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The experiment failed. Dark matter surged uncontrollably through his body. Barry felt every atom constituting him scream as it was torn apart, stretched thin. His skin flaked off like dried pottery, inch by inch, before his entire body exploded.
Barry thought death was certain. Little did he know, at the final moment, the Speed Force intervened and saved him.
He drifted within a sphere of white light, sleeping for a very, very long time. When he awoke, the Speed Force, manifesting as a child, happily told him he could stay here as long as he liked.
But Barry hadn't forgotten his responsibilities as the Flash. He hadn't forgotten the many things waiting for him outside. He hadn't forgotten Central City faced a grave crisis, the threat to its citizens from Zoom of Earth-Two. The Speed Force could protect him forever, but it couldn't protect everything he cared about. The people he loved could only be saved by his own hands.
Despite the Speed Force's desperate pleas to stay, Barry insisted on returning.
The smile vanished from the Speed Force's face. Its eyes darkened for a moment before it finally spoke softly, constrained by the laws of space: if he wanted to leave, someone needed to take him away.
"If someone holds you deeply enough in their obsession, places you in the most important position in their heart, then you can go."
Thinking the condition couldn't be too stringent, Barry was overjoyed. In stark contrast, the Speed Force looked at him with sorrowful eyes. At that moment, Barry didn't understand. Only at the very end did he finally grasp why the Speed Force had reacted so strangely.
Barry closed his eyes as instructed. When he opened them again, damp, cold air, thick with the scent of earth and death, rushed over him. He found himself in a cemetery.
The sky was a low-hanging, oppressive grey. Rain clouds smothered all color. Cold raindrops fell one by one. Crowds stood around, dressed in black – familiar faces, unfamiliar ones; people he knew, people he didn't. Some, long dead in reality, crawled out of coffins or emerged from the dug earth – like the figure beside Barry.
"Ronnie!" Barry exclaimed in shock.
"Hey, Barry. Long time no see," Ronnie replied calmly.
"What are you doing here?" Barry was confused. "I don't understand... um... whoever gets taken away comes back to life? Is that it?"
"No," Ronnie shook his head. "Barry, the Speed Force only loves you. Even if we were chosen, we wouldn't come back to life. Only you have the chance for rebirth. We're just... set dressing."
Just then, figures began to appear at the cemetery entrance – people Barry had met a few times. They came in a steady stream, each taking away their chosen one. Barry knew this was just the prologue. He joked lightly, "What happens if no one picks me?"
He asked casually, but Ronnie's expression turned subtly strange. "Don't worry, Barry," he offered reassuringly, "Someone—someone will definitely come for you."
As Barry was about to press him, he caught sight of a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye.
"Caitlin?" Barry called out happily. Caitlin seemed not to hear him. She walked straight past him towards the person beside him, opening her arms to embrace Ronnie tightly. Ronnie hugged her back fiercely, wiping away her tears of joy as they walked away hand in hand.
As he left, Ronnie glanced back at Barry, mouthing "Good luck," his eyes filled with... pity.
Barry guessed the trial had officially begun.
The second to arrive was Cisco.
Cisco scanned the crowd, seemingly unable to see Barry either. He puffed out his cheeks, looking annoyed as he marched towards his brother, Dante. Grasping Dante's wrist, he muttered something, probably complaining, as the two walked off together.
Barry found it almost amusing. Cisco usually acted sworn enemies with his brother, but at a crucial moment, he revealed how much he truly loved him.
Suddenly, a memory was forcibly implanted into Barry's mind. He saw a scene in an unfamiliar room: Captain Cold confronting Cisco. Cold pointed his freeze gun at Dante's hands – hands that played the piano – and smiled. "Tell me, who is the Flash?" Cisco struggled for a moment, then agreed to the trade.
The scene felt hyper-real, as if Barry were there himself. He knew about this incident; he hadn't held it against Cisco, as saving one's brother was understandable. But seeing the scene play out so vividly left a bitter taste. He had thought Cisco would have hesitated longer.
Barry finally understood the nature of this trial.
The third to arrive was Harry, Harrison Wells of Earth-Two.
