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When Barry woke up, it was like breaking the surface of water after being held underneath. The too-strong hands had held him under until his lungs started screaming. He emerged to take a life-saving breath and realized that there was an aura coating the world. White lights spotted his vision. Then he was relieved to find that he was sitting.
Barry blinked rapidly to bring his vision back into focus. He was looking at Apokolips. A picture of it plastered on the screen, the silhouettes of Clark, Diana, and Bruce framed by the planet that would destroy their spirits. Around the table were other founding members of the Justice League: Hal and Victor and Billy. He realized that Batman was talking, but he couldn’t understand what he was saying. It didn’t matter. Barry already knew what it was about because he’d lived this moment before.
Time stuttered again and he settled back into his body. Barry looked around in a daze. They were on the jet. Hal was sitting next to him. Outside the windows, he saw the hanger, and Bruce and Victor were at the controls.
Hal caught his eye and all he could see was Hal’s blood spilling on Apokalips. Hal’s serious look turned to confusion.
“Um, not that I blame you, but if you wanted to hold hands, you could’ve asked,” said Hal.
Barry hadn’t even realized that he’d grabbed hold of Hal’s forearm with crushing force.
“You’re going to die on Apokolips,” said Barry.
“Damn, you think so?” Hal drawled. “You think it’s too late to ask Victor to swing by Starbucks?”
“We can’t leave.”
Barry moved with all the urgency of lives depending on him. He couldn’t explain. Explaining would take time. He couldn’t take the chance of the Justice League leaving for Apokolips under any circumstances. Just as Hal started to turn towards him, Barry was in the engines, ripping apart everything he saw, deconstructing components as swiftly and safely as possible to erase any chance of taking off again.
Long enough to buy time. Long enough for explanations. And if explanations didn’t work, he would hold them back by force and not even Clark could stop him.
He was back in the cockpit just as Hal’s expression morphed from a strained smile to confusion.
“What the—” Victor squinted at the console. “Batman, the engine’s disabled.”
“We can’t leave,” said Barry. “Bruce, we can’t leave.”
“You disabled the engine?!” Victor asked.
“We can’t go to Apokolips!” Barry’s gaze passed over Victor entirely to rest on Bruce. “If we go, we’re all going to die!”
“Think he’s cracked?” Constantine said. Zatanna hushed him with a firm elbow to the gut.
“We already discussed this,” Clark interjected. “We need to take the fight to Darkseid.”
“He already knows everything,” said Barry. “Darkseid knows we’re coming, we can’t go to Apokolips.”
“What are you talking about?”
It was too late. Barry could feel the edges of his vision closing in on him, his gaze resting on Bruce.
“Don’t let them go,” he said.
And down.
Barry ended up in the main meeting hall, resting his elbows on his knees and bent far over to try to stop himself from being sick. Fainting in front of the whole Justice League was embarrassing enough, so puking wasn’t on his agenda for the time being. Although his stomach might have the final say in it.
The nausea was the least of his concerns. Barry could remember getting up that morning, getting the message to convene with the rest of the Justice League, Clark going over the plan or lack thereof, the subtle all-encompassing pang of doubt. He’d known it was wrong, voiced his concerns, trusted in Clark and Bruce. If Bruce was going along with it, surely the plan had merit.
But looking at his pasty reflection in the floor, he wondered Bruce had just swallowed it down like the rest of them, if Clark had given him an ultimatum.
“Barry. Hey. Earth to Barry!”
Barry felt like a broken wind-up toy barely able to pull himself together. And there was Hal, leaning against the table, his arms folded, his expression pinched. He was tasked with watching him.
“What?” Barry said faintly.
“Geez, look, I know you have a short attention span, but at least answer me, that’s the millionth time I’ve tried to get your attention,” said Hal. “You’re weirding me out enough as it is.”
Barry’s gaze drifted. A hologram of Apokalips hovered above them, swathed in a molten blanket of red and orange.
