Chapter Text
Accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and have the wisdom to know the difference.
He did not want to open his eyes.
He quite preferred the darkness of keeping them closed, perhaps for eternity if he must.
Three timelines. One aborted, two destroyed. Both by him; one out of selfishness, the other by truly awful luck.
He dreaded the thought that this one was going to end up just like the others - doomed to a loop of never ending doomsday; an eternal cycle of repetition with him being forced to remember it all.
Try as he must though, he had to open his eyes eventually. With a deep breath he embraced the light of the fourth timeline. Or at least he attempted to do so, as the moment his eyes were opened they were greeted with a burst of blinding light from the sun. He groaned a bit, though his eyes adjusted within a matter of seconds. Once they did, he was in for quite a surprise.
He had no idea where he was.
The city was not a thing like Central City, Metropolis or even Gotham. In fact, it appeared as though he was in Italy, Venice perhaps. It had the canals with gondola rides going through, it had classic venetian style architecture, though none of the landmarks were correct. There was no Doge’s palace, only two large bell towers and a castle on some island far off the distance. There was also a complicated structure built in the canals directly in front of the courtyard where he was sitting; a stone platform connected to six others, with torch-like pillars in the center; all also connected to what looked like one more massive torch, decorated with metallic railings made to resemble both stylized flames as well as an eagle directing attention to the larger torch in the center. A very ornate and unique landmark, though one Barry had not once seen or heard of in his life.
This was no city he’d ever been to.
Where am I? He thought as he got up to leave in the hopes of finding some way back to a place he was familiar with using his speed, only to find that yet again he lacked his powers of super speed, unable to accomplish more than the average top speed of a handsome, very athletic grown man. Faster than most of the people in the city, but the blonde man was far from superhuman.
“I probably should have expected that” he said to himself upon the revelation, sighing at this being the second timeline where he has no powers upon entering. His initial plan dashed, he restored to his second plan; asking a local where he was.
It proved to be harder than he expected, as there wasn’t a very high population of people within the town and those that were around didn’t seem to pay him much mind. It took him some time to find someone willing to talk to him, though it wasn’t him who asked the question. Instead, his attention had been grabbed by the sound of a young boy sobbing.
The boy was at least a pre-teen, with auburn brown hair and a very thin physique. Barry, ever a superhero even with no powers, instinctively went over to this young man to see what the problem was:
“Hey kid, what’s the matter?” he said in a concerned voice, grabbing the child’s attention:
“It’s my dog, Pele” the boy explained, “I was taking him out for a walk and now he’s missing, I don’t know where he’s gone off to!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll help find him for you” Barry assured the child, patting him on the shoulder - the boy responded with a hopeful look that helped Barry forget his own dilemma for a moment, “What does Pele look like?”
“He’s a black and white dog, mister” the boy said to describe his dog, “He’s not very big, but he’s not very small either.”
“What breed?”
“I don’t know, I think he’s a mix of a few!”
“Alright, where did you last see him?”
“About right here, sir!” the boy exclaimed, before pointing off towards the courtyard where Barry had just been a few minutes prior, “He ran off in that direction, but then I lost sight of him!”
“Alright, you stay here I’ll go look for him.”
“Thank you, mister!”
With that exchange being done, Barry went off in the direction that the boy had pointed off in. He would have been much faster without his powers, though as it turned out in hindsight he didn’t need them anyway. Venturing around the large courtyard and cafe area he found a small crevice with a small bridge that served as a shortcut to a part of the city located behind it. It was but a quick jog away from where the boy was, and on the other side of this small bridge was the dog. Sitting, panting with his tongue out, and wagging its tail.
Are you kidding me? Barry honestly wasn’t sure why the boy evidently didn’t run after his beloved pet, but knew better than to judge a child.
As Barry approached Pele, the dog proved to be friendly - actually rolling over and letting the depowered speedster rub his bully in a moment that made Barry actually chuckle a bit.
“Alright Pele, fun’s over. Time to get you back to your owner.”
The dog parked a bit, apparently understanding Barry. Either way, Barry was then able to pick Pele up in his arms and carry him back over to the boy, which yet again proved to not actually be very long of a walk at all.
