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Barry thought he knew what the worst could feel like, at this point. After so many cycles of dying and resurrecting, after Lup's disappearance, after being forgotten by his family, spending years and years alone, hunted and hunting--he thought he could take whatever the world threw at him.
But nothing has prepared him for this moment, floating incorporeal in Wave Echo Cave over a crumpled, red-robed form.
He's searched for Lup for so long, imagined the moment of finding her for so long. And now, this--
Barry's mind reels, his thoughts spinning back on themselves in endless, awful repetition.
Lup is dead.
Lup is dead and she is not here.
Lup is dead and she is not here and if she is dead and not here and he has not found her in the years that she has been outside her body then she—what if she—
A growing buzz of magic crackles over his body, sizzling threads of red energy surrounding him, coating his hands and his arms and his head. A bolt of magic shoots off into the walls of the cave, sending down a shower of rocks.
The thought of a world without Lup is a yawning pit inside him, a hole that fills up with magic and threatens to eat him from the inside out.
He can feel himself beginning to lose control, lose track of the edges of himself. He’s been on the brink of this a few times, over the years, and has always been able to pull himself back. But now, he’s not sure if he can. What’s more, he’s not sure if he wants to. If Lup is truly gone, then why should he keep going, why shouldn’t he let himself just dissolve into nothing, what is the point—
But then
Then a face surfaces in his mind, and he realizes that the face is not Lup’s.
It’s Taako’s.
And then Merle, and Magnus, and Davenport, and gods, even Lucretia.
Barry is the Lover, and his love for Lup sustains him, keeps him sane. But it’s not the only love he has.
It would be so easy to give in, to let go, to let himself dissolve and let this world burn. But he can’t—not yet, not now, because the rest of his family is still here. And he’s the only one, besides Lucretia, who knows who they are, where they’ve been, the dangers that could still come for them, one day.
While Barry still has family in this world, he can’t afford to go to pieces.
And so there, in Wave Echo Cave, Barry builds and strengthens his anchors with every memory he can think of from their century of travel:
terrible mongoose-language conversations with Taako, the rest of the table trying to contain their laughter as the two of them squeaked and grunted at each other over the dinner table--
woodworking lessons with Magnus; they both had fingers full of bandages from nicks and cuts for weeks and Barry's duck looked more like a hippo, but Magnus displayed it proudly on a shelf in the lounge anyway--
the time he and Davenport and Merle all got drunk off Tesseralia moonshine and Davenport and Merle composed increasingly dirty sea shanties as they sat on the deck under the stars--
running into Lucretia in the kitchen at three in the morning, when they’d both been up too late working, sharing a pot of coffee and silently, without discussing it, moving their work to the kitchen table because sometimes three-in-the-morning work is better with company--
The memories keep coming: Taako’s swimming lessons and Lucretia’s portrait and sparring with Magnus and chess games with Merle; Davenport teaching them all to fly the Starblaster and Taako trying and failing to teach them to cook. Cups of tea or coffee placed at elbows during long days in the lab, snowball fights on the worlds where it got cold enough to snow, the precious moments of quiet when they were all sitting in the lounge, reading or carving or playing cards and not talking, just enjoying the comfort of being together.
And through it all, Lup.
Lup snorting milk out her nose at something Taako said at the dinner table, persuading Lucretia to build a blanket fort in the lounge for a girls’ night, cackling with unbridled joy and delight at Magnus's "Lup! Pull!"
Lup fiercely defending the worlds they traveled to, demanding that they all do better, be better.
Working with her, talking with her, dancing with her.
Lup giving him his glasses on the beach,
Her hand in his after their presentation at Legato,
The feel of her hair and her lips, the smell of her skin.
Her compassion, her boldness, her humor and her anger and her love.
He loves her so much, and even in his fear and despair the memories of her weave in and out of all his memories of the century, and tie them all together. He can’t not think of her.
Lup may not be here right now, but she’s still with him—they all are, alive in his mind in memories that he must hold in trust for them, until he can find a way to bring them back.
This is what will sustain him, in the months to come: the knowledge of what it is to love, and be loved. And the chance to bring that back is more than enough to keep fighting for.