Hal snapped his fingers in front of his eyes. “Hey!”
“Is Iris…Do you know Iris?” Barry asked.
“Uh, I was at your wedding, man.”
Barry opened his mouth to tell Hal that no, he hadn’t been at hid wedding—and then a freeze-frame image of the members of the League being at the ceremony and reception penetrated his mind. But…that wasn’t right. The wedding had been for close family only. Barry remembered two versions of his wedding, one with the League members incognito, one without.
Two timelines. One was gone. The other was here.
And Iris. Iris was here. Iris was alive. “Is she okay? I need to—”
“You called her right before we got on the jet.”
“I need to—I need to call her—I need to see her—”
“You already called her. Christ, what’s gotten into you?”
“She’s going to die.”
“Barry—no, Barry, don’t you dare go running off now—listen to me, Iris is fine.”
“She’s not going to be fine!” Barry leapt to his feet, and if it wasn’t for the weakness in his ankles he would’ve sped right out of the room.
“Iris is fine, you two talked for ages,” said Hal. “It was honestly kind of disgusting.”
Hal grabbed Barry by the arms, though he had no hope of holding him into place if Barry decided to bolt. And damn, if he didn’t feel like bolting. The Watchtower wouldn’t survive the war, it wouldn’t survive anything. It wouldn’t survive invasion and they were all going to burn with it.
His chest was tightening. He felt skin constricting over bone.
Accept the things you cannot change.
“I can’t change this,” Barry realized.
“Barry, dude, you gotta calm down a little, don’t go wigging out on me again,” said Hal.
The door slid open and Batman, Clark, and Diana glided into the room.
“What’s the word, Supes?” Hal asked, not releasing his grip on Barry. Barry let him have it. It might be the last time they had contact.
“It could take a day or two to get the engine back in working order,” said Clark.
“Just a day or two? I guess if anyone can do it in ‘just a day or two,’ it’s Victor.”
“We can’t go!” Barry insisted. He locked eyes with Bruce. “There was another flashpoint.”
“A flashpoint,” Bruce repeated, with the careful intonation of someone who had no idea what he was talking about.
It clicked into place. “You don’t know. Don’t you remember?”
Bruce didn’t answer.
“I—The letter, I gave you the letter from your—the last time I broke physics and went back in time—you have to remember that!”
“Nothing like that has ever happened in my recollection, Flash.”
Barry processed it. “I can’t—the past, it’s changed, but the future—I don’t know if…”
“Easy, Barry, you’re just a little nervous, that’s all, said Hal. “We’re all nervous, no biggie, it’s just the world on the line. Nothing we haven’t handled before.”
“You don’t understand!” Barry said. If nothing else, he had to try. “If we all go to Apokolips, we’re all going to die! Superman’s plan is suicide!”
“Barry, we’ve gone over this,” said Clark. “We have to take the risk.”
“No, I just got back from that future, it’s not going to work!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hal’s going to die on Apokolips, Arthur’s going to die! They’re going to kill the kids—the Teen Titans!”
“Jesus, don’t be grim, Barry,” Hal sighed. He looked at the others, helpless. “What do we do?”
There was a long moment where no one said anything, and Barry realized he’d lost his audience. He couldn’t focus long enough to make them understand what had happened, what was going to happen, what their inevitable fate was in the two years to come. The desperate end that awaited them and most of the planet.
It was Bruce, only Bruce, who looked at him. The others saw him, but they didn’t see.
Bruce took Barry’s arm, and guided him to the nearest chair. There was no softness to him and it was a reassuring, grounding presence.
“Take a breath,” said Bruce.
Barry’s chest spasmed. It took a few tries before his ribcage cooperated enough to inhale and exhale.
“Explain,” Bruce ordered once he’d done so.
Barry had to take another breath, because having to explain, having to recount, having to replay everything through his head again when it was already flashing through his mind was too much to ask. He blinked and he was on Apokalips. He blinked and he was hearing about Iris’s death and wanting to kill himself for not being there, but Darkseid didn’t let him die. It was too real, it was too real, it was too—
“Barry.”
