Chapter Text
Every kid has grown up reading stories about soulmates coming together or seeing movies based on the idea of bondmates, or listening to songs about love at first sight.
I...didn’t really have to.
See, my parents were soulmates. It’s rare, and special and magical and I grew up seeing the real deal. So, yeah. I guess you could say I ended up being something of a romantic.
There have been as many scholarly reports written about the science of soulmates as there have been romantic novels, but people still don’t quite know how it works. It’s universally agreed that when a person gets near their destined mate, there’s a release of hormones into the blood and neurotransmitters to the brain. How or why it happens? Yeah, science is still working on that one.
Eye contact seals the deal. You just lock eyes with your mate and...that's it. You’ve found your other half. Some call that moment a ‘click’. Others, a ‘shift’. Others still a sort of…‘clarity’.
At any rate, the ensuing eye contact, in conjunction with the hormones coursing through both of your bodies, establishes an empathic link. Over time, the link grows stronger, and, in some couples - like my parents - it develops into true telepathy.
But, as comforting as it is knowing that there's someone out there who’s meant just for you...well, statistics aren’t really in your favour here. I mean, there are seven billion people in the world. Your soulmate could be somewhere on the opposite end of the planet, separated from you by borders and oceans. People can go their whole lives, catching the eyes of everyone who passes by them, and feel nothing, find nothing.
So, most people try not to get too hung up on it. You either find them, or you don’t. It doesn’t stop you from finding someone who loves you, even without the happy hormones helping things along.
The running joke is that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, but only because the other half couldn't get a divorce from a soul bond even if they wanted to.
Now, let me just clarify: even when you do find that person, it doesn't always mean romance. I mean, look at Caitlin and Cisco. Soulmates, but definitely the platonic kind. Cait’s happily married to Ronnie and Cisco? Well, he’s still pining after Lisa Snart, so we’ll see how that works out for him.
So, you see, the whole ‘soulmates’ thing doesn’t really prevent you from doing what you want anyway. A lot of people have sort of thrown up the middle finger at the entire idea and just decided to just... live their lives.
And in some ways, it’s safer.
I’ve seen what it’s like, when one half of your soul dies. I saw it every time I looked my dad after mom’s death. It’s a...hollowness in his eyes. It's an emptiness. A vacancy that can't be filled.
So, yeah, it’s beautiful and amazing and also really scary. I mean, being The Flash isn’t exactly a safe line of work. Either I’m going to die and leave someone behind, and leave that hollow-empty feeling there...or someone’s going to be taken away from me and I’m going to be the one who’s hollow-empty.
But then, I’ll see a couple like Iris and Eddie and I almost want to thank the person who stole Iris’ purse because that’s how they met. And boy did Iris fight against it. Iris West is definitely not the kind of person who’s happy to have life choices made for her. She fought, tooth and nail, and made Eddie earn every glance, every cautious smile, every moment.
She made Eddie earn her love.
And look at them now. It’s like looking at my parents: two people who are totally, completely perfect for one another.
This soulmates thing is weird and twisted and complicated and it doesn’t always work out the way that you think it should but...some part of me can’t help but wait and secretly hope that it’ll happen to me too.
My name is Barry Allen. And this is the story of how I changed the timeline and met my mate.
***
As far as timelines go, this one wasn't too bad. It wasn't ideal by any means but at least no one was evil and his team was more or less how they were before Barry had changed things.
Barry followed dutifully behind Joe, baffled and trying to keep up. He needed things to get back to normal, or at least, as normal as things could ever be while being a speedster.
Returning to ostensible normalcy meant returning to his job. His actual, mask-less, superpower-free one, that is. Well. Partially powers-free. Barry always did use his abilities in and around the lab. It just felt like such a waste of time if he didn't.
Barry Allen, of course, was all about maintaining time.
"We found another husk this morning," Joe said.
"Husk?" Okay, so maybe he should have read up on a few case files prior to this return.
"Singh wants this processed ASAP." Barry was about to reach out and take the sample in question, opening his mouth to say something along the lines of ‘I'll get right on it’. However, the bagged evidence was, evidently , not being given to him, placed as it was on someone else's desk.
And since when was there more than one desk in here? Never mind more than one CSI.
"Yes, the skin husks that we've been finding around the city. The ones we think are attached to the metahumans. This is now the fourth one." The stranger’s voice was brusque, likely pitched to be businesslike, professional. To Barry he just sounded exhausted.
