Work Text:
“We know what you did.” Alexa catwalks up beside him, leaning close to his ear. Barry swallows thickly, briefly tilting his head in acknowledgment. He looks past her, not meeting her eyes.
“We know the deal you made.” A sickening grin stretches across her face. Her voice is calm, but it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stick up.
Bashir and Deon stand tall in front of him—lions watching in satisfaction as the lioness corners their prey. It’s not them. They’re not his. It’s the negative forces. They locked the positives away, and they won’t be returning soon.
Their black eyes make him ill. Each of them radiate poison, he can feel it. An enraged aura wanting so badly to consume his. Barry remembers when they were only human. Not corrupted by his creation. By his mistake. Before their existence changed to being a physical vessel for a force no one could hope to understand.
He remembers how frightened Alexa was, the guilt she felt for unknowingly hurting people because of Fuerza. How the Speed Force had killed her out of fear. How he and Iris had brought her back to life, because their existence somehow makes less sense than hers. That same innocent girl now stands beside him, whispering horrible truths into his ear.
“You’ve made some bold decisions this year, Dad,” Deon taunts him. This time Barry does stare directly at him.
“Tipped the scales, once again,” Bashir sings, sauntering up to him. He’s surrounded in a semicircle of forces of nature.
“You know I know better than to tip the scales Bashir, but you tend to force our hand,” Barry defends.
“Tsk tsk, Flash. We weren’t even involved when you made the deal that you did.”
Alexa twists to face him. “It was your truce. Your peace. And you ripped it away.”
“I did what I had to.” His anger is starting to slip through. “At no point were my actions pointed at weakening your side.”
“But you did!” Deon shouts. “That’s the point.”
Kara, the Legends, some of his team, and some of the Arrow team stand at a distance behind him, frozen in time. They’re like statues in a wax museum, lifelike but unmoving. At a snap of his fingers, Deon had paused time. Barry knew this meeting was coming—that they'd come. He didn’t think it’d be this soon. He didn’t think they’d know. Looking back on it, how wouldn’t they?
His heart races. The already deafening beat of it pulses in his ears. He imagines the graph of his heartbeat on the monitor. At rest it’s already in quick, sharp zigzags as it flows. He imagines those zigzags as a never ending block, beats so close to each other the individual beats become indistinct.
Barry remembers to breathe. He holds onto the sound of his heart because it’s human, and it’s grounding. The speedster shares a glance over his shoulder, back at his teammates. They’re oblivious to the meeting he’s having in broad daylight, in the middle of a street, for a whole world to see. But no one sees.
This moment exists between the lines. In a gap through history. When time starts flowing again it’ll be like it never happened. Because it didn’t. It’s not woven into the timeline.
He hates the gratitude he feels towards it. To have this conversation with a private audience. The speedster can deal with the negative forces knowing. He gazes at the faces of his friends. He doesn’t want to tell them. And he won’t. Not now. What’s done is done.
The three negative forces regroup together in front of him. “So, what are you going to do about it?” He asks, because that’s what this is all about, right? It was his choice. His fault again. His doing. It’s always him.
When something goes wrong it’s always, “What did Barry do this time?”. He’s always at fault for the issues. Everyone knows it. It’s like the universal accepted facts of ‘humans need oxygen to breathe’, ‘gravity makes things fall’, and ‘water makes things wet’, because ‘Barry is responsible for all the world’s problems’ is right up there with them. He doesn’t deny it, because more often than not it’s true.
First with Flashpoint, then the alien invasion, Savitar, the bus metas, the forces, and this.
“Nothing.” Barry’s brows furrow. Alexa smiles at him, and it’s anything but warm.
“There’s a sort of sweetness to your deal. The sharp end of the knife. Watching you slowly break is enough entertainment to consider your punishment fulfilled,” Bashir tells him with a gleam in his eye. Excitement drips through his voice. Barry has to push down the bile threatening to arise when he thinks about the future. When he thinks about how he’s trapped.
“How long until they begin noticing?” Barry’s heart clenches tight as Deon’s words slice through the air. That question had only ever existed as a thought haunting his head. Cycling over and over driving him crazy as it’s joined by the other questions. The questions would keep him up at night if he still… if he still… did that.
“How long until they realise you lied to them?” Deon goes on. “That your precious Speed Force hadn’t agreed? That it didn’t hand out a favour?”
The Speed Force hadn’t agreed. It didn’t help them with a favour, like it would have in the past. Barry had screamed at it. Barry had begged it.
“How long until they realise the safety they were granted wasn’t for free?”
There was no other way. There was no other way everybody would survive. The Speed Force had been their only answer. The only hope they could find. It could provide them the thing they needed to save everyone.