He snapped back.
“Explain,” Bruce repeated.
Barry took another breath.
It took far too long to explain. Time was already short and they didn’t have enough of it to go over detail. With every dragging moment, Darkseid could be coming up with a new plan now that the Justice League wasn’t coming, and Barry—
Barry just wanted to rest.
He paused between sentences to hold his head in his hands and sob, the anxiety seizing up his spine and making him weak in the knees. The flashpoint had nursed his body to full health, but he still felt like a skeleton with a hollow chest cavity, could see bones protruding in his arms. And worst of all, the worst of it, was that no one believed.
The first time he’d told them about the flashpoint, in the other timeline, people hadn’t believed. Bruce had believed him, but he couldn’t tell whether the same could be said about this Bruce. This Bruce, like all others that came before, had a firm, skeptical frown, his eyes laser-focused, but giving away little else. Clark, Hal, and Diana had the confused stares of someone listening to a madman ramble. The disbelief remained entrenched for the long winter, until his voice cracked and their expressions shifted from confusion to concern. Hal sat with his head in his hands. Diana paced the room. Clark fidgeted, his hands rubbing the back of his neck in a nervous, uncomfortable gesture, then clenching and unclenching his fists, his jaw setting, his face grimacing with every subtle emotion that passed through it.
Even if they thought it was just his imagination, if they thought it was fiction, tales about the grim demise of all their friends and colleagues was enough to make anyone uncomfortable.
It was all too vivid. Barry, himself, only knew bits of the full story—he hadn’t been there for all of it, and most of that was a blur in itself. Most of the time his body had ached too much for him to think about anything other than the all-consuming pain.
Even Diana and the others that had been converted into Furies hadn’t known he survived the assault—he hadn’t even been sure what happened to everyone after the fact, not until his rescue. He couldn’t look at Diana’s face without seeing the cybernetic optic that had been there.
He called it a rescue lightly. There had been no rescue, his life had only been extended.
“Darkseid is spying on us through Victor, and he knows that we’re coming,” Barry concluded at the end of it. “Victor doesn’t know Darkseid can see us through him.”
“I feel like Victor would be the first to know if he had some kind of Darkseid computer virus,” said Hal
“I know what I’m saying, I lived it!”
“How can we be sure any of this is true?” Diana asked.
“Do I look like I’m making any of this to you?!” Barry demanded, voice cracking.
“I am not doubting that you believe what you are saying. There are times when a lie is so convincing it deceives even the liar.”
Four sets of eyes landed on Barry, and he got the fleeting impression that he was a curiosity in a museum, spouting easily unravelled lies until nothing was left but the end of the string. He clung to the end of the string because he knew the truth. He remembered the years of torture, the dismantling of his psyche.
Him. Him. All him. It had always been him. He’d destroyed everything in more than one timeline. How many more had to be deconstructed for karma to be satisfied that he’d learnt his lesson?
“You have to stop me,” Barry warbled out.
When he spoke, Diana’s eyes got a soft edge to them, as if going in and out of focus.
“It’s happened twice,” Barry said. “I can’t—I can’t do this again. I can’t keep doing this. Fuck, what did I do? Just, please. Please, if you don’t do anything else, please just stop me.”
Diana was quiet for a while, then she said, “I believe you.”
“Just like that?” Hal asked. “You weren’t so sure a second ago.”
“I’ve seen his look before, in my sisters who had seen one too many battles,” Diana explained. “I believe you.”
The relief that overcame him was absolute, left his fingertips numb and his world tilting sideways. Bruce grabbed his shoulders to keep him upright in the chair.
Barry held his face in his hands and let himself cry, for the sake of two aborted timelines that he wished he could forget. Everyone had the luxury of being reset and forgetting everything, but Barry carried everything with him, all because he’d wanted to see his mother grow old and die warm in her bed instead of being butchered on the kitchen floor.