In the midst of the swirling confusion in his mind, Barry felt a stab of sympathy and a touch of warmth. It prickled along his skin like the now-familiar sensation of electricity. At least, that was the immediate emotion, at any rate. More distantly, he could feel a bone-deep tiredness, layered over with a veneer of indifference, along with a few other things that were too tangled for him to immediately identify.
All of this, of course, made perfect sense until Barry paused to wonder how it was that he somehow gained a second set of emotions. He could feel that one set, the former set, was distinctly his, while the the other was definitely not-his . Barry looked around, wondering if there was a meta at work here. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had toyed with him through his feelings.
Joe’s voice cut through his thoughts, bringing Barry back to the present. "Deep. Breaths," he instructed. That was Joe West’s ‘parent’ voice, down to the finger raised in his direction that was silently telling him to behave . Message delivered, Joe headed for the door.
Barry turned to try and catch his attention. There was definitely something going on here and if it was the work of a meta then they needed to come up with a plan (and Joe needed to cover for him while he did his his Flash thing).
Instead, Barry was left behind in the lab with two sets of emotions and a few dozen unanswered questions. Slowly, Barry looked back and directed glance in the newcomer’s direction.
Well, at least one of these questions could be answered.
"Uhh...hello...?"
"Yes. Hello. Mr. Allen. I can still see you're there. And no, I don't want your help, thank you," the man drawled.
Alright. Not a friendly stranger. Got it.
Barry peered at the nameplate, neatly angled to allow anyone walking in to see who was who. Barry's own nameplate - since when did he even have one of those? Right. Probably when he got himself a lab mate and he wasn't the only CSI in the building - was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the clutter on his desk.
"What are you doing here Julian Albert...Meta-Human CSI specialist?" Barry spared a quick moment to wonder when Meta-Human Specialists even began to exist as an actual profession.
Right. Timelines.
Julian didn't look up as he answered, "I did tell you that the Meta-Human conference was only for two days." He sounded bored and Barry felt a wave of annoyance from him, as though he regularly fended such ‘stupid questions’.
"Okay…” Barry tried to be patient. This guy didn't know, after all, that he had travelled through time, changed the past and affected the present and had a three-month gap in his memory from living in another timeline. No one but Felicity did, so far. “But this is--"
"Still our lab." Julian looked up and their eyes met.
‘Shift.’
‘Click.’
‘Clarity.’
‘His-entire-world-turning-on-its-axis-and-leaving-him-breathless…’
Whatever the terminology was, Barry felt it. All of it. At once, and it was a minor miracle that he managed to stay on his feet as his blood sang in his veins and a single word rung out, like the sharp chime of an unexpected bell.
‘Soulmate.’
A flurry of thoughts flew through his mind, all in under a second. His mate. Barry had found his mate. He was here and in front of him and wow his eyes were really blue and he was so handsome and he was a CSI too so they already had things in common.
He had a mate. A mate!
Barry hadn't banked on ever finding him - or her. Not between being The Flash and fighting evil metas and everything else that happened in this crazy life of his.
Suddenly it made sense - the extra set of emotions, the sudden pull he felt towards the other man, the need to comfort someone who was rightly still a stranger for all intents and purposes.
He wanted to introduce himself, but, no he couldn’t do that, could he? If they were lab mates then they’d have known one another for months, easily, and that realization tipped his brain into hyperdrive.
Barry had known his mate for months in this timeline.
So then…
Was he…?
Was he... married ?
Barry felt as nauseated as he did excited. How much of this life had he missed? How much did he need to know and how on earth was he supposed to explain to his soulmate that he wasn’t the same person that Julian had come to know (and possibly bonded with?)
Months. Months of catching up to do. Months of memories he didn’t have. Though, it did explain the sudden strength of the bond. They’d known one another for a while, and Barry had stepped into the shoes of his other self, picking up all the proverbial baggage that came with it.
No, it’d be okay. Barry needed to trust that things would be fine. If Julian was his soulmate - and there were enough hormones in his blood to prove that correct - then he’d understand. He would have to...wouldn’t he?
Unhindered, Julian kept talking. "Unfortunately," he finished.
Barry frowned and a feeling of wrongness settled over him. Something was off here, and that feeling of nausea curdled and ramped up as Barry stared back at Julian, searching for something, some kind of acknowledgement of their bond, anything close to the elation currently coursing through him. He searched, both through the bond and in Julian’s eyes for some sort of recognition or acceptance or...anything. “W-what?” Barry asked, shakily. He hadn’t entirely been paying attention to what exactly it was that Julian had been saying.
