for killing Bart’s grandfather, even though Bart tells him time and time again that it wasn’t his fault – and, most of all, with a lifetime of bitterness haunting his mind.
Bart stays silent, waiting for Nathaniel to continue. He does, eventually.
“It’s likely that I killed them,” he speaks the words into the air, and Bart feels his heart drop. Today will be a bad day, probably. A bad week, with the way Nathaniel sounds. Bart’s known him for long enough to recognise the way Nathaniel will feel later due to how he sounds now, and Bart prides himself on being able to help.
He doesn’t offer comfort – comfort is never something that Nathaniel wants. Something that Nathaniel wants, Bart knows, is a discussion – talk about whatever it is, and make it better for when he thinks about it next.
“Do you think anyone could really do it?” Bart asks into the still. The only thing moving is the ash falling around them, getting tangled into his hair, stuck on his clothes, caught on his eyelashes. It doesn’t bother him. He’s used to it by now. He’s used to a lot of things by now.
Nathaniel opens his eyes after an eternity of having them shut, and stares at Bart.
“Do what?” he asks tiredly, the exhausted injected into every ounce of the two words. Bart just shrugs skittishly – he may have had an inhibitor collar on for practically all his life, but he’s still a speedster, and hyperactivity is one of the traits he definitely inherited.
“Kill their soulmate,” he mutters, meeting Nathaniel’s eyes straight on and meeting the blackness and pain within them. “Like, in their right mind. Not moded, or anything.”
Nathaniel pauses for a few seconds, mulling the question over genuinely. Bart has to fight the smile tugging at the corner of his lips – this is exactly what Nathaniel needs. Something to distract him, but something still painfully on topic.
“I think,” Nathaniel says slowly, scars moving as he talks the way they always do. Bart settles his eyes on them. “I think that, if they were desperate, with nothing else to do, and killing them might bring about something wonderful – I think that they would do it.” He laughs bitterly. “If they were smart, that is.”
Bart doesn’t know what to say, and he really wasn’t expecting that answer, so he just smiles uneasily.
iii
“What about your Timer?” Nathaniel asks about a week later, when they’re sifting through rubble looking for anything of use. The ash has thinned out, as it always does in the summer, and so it’s not too blinding to be outside. It’s pretty much the only concept Bart has of seasons.
He doesn’t know whether or not to answer.
Bart’s never talked about his Timer before – other people’s sure, but never his own. By the time he realised that counting forwards wasn’t normal at all his parents were already gone along with everyone that he trusted. He’s had his Aunt Dawn but she was always so sick, and then she died too and Bart was left all alone.
Out of everyone in the world, Bart thinks that Nathaniel’s the only person he really trusts. It’s been years since they met, in that time Nathaniel’s been so good to him, taken so much care of him, that it would be like a betrayal to keep this from him.
Bart straightens up from where he was crouched on the floor by the rubble. He doesn’t turn around to face Nathaniel. He doesn’t think he would be able to bear it.
“It’s… counting forwards,” Bart admits for the first time, the words heavy and bitter on his tongue, but it relieves a great weight from his heart that’s been hanging there ever since he realised that he wasn’t normal.
He doesn’t have to be facing Nathaniel to know that the man is frowning.
“It’s… what?”
“Counting forwards,” Bart elaborates, bending back down to carry on with his work. He needs to distract his fingers before they start trying to tear each other apart. “It always has been. I don’t know why.” He shrugs nonchalantly, but he’s jittery as hell and both of them know it.
“I’d say that’s fucking impossible, but…” Nathaniel trails off. Bart hears the sound of the man continuing his own work behind him, and he almost sighs in relief. At least Nathaniel’s not freaking out, then. “What, um, what time is it on?”
“Thirty nine years,” Bart informs lightly, and though his tone may be cheery he’s really feeling anything but. “And counting. Up, not down. Not like everyone else.” He smiles – just for the defence mechanism, Nathaniel isn’t even looking at him. The smile is wobbly and forced but it’s there, and it makes Bart feel better just for its presence.
There’s a shifting behind him, and suddenly Bart’s being enveloped in a hug.
Bart isn’t hugged often. He knows that he’s generally a tactile person, always has been, and when he was younger his parents smothered him in hugs, but his hunger for human contact has always been sated by brushing arms and huddling close for body warmth. It’s rarely ever been… this.
Nathaniel isn’t big on hugs, and Bart can appreciate the effort.
He turns around and hugs tightly back. He knows that his fingernails must be digging in but he doesn’t care and he’s pretty sure that Nathaniel doesn’t care, either. It’s not about the comfort of the thing. It’s about the feeling, the caring, and Bart loves it for it.
They pull away, eventually, and Nathaniel never speaks of Bart’s Timer again.
iv
Before he changes into his new superhero costume, before he travels into the past – Bart takes one good look at his Timer.
The numbers are still rising, a second at a time, steadily getting higher and higher until Bart’s sick of looking at the proof he’ll never meet his soulmate.
He allows the left side of his mouth to quirk in a bitter smile.
Forty years and counting.
v
Afterwards, when Bart’s exhausted himself with the smiles and action and running and saving Grandpa Barry’s life, holy shit, he lets himself rest. The Garricks have offered to let him stay with them – they didn’t ask any questions, about his time or his Timer or his family. They just offered him a guest room with a bed, and it’s one of the greatest acts of kindness that Bart’s ever been given.
He’s been given new clothes, some of Wally’s old ones that have never been thrown away for some reason – pyjamas included. Bart’s wearing them now, white with little ducks printed all over them. The material is slightly scratchy and the sleeves stiff, but Bart’s grown up wearing his daytime clothes in the night, and this is lovely.
He thought that it would feel wrong, but it doesn’t. It feels so utterly, wonderfully right.
The bed itself, when he lies on it, feels soft and gentle, and it feels like Bart could sink into it forever. He’s had a bed before, of course, but that was with a thin mattress and shared, and this is in a spare room of a lovely warm house and everything is wonderful.
He’s been bought a toothbrush that he uses with joy. Once again, he’s had one before, he just… it’s such a luxury, to have one again, and the Garricks had actually apologised for buying a cheap one.
Everything’s so overwhelming, but in the best and most amazing way possible.
Bart’s tired, and he knows that going to sleep won’t be difficult. Still, he’s going to stick with his usual ritual – stare at his Timer first, and wonder what it means.
And so Bart climbs into bed, lies down, wrapped up in his duvets like a cocoon, and sticks his arm out to glance at it.
What he sees makes him freeze.
The time has changed.
And not in the usual way, either. Not in the way that he’s used to, where thirty seven years steadily worked its way up to thirty eight and then to thirty nine and then to forty. Not in the gradually building, second by second, way that Bart’s been watching for all of his life.
Because his Timer has three days on it now.
And it’s counting down.