Upon returning to the boy, the dog began struggling within Barry’s arms until he let go of Pele and let him run back to his owner - the two embracing with Pele excitedly licking his chuckling owner's face.
“Pele! Your back!” the boy cheered between giggling as Pele showed his affection for him. It was honestly a scene that made Barry smile, after the horror he’d witnessed in his previous timeline seeing something as bright and wholesome as this small moment was practically therapeutic.
Speaking of that subject…
“Hey, kid…”
“Huh? Oh, right, thank you so much mister!” the kid responded as Pele calmed down, Barry having grabbed the owner's attention, “I really thought Pele was gone forever!”
“It’s no problem, it’s what I do” Barry answered, “But besides that, can you tell me where I am? I have no idea what city this is.”
“Oh, you’re a tourist?”
“I, guess you could say that, actually.”
“Well, this is Soleanna, city of water!” the boy happily exclaimed.
Soleanna? Sounds Italian, or at least Latin, but this looks almost like a carbon copy of Venice. Maybe this is just ‘Not Venice’ or something?
“So, am I in Italy, or what?”
“What’s an Italy?”, the boy cocked his eyebrows, his face showing confusion as though he had never even heard that word before, let alone knew what it meant.
“What country is this city in?”
“Mister you really should learn more about places you travel to, Soleanna is a country and a city!”
“Oh.”
“Haha, you’re kinda funny” the boy chuckled, “You must be from the Federation, those guys always know the least about the world!”
“You mean the United States?”
“No it’s the United Federation, not the United States!” the boy laughed again, “I thought grown-ups were supposed to know these things! There’s no United States! Haha!”
Barry wanted to respond with snark to the kid, though the speedster knew that from the kid’s perspective the boy had a point. Remembering that, Barry decided to at least attempt to play along in order to end this conversation:
“Haha, that’s right, how could I get that mixed up!” he said while forcing his laughter, “I was tryin’ to mess with ya a little there, but you saw right through me!”
“You’re really bad at jokes, mister” the kid bluntly said, “Anyway I better go home now, my mama’s making pasta tonight, plus I really wanna be up to see the festival later, see ya around!”
That remark was uncalled for, Kid. Barry pouted at his sense of humor being insulted, but let the kid and his dog walk off back to their home without taking up any more of their time. Besides, I need to find some kinda newspaper or computer, something that can tell me where the hell I am.
Walking away from the area he was in, Barry searched for any library or newspaper stand - or really anything that had any information about this new timeline at all. Last time he created a flashpoint, the timeline was different but the world was still recognizable. There was still an Italy, and still a United States. Still a world that he could at least accept as his. There was no ‘United Federation’ or ‘Soleanna’ as far as he knew. Even if this city-state was beautifully scenic, he still needed to locate this timeline’s versions of his friends - Iris, the League, the Titans, Constantine, anybody really. He needed something he could recognize.
Luckily for him, finding a library was not difficult. Spending some time walking around the castle town, he eventually had a chance to converse with some of the pedestrians walking along the streets, and one middle-aged man had said to him:
“Library? Yeah, that’s in the New City, just take that tunnel right on over there and you’ll be there.”
“Thank you” Barry actually sighed when that man said that, he felt like he’d been wandering in circles around this place for hours - everything blended in so much that it all seemed like the same place to him. Either way, as the man said, the city was connected to other parts of the country via large tunnels, entered through large, opulent green doors. With there evidently being no vehicles to use in this part of the city, Barry had no choice but to walk through the cave-like tunnel and just hope there was a ‘New City’ area on the other side.
The whole while, all he could do was think:
Ya know, this would be a lot better if I had my powers. But no. Figures.
His legs hurt like hell by the time was on the other side, but once he was on the other side of that tunnel he saw the coveted ‘New City’ area: a mountain-side slice of a metropolis, complete with high-rises and skyscrapers, with a harbor area on one side, a train station built partially into the mountains, and a warehouse ‘in between’ the two. The roads did in fact have asphalt on them, though Barry was perplexed as to why there was no traffic. At least, not in this part of the city.