In his defence, Barry was a bit distracted.
There was nothing but a faint flicker of confusion in Julian’s eyes, one that was quickly replaced with irritation. "Yes, County forgot to mention that significant detail before assigning me but, here we are.” Julian stood, jaw tight, radiating enough hostility to make the empathic bond redundant. “Looks like you and I get to be roomies for a little longer than we'd hoped."
With a terse, faked smile, Julian turned his back and Barry's heart sank into his stomach.
This wasn't like the stories. This wasn't like anything that Barry had ever seen or read about. Meeting your soulmate was supposed to be this magical, amazing thing. Your soulmate wasn't supposed to reject you...and once you found that special person, you weren't supposed to feel alone.
Barry felt alone.
***
Felicity squeaked and slammed her hand down on a stack of papers, feeling that familiar rush of wind that signalled a speedster’s arrival. “No...” she said, allowing herself a moment to mourn the loss of her organization. “Barry.” The call of his name was both a question and a comment as she spun her chair around to look at her frazzled friend.
Silently, she watched him pace, letting him gather his words. “Am I married?” he asked, suddenly. “Or was I? Or about to be? Or…?”
Felicity blinked. “Uh. No…? At least...I don’t think so? I mean, you would’ve told me if you were …” she paused. “You would tell me if you ever got married, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. Yeah, of course I would.” Barry stalked back and forth a few more times before leaning his weight against the back of a chair, covering his face with his hands. “I messed up.”
Felicity frowned. “Did you...marry someone? Is this some kind of Vegas situation? Because I thought speedsters couldn’t get drunk.”
“It. Well, no. We can’t. And this is way worse than any ‘Vegas’ situation. If I could choose a Vegas situation I’d chose it. Happily.”
“Okay so it’s not. Then…?”
Barry took a breath, and began to explain.
By the time Barry had finished detailing all that had happened, Felicity was up on her feet, pacing, and Barry was the one slunk down in a chair. “So…” she shook her head. “Wow. Okay.”
“And that’s not all of it.”
“There’s more ?”
“I found my soulmate.”
A heartbeat, and then, “...Barry that sounds like the exact opposite of a problem. Your soulmate ! Wow! That’s--”
“And he hates me.”
“I don’t...Is that even possible?”
Barry ran his hands through his hair for the fifteenth time that minute. “I don’t know. It’s like it’s...one sided. Like, I felt it Felicity. All of it. I felt it happen but...Nothing. Nothing from him.”
“Maybe he’s just not good at expressing himself?” Felicity asked, perching on the edge of the desk closest to Barry.
“No, I don’t think that’s it. It’s like...he’s blocked off. Okay so, my parents always said that the bond…’works outward’. Once it’s in place, you can always sense the other person, and they can sense you. I can get a read on Julian but…” Barry shook his head. “There’s nothing proving that he’s sensing anything from me. Like this bond is one way only. Can you even have an unrequited soulmate? Has that...ever been a thing?”
Felicity shrugged and set a hand on Barry’s shoulder, feeling nothing but tensed muscle under her hand. “I don’t know. I can look into it, if you want...but I’ve never heard anything like it.” She squeezed gently.
"I don't know how to fix this."
"Well, you're gonna figure it out because of there's one thing I've learned from you is that, with you, anything is possible," Felicity said, reassuringly.
"Why because I'm The Flash?"
"No. Because you are Barry Allen. And sweet, loving, kind Barry Allen who everybody likes; The Barry Allen who is just like pudding, can fix this. So go, and fix this."
"Yeah. Okay. You're right. Yeah.."
Felicity stared. "Now!"
Barry's eyes snapped to hers. "Right now?"
"Yes!"
***
As it turned out, time travel was not the solution for fixing it. It had been such a good plan too: try another reset, make sure everyone was okay this time, that Joe and Iris were talking and Dante was still alive…And then find Julian Albert and do this whole bondmates thing properly.
Jay yanked him out of the speedforce and literally sat him down to explain that, no, this wasn’t going to work and, yes, Barry just needed to live with his changes.
So it was time to live with the changes.
It got easier over time and, eventually, Barry was forgiven - thanks, impromptu aliens for helping fix his life - and things returned to that ostensible normalcy that Barry had come to expect.
There was still the matter of the one-sided soul bond. With his immediate loved ones taken care of, Barry could return his attention to Julian. There would be no more of those half-tried attempts to befriend him.
No, this time, Barry was going to do it properly.