Harry's choice held no suspense – his daughter, Jesse. It wasn't so much him walking towards her as running. He embraced her fiercely, as if she were the world's greatest treasure, his bone of bones and flesh of flesh.
This time, Barry didn't need the Speed Force's help to recall the memory; the scene was etched in his mind. He and Jesse had been captured together by Zoom and locked in cages on Earth-2. When the rescue team arrived, Harry walked straight past Barry and rushed to his daughter. As he passed, Barry saw clearly: Harry's heart and eyes held only his daughter. Perhaps it was the uncanny resemblance that had fostered an expectation, but Barry still remembered the disappointment of that day. He had subconsciously believed that man would come to him first, should come to him first.
Back then, Barry had stopped himself from thinking further, from thinking that if it were that man who came, that man should be the one to come.
Come to think of it, that was the moment he truly gave up, realizing that no matter how similar the face, the soul within was different. Utterly different.
He was ultimately not him.
Harry had told Barry plainly long ago: "I am not him."
The fourth to arrive was Iris.
To be honest, Barry wasn't confident. He wasn't confident Iris would choose him over Eddie.
Iris walked slowly towards them, rain dampening her hair. She paused between Eddie and Barry, seeming to hesitate briefly, but after a moment's consideration, she turned towards Eddie.
Barry's chest tightened. Not long ago, the gap between his place in Iris's heart and Eddie's had been paper-thin. One reset timeline, and the scales could tip either way – maybe Eddie, maybe him. You never knew who would win until the end. Now, he only warranted a second of consideration?
Perhaps Eddie's death had truly left an indelible mark on Iris's world. Barry was a superhero, yes, but Eddie... Eddie was her hero. "That’s all I ever wanted to be. Your hero," Eddie had said with a gasp and a smile, and he had succeeded.
Barry supposed he shouldn't feel resentful. After all, his life was owed to Eddie. That man, furious, his vibrating hand poised like a blade, had declared he would kill Barry, then kill everyone else. The threat felt real. It was Eddie's death that saved them all, including Barry.
So, Barry watched as Iris walked away, arm in arm with Eddie.
The fifth to arrive was Joe.
Joe was the closest person to Barry in the world besides Henry, having raised him for over a decade.
Joe saw him, nodded with a smile, and started walking towards him. But when Iris's figure came into view, his steps veered away. He turned his head, no longer looking at Barry, and went to find his biological daughter.
Barry understood the logic: blood ties mattered. He was, after all, just a foster child taken in, with no blood relation to Joe.
He remembered when they were kids, boxing with Iris. Whenever they fell, Joe always ran to Joe explained it was because Barry was a boy and Iris was a girl, she needed help up first. Young Barry had believed it. As he grew older, he understood: it was simply that Iris was more important.
This time, the Speed Force pushed an unfamiliar memory into his mind. Joe, alone in his room late at night, sorting through clues for Nora's case. Suddenly, a red lightning bolt burst in, wreaking havoc. Before leaving, a knife pinned a photo of Iris to the wall. Horrified, Joe looked from the files on his desk to the photo on the wall, then slowly gathered the papers one by one and shoved them deep into a drawer to gather dust.
Barry was stunned. He hadn't known about this. He hadn't known Joe had dug so deeply into his father's wrongful conviction, and certainly hadn't known Joe had given up.
Rationally, he knew it was the sensible choice. Emotionally, it left a sour taste. Barry desperately tried to convince himself Joe had done the right thing – Iris's safety was paramount. He couldn't defeat the Reverse-Flash, let alone Joe.
Watching Joe wrap his coat around Iris, shielding her from the falling rain, Barry suddenly missed Henry terribly.
When Henry finally appeared, Barry was nearly overcome with joyful tears – finally, someone had come for him.
Sure enough, Henry spotted him immediately, waved with a smile, and strode towards him. Years in prison had etched wrinkles around Henry's eyes, but his body remained strong. Barry was about to throw himself into a bear hug, to tell him how much he'd missed him, how long he'd waited... when Henry's steps faltered. He stopped, staring transfixed in another direction. Following his gaze, Barry saw his mother, Nora, dead for many years.
Barry froze. In any other situation, he would have run to embrace Nora. But this was the Speed Force; everything was an illusion. Unfortunately, he was the only one who knew that.
