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It’s hard to fall asleep in the Watchtower. Barry faces the ceiling lying down on the memory foam mattress of his quarters that somehow feels stiff even as it sinks under his weight, at when he knows is the dead of night back in Central City. He wishes he was there right now. A lick of light breaks through a gap in the blackout curtains, pure unfiltered light from all the stars of space, and slivers up the wall beside him. He rests one hand over his chest, itching the thin fabric of his shirt. He kicked the covers off a while ago, feeling too hot and too cold at the same time.
There’s the faint hum of electricity from the wall behind him. It is a billion dollar monolith of innovation dedicated to Earth’s defence, after all, so it’s always running loudly. He wonders if he strains his ears enough that he might be able to hear the others in their rooms. It’s otherwise so quiet.
But he can’t. He’s never envied Clark more. Would it be solace or torture, never feeling alone?
He swings his legs off the bed and pads out into the hallway. Every footstep is followed by an echo. He keeps a leisurely pace, no use sprinting when he gets so little time off the clock, he tells himself. Might as well make the most of it.
There is new noise, as he approaches the kitchen. Faint murmurings punctuated with occasional laughter. They speak in low fluctuating patterns, trying to be quiet and half-succeeding.
When Barry enters the break room, it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. Watchtower lights have been dimmed for downtime so the team can get their mandated rest after a long and eventful day, but the kitchen is drenched in white fluorescent.
On two barstools, two familiar figures sit chatting. Clark faces the doorway. His signature curl is askew, lost in the tangle of his un-gelled hair. He’s wearing… (Barry almost stops again) Wonder Woman pyjama pants and an off-brand Green Lantern sweater, which Barry can tell is off-brand because the lantern is sideways. Barry could recognise Arthur’s broad torso even when he’s got his back to him, especially with his blonde mane of hair, which has frizzed. He’s just wearing a plain shirt and pyjama pants, from what Barry can see. And sporting a nasty bruise on his hand which makes Barry wince.
But he’s laughing, which is — Barry hasn’t heard him laugh in a really long time.
The soft conversation finally reaches his ears, as he tries to silently approach the kitchen.
“… Keeps eating my hair,” Arthur is saying, voice laced with amusement, “She probably thinks it’s spaghetti or something.”
Clark has half his body leaning over the countertop and Barry notes, as he chuckles at the tidbit, that he does so a little deliriously. It’s possible he’s still feeling the effects of that red sun radiation from earlier.
“Oh, Rao,” Clark says, and folds his other arm over the counter, “Yeah, I remember… Jon was a little monster when he was teething. I bought him a dummy and everything, but he refused to chew anything except—“
“Metal?” Arthur guesses, and then descends into rumbling laughter again.
Barry can’t fight the smile off his face as he treads over. It’s been a longtime running joke between the team, since Bruce let the information slip.
“It’s not that — it’s bitter, like candy!” Clark had squawked, face flushed, and the whole meeting had been uprooted in favour of teasing him even more.
Barry ducks his head and snorts at the memory. Clark’s eyes dart over to him, and subsequently Arthur’s.
“Barry,” he says, “Hey. Didn’t hear you come in.”
“Hey,” he greets, forcing a polite smile.
He makes his way to the fridge. No point in watching his footsteps now. The door swings open to reveal a depressing lack of food inside.
He sighs. In hindsight, he and the rest of the team had probably gorged themselves on almost everything in stock after the debrief was over. Barry wishes he could eat enough to make himself collapse in a heap of exhaustion. Alas, the fastest man alive also has the fastest metabolism.
“Takeout?” Clark offers.
Barry turns to see the state of him — the indestructible man, looking fairly rumpled. Which is a pretty concerning state to see an indestructible man in.
He shakes his head and turns back to the fridge, “Leave it.” There is a couple of vegetables lying discarded at the base — looks like somebody tried for a healthy alternative and failed. Tomatoes, peppers, a carrot and an eggplant. Some old sauce that, upon inspection, was only just not out of date. An old memory comes to mind.
… Of an evening in Max’s house. He’d just been dropping by for some advice on a case that’d been bugging him, but the smell had enticed
As Max had explained, Bart had been fixated on the dish since watching the movie, and instead of going out and getting it he thought he’d teach the boy a thing or two about patience by cooking it himself.
“With just whatever we had in the house,” he had said.
Barry still remembers Bart’s face when he took his first bite of it.
He grabs the vegetables out of the fridge, a long knife and a cutting board. He can use the carrots to substitute the squash, and hopefully the sauce won’t be too bad, and they probably have some spices tucked away from the last time Ollie made chilli…
He realises, as he’s slicing the tomatoes, that Clark and Arthur’s conversation has skidded to a halt.
He glances over his shoulder, “You guys don’t have to put a stop to the baby talk now that I’m here, you know. I know a thing or two about it.”
He says it like it’s easy, like it doesn’t mean anything to him. But the memory — so far away in a literal sense that it feels sometimes more like a dream — really stings, once the reality sets in.
Clark scratches the back of his neck, “Barry, I’m not saying you didn’t basically raise Wally, because you did, but…” he smiles awkwardly, “Babies are a little different than teenagers, no?”
If Barry wasn’t so in tune with the speed force, his finger would’ve slipped right under the knife. He brushes the tomato slices aside with a frown, turning back to his teammates, “I wasn’t talking about Wally.”