“How long until they realise it was paid for?”
They were desperate. Barry was desperate. His team was so distraught. No one knew what to do. A threat was coming, and they couldn’t stop it. The Speed Force was their solution. Their only solution. It was it or nothing.
“How long until it dawns on them that it had nothing to do with saving them at all? That it was selfish?”
The positive Speed Force may have lost its human form last year, but its presence could still be found in the dimension. He could ask it. He did ask it. Barry wasn’t expecting for it to ask something back. Barry wasn’t prepared for it to ask something back.
“When will they realise that you don’t sleep? That your heartbeat, your eating, your breathing is some fairytale the Speed Force constructed to hide the truth?”
The Speed Force needed something in return. In exchange for saving everyone’s lives Barry had to do one thing for it. It was scared. It was scared that it was weak. It’s lethal for a force to lose its connection to the physical world. Without it they crumble. They die. The Speed Force had to attach to its next best thing.
“How far down the track will they realise you’re not aging?”
Barry being its connection to the physical world was dangerous. That’s why the negative Speed Force did it. It attacked and forced the positive Speed Force into that action. It’s much easier to kill a human than a god. If Barry dies, so does the Speed Force. And when that happens reality will be left to the negative forces to do with it what it would like.
It couldn’t stand that risk any longer. Him being in the Speed Force with it was just convenient. A way to get what it wanted. Barry understood its logic. He understood why. But it still stung. He felt cold. It was just him. It was him surrounded by this creature that held life and death over everyone and was only asking one thing.
“How long until your friends realise the only human thing left about you is your soul?”
Darkness. That’s what Barry remembers when the form of his mother had vanished. There was only static filling the silence, the usual crackling lightning had disappeared, shying away as if it objected to being a witness.
Barry had felt this feeling before. His body was alight, dissipating and crackling, and glowing white. He felt himself crack into a million pieces and he collapsed onto his knees, breathing hard. He was broken segments and he screamed as he was torn apart. Then it was black.
A distant bang! awoke him. His eyes were still closed and his head felt as heavy as a bowling ball. He was lying somewhere, a soft ground brushing on his skin. Another bang! sounded somewhere, louder and more clearer this time. Barry tried moving, but he could only manage to flex his fingers and toes first. He could feel his arms wavering as his muscles tried to move. After a few tries he shakily lifted himself into a seated position. He sat on a grassy hill, the slightest of breezes flowing through the blades and teasing his clothes. No one else was here, it was deserted.
He felt like crap. And he probably looked it.
Bang!
They’re fireworks. Loud, beautiful, and mesmerising fireworks. Exploding sparks of blue, purple, yellow, and orange flashed in the night sky.
It’s not the night sky, he knew. It’s the Speed Force’s manipulation. It’s trick. The hill he sat on overlooked a small one street town, houses, markets, and diners stretched down the road. All empty. All abandoned.
Barry wanted the tears to run down his cheeks. He wanted to cry out every piece of himself he had left. But he was numb. A dizziness took over him and he wanted to throw up. His body vibrated with Speed Force energy, and it was so pure and so overwhelming it was all he felt.
He traded away his mortality. The Speed Force needed reassurance on its survival. All it had to do was adjust its avatar. Isn’t that what it has always done? Barry had died years ago, disintegrated by the blast of a recreated explosion from the particle accelerator. But the Speed Force owned him. Owned his soul. Remade him faster, brighter, in tune with what the Speed Force wants.
He felt violated. Ripped and torn and molded into something that wasn’t him. Barry didn’t have a body. He hadn’t had his body for nearly a decade. It’s gone. The Speed Force makes him this form so he can continue to walk the physical world. And every time it rebuilds him he feels less of himself. He’s nothing but energy. Energy trapped his soul in a body that looks like him, and sounds like him, and moves like him.
Barry can see through the mirage. He can see through the Speed Force’s lies. This body could look like anyone. Work like anyone. It’s a malleable source, one that doesn’t bat an eye to a scrape, a cut, a knife, or a bullet. One that doesn’t yield to time, to space, to matter, and antimatter.
All his life Barry’s been stuck in Central City. He’s been stuck with the Speed Force. And he’ll continue to be stuck because his life never ends. His existence is always tied here. Now… he’ll never truly die.
He’ll serve the Speed Force for as long as it wants him too. He’ll outlive his friends and anybody he loves, his children, their children. That’s the purpose of his life? He won’t move on so everyone else can?
Alexa, Bashir, and Deon all give him one last smug grin before they all disappear. Time stays stopped for a few moments more. Barry’s eyes trace over all the people in his life he holds closest. He’d do it all again if he had too.