Consummate all-American Boy Scout Clark Kent knelt at his side. Not Superman. It was Clark in every sense of the world. He took his shoulder and Barry felt held-back strength thrumming through his hand.
Maybe he really was losing his mind, that would be the easy way out, to believe that he was delusional and the super speed was cheese-grating its way through his brain. Everything would be simple if he gave into insanity. But it felt a little better to let the others give him the strength he didn’t have.
“…Lantern, go tell Constantine or J’onn to come here—whoever you find first,” Clark ordered.
“You’re ordering me around?” Hal demanded, forcing a joke.
“They can confirm Flash’s story and, if what he says is true, then Cyborg is a security risk. It’s better to take precautions.”
“Well, what am I supposed to tell Victor if he asks about Barry?’
“Tell him we’re handling it.”
“Goddammit.” Hal’s hand lingered on Barry’s shoulder a little longer. He leaned in and said, “Take it easy, okay?”
Hal hurried out, head shaking in disbelief.
Barry rested his head on the table, overcome by exhaustion and the need to sleep, though he knew it wouldn’t come easy. He could still feel the heat of Apokolips on the back of his neck.
There was quiet for a while.
Then, Bruce said, “Clark, if you still want to go to Apokolips, I’m not going with you.”
Clark closed his eyes, as if he’d known it was coming. “I need your support. If you don’t endorse it, the others won’t follow.”
“This plan was always too risky and you know it. If I stay here, Darkseid will have one less asset to use against the Earth. I won’t stop you if you insist on risking your own life, but I won’t risk us all.”
“We need to hit Darkseid before he hits us.”
“He knows we’re coming, and he is much more powerful than we are. He wouldn’t have been so blatant about his arrival in the Solar System if he wasn’t ready to challenge us. As I’ve explained.”
There was that hint of an ultimatum. Clark rubbed his forehead, indecisive.
“Think about this, Clark,” Bruce continued. “Is this what you want?”
Barry knew he was the ‘this.’ He saw Clark’s willpower give away, but Clark looked at Diana.
“I don’t want you to get killed because I allowed you to walk onto the battlefield alone,” said Diana. “However, we cannot save the planet if we are all dead or worse.”
Right on cue, Constantine stormed through the door, smoking. On a space station. Barry was sure there was a policy against that, however no one commented as he flicked the cigarette away, and he was followed by Zatanna.
“What the hell is going on?” Constantine demanded. “We’re supposed to be knee-deep in Apokolips. Not that I was eager for a bitch slap from Darkseid, but it’s better than going mad from the anticipation.”
“We need you to read Flash’s mind and tell us what you see,” said Bruce.
Constantine squinted at Barry, then at Bruce. “What for?”
“Do it.”
Constantine rolled his eyes. Zatanna had to nudge him forward before he gave in.
“Alright, let’s have a little looksy,” Constantine chimed.
His fingertips just had to graze Barry’s head for the memories to flood.
It was like Constantine was a practiced plumber unclogging a drain. Barry’s entire body locked as his mind replayed the events that had defined his life. Defeat, imprisonment, torture—and before that, the war between Arthur and Diana that had ended in their world being erased. The sound of his mother’s voice. The letter from Bruce’s father. The survivors from the Apokolips assault becoming mutilated and brainwashed.
Constantine’s hand left him.
“You bloody fool,” Constantine said. “You absolute SHITE!”
Constantine drew back his fist and swung.
Barry let the swing come. Zatanna, however, was somewhere between super speed and Constantine’s right hook, quick to grab his wrist.
“What are you doing?” Zatanna asked.
“You fucked the timeline, and you did it TWICE?!” Constantine yelled. “Fucking hell, I’ve met novice magicians with more sense than you! Are you fucking insane?!”
“There was nothing left,” Barry said flatly. “It didn’t matter anymore.”