For a quarter of a second, something dark falls across Arthur’s face, “What exactly do you mean?”
“My kids,” Barry says, after a second, “Bart’s — Bart’s dad and aunt?”
Clark opens his mouth, closes it. He and Arthur share a look. This all happens within the quarter of a second, but he and Clark both have super speed, and he’s pretty attuned to the other one at any pace. He watches him hesitate before speaking, “Bart’s from the future, though. I… we just assumed you hadn’t had those kids, yet.”
God, Barry thinks, the realisation crashing down on him like a ton of bricks, did he never tell them?
“I’ve had them,” He swallows. He turns back to the board and starts cutting the peppers. It’ll be easier to explain this if he doesn’t have to look anyone in the eyes.
“It was when I retired. Iris and I were in the 30th century for a while. A long while. But Don and Dawn were just a month old when I had to leave.”
And then he died, which he doesn’t have to mention, because they know he did. They know why he couldn’t come home to them. Still, the silence in the room that was bright with laughter only a few minutes ago is stifling.
“It doesn’t matter now, anyway. They grew up. Obviously. They had Jenni and Bart.”
Barry puts the pepper slices into the pile and fishes a peeler out from the cabinet so he can start working on the potatoes. He doesn’t dare turn around and look at anybody’s faces.
For all he’s aware, Clark and Arthur have up and left. Completely disgusted with him and at how he abandoned his own children. How irresponsible he was.
“You couldn’t take them with you?” Clark says quietly.
“To where?” Barry snorts. A lump rises in his throat that he tries to shove down with impossible focus. The peeler nearly pricks his finger, “Take them to the battlefield with me and into certain death? I don’t know what would’ve been worse,” the last of the carrot skin falls onto the cutting board, and he chucks it in the garbage, “Trapping them thousands of years into the future where I could never reach them again, or sentencing them to die with me.”
“Dying wasn’t your fault, Barry.”
“I know that,” Barry sets down the peeler. Pauses. Picks up the knife, “I know that.“
He cuts the carrot and the eggplant, all in real time. He rinses them, tosses the eggplants into a pot and sprinkles them with salt and two table spoons of olive oil he grabs from the cabinets.
As he lights up the stove, he becomes acutely aware that the room has descended into silence. Fine, then, he decides. If they want to mull over his judgement in silence, so be it. He’s judged himself for it enough times. At least he’s reached the breaking point on his own terms.
Three minutes. He takes the lid off the pot. Pours the eggplant into a bowl and replaces it with the carrot slices and a drizzle of oil. Lets them cook and takes them off the stove. Repeats with the peppers. Repeats with the tomatoes after mixing in the red sauce, plus some oregano and pepper he found on the spice rack. Mixes everything together on a low heat and waits for it to simmer.
He had a gas stove at his old house. He could hear the crackle of the fire whilst he was cooking. It was grounding.
He’d wanted to try making pancakes for the twins on the 30th century-stove, but they’d been too young for solid food before he’d left.
At the other end of the room, the door slides open with a whoosh. Ollie announces his presence with a low whistle. He’s wearing a faded band t-shirt that’s too tight around the shoulders, so it’s probably Dinah’s, and some old pyjama pants. Both of his hands are wrapped in bandages.
“Table for one?” He jokes, sauntering towards the kitchen and sliding onto one of the barstools. He nods at Clark and Arthur in salute, “Guess you guys couldn’t sleep either, huh?”
Arthur and Clark both reply in kind, with mutterings that only faintly catch Barry’s attention.
Barry thinks of Ollie as a dumb college frat boy, getting his girlfriend pregnant and ditching her and his son as soon everything felt too serious. He thinks of Ollie knowing, for the entire nineteen years that Connor grew up without him, that he had a kid out there, that he could go see him whenever he wanted, and choosing not to anyway. Jealousy rears its ugly head.
For a second, just a second, before Barry’s better conscious gets a hold of him, he wants to wring Ollie’s neck.
“Everything alright, Bar?” The man asks, moustache twitching with his lip.
The vegetables simmer in the pot. Barry’s hand tightens around the bottle of red sauce Ollie had used to make them all chilli — the same chilli he makes for his family at least once every fortnight. It’s the only meal Ollie knows how to cook, but it’s pretty damn good. The weight on Barry’s chest eases a little.
“Barry?”
Barry tries to look at him with anything but envy. From how Clark’s face falls, he must look pretty pitiful.
“How do you cope. Knowing you missed out on raising Connor all those years?”
Ollie’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. He hadn’t been expecting that response.
“I don’t cope with anything,” he tells Barry after a moment, “I abandoned him. I can’t change that. I try my best to now, anyway. That’s all I can do.”
His eyes unwillingly roam to the ratatouille steaming on the stovetop.
As Barry plunges the fork into the pot and takes his first bite, he can feel Bart’s eyes on him. Hell, he can hear them. He’s tapping his hands rapidly onto Max’s dining room table in barely contained excitement.
“This is… good.” Barry says, holding back a wince as the spice kicks the back of his throat. Tears prick at his eyes, and he blinks them away, “Really good.”
Bart gives him a toothy, lop-sided smile. Barry’s chest hurts, “Thanks, gramps.”