Henry looked at Barry, then at Nora, his gaze shifting uncertainly between them. Barry's heart sank. Finally, as if making a decision, Henry cast Barry an apologetic look filled with regret, then walked towards Nora. He embraced her tightly, his eyes alight with the joy of something lost and found again – a happiness Barry hadn't seen on Henry's face in years.
His parents walked hand in hand towards the exit. Barry felt no joy.
A long-buried childhood memory surfaced. Standing in the kitchen, witnessing the red lightning kill his mother, little Barry had been terrified too. He'd huddled in a corner, frozen with fear. But Henry was only holding his wife, weeping over her body in the blood, lost in his grief, ignoring his young, terrified son nearby.
Barry knew he shouldn't resent it, but tears began to fall, drop by drop. He slowly sank to the ground.
No light appeared at the entrance for a long time, as if the trial had ended, declaring his life a profound failure. After more than twenty years on earth, he couldn't find a single person who put him first.
Overwhelming loneliness, cold and piercing, flooded over Barry like a tide. Just as he was nearing despair, another beam of white light descended from above. Seeing the face of the newcomer, Barry froze.
It was the face of Harrison Wells.
With a single glance, Barry knew it wasn't the Harrison Wells of Earth-Two returning. His bearing, demeanor, the look in his eyes, even the slight curve of his lips – everything proclaimed him to be the impostor, the Dr. Wells he knew so well the mentor he had once trusted wholeheartedly, later hated to the bone. His lifelong nemesis. The Reverse-Flash. Eobard Thawne.
The man scanned the field, his gaze seeming to pierce through the curtain of rain and the thinning crowd as if possessing X-ray vision, instantly locating Barry crouched on the ground. His eyes locked onto him, and he walked straight towards him.
Barry's legs felt like lead. He couldn't move, couldn't advance, couldn't retreat. He was accustomed to the speed of the man approaching in a wheelchair; he hadn't considered that Eobard, shedding his disguise and walking on his own legs, would move so swiftly, leaving him no time to evade.
In just a few strides, Eobard stood before him. Cold rainwater dripped from his sharply defined jawline onto Barry's face. Barry looked up, tears still brimming in his eyes. Without even asking permission, Eobard grabbed his arm, pulling him up roughly, almost violently, and started leading him imperiously towards the exit. Barry struggled faintly, but couldn't break free.
Step by step, following his former mentor in silence, Barry felt a dawning realization.
In this entire life, only this one person had placed him in the most important position in their life.
In that instant, countless memories flooded his mind. He remembered the man saying, "I believe in a better future. One that I very much want to see. One that you are a part of." The man saying, "I might not much care for people, Barry, but I care about you." The man saying, "I also did not anticipate, as difficult as the past fifteen years have been for me, how much I would come to love working with you." The man saying, "I used to feel that rage every time I looked upon you. And now, somehow, I know what Joe and Henry feel, when they look on you with pride. With love."
He had never known before whether the man's words were true or false. Now, he felt he finally knew.
No words were spoken. Only the sound of rain, footsteps, and his own heartbeat. All Barry felt was the firm pressure of Eobard 's hand gripping his, a warmth gradually seeping from that broad palm into his heart.
As they neared the exit, Barry whispered, almost inaudibly, "Dr. Wells..."
Eobard tilted his head slightly to look at him. His eyes held that complex, unfathomable emotion Barry had never understood before. Now, he felt he finally understood.
The man didn't speak. He simply led Barry into the white light of the exit. Everything vanished. And the man beside Barry, just like when his existence had been erased before, fragmented into countless pieces and dissolved into nothingness.
When Barry awoke, he saw a crowd gathered around his hospital bed – the very people who hadn't chosen him in the trial. And the only one who had truly, genuinely placed him first... was long gone.
Physically and mentally exhausted, Barry asked everyone to leave. He just wanted to be alone. Lying on the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, Barry suddenly remembered the words Eobard had left for him in his will: "
"You will never be truly happy, Barry Allen. Trust me. I know you."
You will never be truly happy.
Barry Allen.
Trust me.
I know you.
That voice, that tone, haunted his ears like a nightmare. Barry slowly, slowly closed his eyes.