“Why the fuck would you even do it to begin with?! You knew there would be consequences—YOU KNEW!”
“Because I was stupid.”
“God, that’s the understatement of the millennium! So instead of dealing with the consequences of your shite, you just restarted it?!”
“Zatanna was dead.”
Constantine froze.
“You told me to,” Barry said. Although his voice was quiet, it radiated out in the large chamber. “This was the best way to fix things.”
He saw the struggle in Constantine, saw him wrestle with emotion. He looked at Zatanna like she was the entire world. Although Zatanna now stared at Barry, he had the sense that she knew Constantine was gauging her every move and committing it to memory, and so she measured how much emotion she showed.
“Well,” Constantine seethed out. “Let’s hope you don’t fuck up the world again, shall we? This is why I don’t trust stupid blokes who wear tights!”
Constantine made a swift and absolute exit.
“Do you have a plan yet for…whatever the hell is going on?” Zatanna asked Bruce, although her attention didn’t leave Barry.
“I’m working on it,” said Bruce.
Zatanna rubbed her eyes. “I’ll deal with John, get the story from him. When I get back, I hope you have a plan.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
With Zatanna leaving, Barry felt a weight lift from the room. At least he wouldn’t have to look into the eyes of a dead person. Barry stared into the distance and wondered if he’d be able to look either her or Constantine.
“Do you need more convincing, Clark?” Bruce asked.
Clark inhaled. “Before we come up with a plan, I suppose we need to…deal with Victor.”
“No. I think we may be able to use that to our advantage.”
Barry recognized the tone. Bruce was thinking on his feet at a machine-gun rate, firing off plans and options in his mind.
“So what do you want to do?” Clark asked.
Bruce thought for a moment. “Take a break.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Take a thirty minute break, then we reconvene here.”
“Chronic workaholic Bruce Wayne wants to take a break,” Clark laughed, though it sounded hollow. “Now I’ve heard everything.”
Clark turned away, followed by Diana. They were gone.
Barry didn’t know whether being alone with Bruce was a relief or not. Bruce had been one of the few who’d believed him during the previous flashpoint. Others had been skeptical, even attributed the other timeline to a nervous breakdown, not unlike now. This time was different, however. This time, he’d been thrown back into something that resembled normalcy and he felt tense and jittery all over from the tension holding fast to his body.
Bruce sat in a chair and scooted close.
“Tell us what we can do for you,” said Bruce.
Barry pinched the bridge of his nose to stop himself from collapsing again.
“I don’t know,” said Barry. “I need some sleep.” He choked on his words. “Remember when I used to chase down gorillas and bank robbers? God.”
Bruce didn’t talk and it was a relief. Barry had enough conflicting voices running through his head.
“It doesn’t matter, the world’s going to end anyway,” Barry continued. “Every thing I change, no matter what, the world ends, either with Diana and Arthur fighting It out until the world explodes or…or by a crazy space conquerer who…he takes everyone and he rips…What if this something I can’t change, and the world is just gonna fall apart, I can’t—it doesn’t change, it never changes. It ends in worse ways each time I try to make things better. God, this is what he wanted.”
“What who wanted?” Bruce asked, level as always, but in the careful and calculated tone that he used whenever he was probing for more information.
“Thawne,” he said miserably.
“The Reverse Flash.”
“He started all of this and I fell for it all, it’s all been his game plan from the start to make me miserable,” said Barry. “He never even wanted me dead, he just wanted…”
Barry folded his arms on the table and lay his head in them, like it would hide him from his mistakes. Like he could hide from the reality that Thawne was right.
“Thawne is a villain who took advantage of you,” said Bruce. “That’s what all villains aim to do.”
“He’s probably laughing at me from wherever he is right now,” said Barry. “I saw him die, but…I don’t know if that would stop him, and—and this is a different timeline.”
Bruce didn’t offer any reassurance, nor did he deny it.
“I think I’m scared of him,” Barry admitted. “He saw one world being destroyed and he was laughing about it, he didn’t even care.”
“He’s obsessed with you. Obsession is dangerous and he’ll go to any lengths to hurt you, even to his own detriment.”
“Are you ever scared of the Joker?”
“Of him personally? No. Of what he’s capable of doing to harm others? Yes. I’d be a fool if I wasn’t.”
Barry choked back his laugh. He pulled off his hood and scrubbed at his eyes. “I knew better, I thought I could—…I thought I could fix the world and all I did was end it twice. It’s going to happen again, Bruce.”
“There’s no guarantee of that.”
“Who’s to say it wouldn’t have happened to the original timeline?! I didn’t even stay along enough in it for anyone like Darkseid to show up!”
“Attempting to predict every outcome is a waste; you’ll just drive yourself insane trying to think of all the possibilities. Don’t punish yourself for something you don’t have control over. Thawne is a villain and a psychopath with a single-minded hatred of you. If you let punish yourself like this, then Thawne will continue to hurt you long after the fact.”
Barry stared at his gloved hands through watery eyes. He could still smell the blood from the decimated Earth in the other timeline, still feel the crack of his flimsy bones straining under their own weight. He curled his hands into fists.
“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” Barry said quietly.
“No, but I have an idea of what it’s like to feel vulnerable.”
Bruce wasn’t the person Barry expected to comfort him. He sat there like a stern teacher, expression unchanged, back straight, like an unfazed headmaster watching a hormonal teenager lose their shit in his office. Fleetingly, Barry wondered if that was the same face he wore when meeting with Damian’s headmaster and, again fleetingly, he thought of the Teen Titans on the planet surface, most of whom were doomed to die.
He didn’t know yet if he had changed any of that, if this was just a farce, if the universe was stringing him so that he would live to see the planet burn.
“You may have changed the timeline, but the evils that occurred in them were the decisions of the people who made them, not yours,” said Bruce. “Focus on what can be done to prevent as many deaths as possible in this timeline. Like it or not, we’re here now, and there’s people still alive who need protecting. You’ve saved Hal’s life. You’ve spared members of the League from being mutilated and brainwashed. You’ve given us an opportunity to prevent billions from dying on the planet. That is no small feat.”
Barry took the first steady breath he’d taken since arriving in the new timeline. “I think you missed your calling as a counsellor, Bats.”
Bruce let out a low grunt that definitely didn’t sound like approval.
Barry ran his fingers through his hair. “I can’t keep changing the timeline every time things get…really bad. I can’t do it again. I’ll snap if I do.”
“Then we’ll get it right.”
“I don’t know if we can save everyone.”
“We’ll save as many as we can, but we’ll need your help.”
Barry closed his eyes, knowing that he didn’t have a choice no matter how much his body screamed at him.
“I know I’m asking a lot, but can you hold it together until we sort this out?” Bruce asked. “I need to consult with you to come up with a new strategy.”
“…I don’t know,” said Barry. Even if he tried to lie, Bruce would be sure to pick up on it. “I have to try.” He held his face. “I don’t know how I’m gonna face Iris, or if she’s even the same person I remember.”
Finally, Bruce reached out and touched his arm. “Even if she isn’t, you have colleagues who value and believe you.”
For an agonizing forever, Barry didn’t speak. He rocked a little on his seat, trying to soothe himself, mind racing, and what felt like that forever might’ve just been a few moments in time. Bruce waited.
“For a moment there, I thought you were going to call me your friend,” Barry teased.
“Friends are a liability,” said Bruce. It was probably a joke.
Barry rested his head back on the table. He focused on his breathing, away from the image of Apokolips hovering above them, fresh oxygen washing his lungs clean. It was the only way he could tell that he was here, in the present, in his third timeline, still alive despite it all. Fleetingly, he thought about how much it would piss Thawne off that he was still breathing.
But Thawne became a passing fear, a monster under his bed that disappeared at dawn, and Bruce didn’t leave his side.