He was surprised to see such a drastic shift in appearance just passing through a tunnel, though at the very least the appearance did bring back memories of his home of Central City. At least, a little bit. He didn’t have time to gawk at what he remembered though, he had to focus on acquiring information.
When it hit him that the man he talked to literally had given no details as to where the library was actually located, Barry ended up asking multiple people walking about the streets:
“Oh, just take the next turn on your left.”
“It’s back that way.”
“Go north for like three more buildings.”
“Go east, it’s the second building on the west side.”
Who talks like that?
“Take a left, then take a right, and you can’t miss it!”
It was like that for at least seven more people until finally one person told the exhausted Barry words that yet again made him happy:
“Dude” the young man dressed in a suit and tie said, “You’re standing right in front of it.”
“I...I am?”
Barry looked at the library and saw it was honestly not any different from the rest of the buildings in this area of the city, only with the words ‘library’ as a sign on top of the door. Barry was both happy and annoyed, he muttered “Thanks” to the man as he walked in but as he wiped sweat from his brow he also thought almost aloud:
These guys really don’t know a thing about designing buildings.
Barry was relieved to be in the inside of a building with air conditioning rather than under the merciless heat of the sun walking around asking people questions. He basked in the A.C. for a bit just before getting right down to business. The sections were easy enough to find, with history being the first section he looked up. He was able to find various books that told him the story of this timeline, though absolutely none of it was a damn thing like the world he remembers.
The History of Soleanna was the first book he sat down and read through. The history of Soleanna was actually somewhat fascinating to Barry, though also a tad bit confusing. Evidently, the civilization had actually started within a desert that is also present on the island - with photographs of ancient ruins akin to what he would normally assume were Egyptian or Middle Eastern in nature sporadically present on the pages. The story was told of an ancient people who worshipped the Sun God Solaris, who also evidently had power over Time and Space. Worshipping him so that he did not destroy the world with his flames, the annual tradition of the Festival of the Sun continues to this day.
They worship a God so he won’t destroy them? Is this Solaris guy the new Darkseid or something?
The book also was very vague on why the civilization evidently moved from the desert to the coastal and temperate areas of the city, though Barry assumed it was something to do with habitability anyway and did not mind the lack of details on that front.
Getting enough of Soleanna’s information, Barry turned to a book that was more about the general world rather than just the city-state itself. He was hoping he would at least see some familiar names, though was sadly mistaken:
Not in any photograph or map presented in the book was anything he recognized. Not a single, solid, thing. The world’s geography was only vaguely akin to his own, but looked more like a completely different planet. There was no United States, no Themyscira, no Atlantis, though there was a Bialya. No Qurac, though. The biggest joke to him was that there was a ‘Central City’ in this new timeline, though it was the capital of the United Federation. To Barry, that alone was a massive slap in the face. Even more slaps to his face included the fact that while there was no Metropolis and not even a Gotham there was a 'Grand' Metropolis, as well some place called ‘Station Square’ that from what Barry could tell filled Metropolis’ role in the world, though there was absolutely no mention of Superman, Lex Luthor or even Kryptonians in general.
Neither was there mention of the Justice League, Wayne Enterprises, Mars or anything else he remembers for that matter. Not even the Green Lantern corps received a mention. The only aliens that were mentioned were present in a book covering the ‘Invasion of the Black Arms’, detailing how one ‘Shadow’ managed to almost single-handedly destroy them and their leader ‘Black Doom’.
‘Black Doom’, and I thought ‘Darkseid’ was lazy.
As he kept reading and reading through the history books he could find, there continued to be n no mention of the Justice League or Teen Titans, only figures named ‘Sonic’, ‘Shadow’ and some organization known as ‘G.U.N.’ - standing for Guardian Units of Nations. From what Barry could tell they were the United Federation’s military force rather than anything remotely similar to the Justice league.
He didn’t trust them.
After putting that book onto a table next to his seat, he placed his hands onto his head and leaned forward, all of this being a lot to take in.
None of this makes any sense.
At all.
Like, at all.
He truly could not believe it. This was a timeline where it seemed as though so much of time had been distorted that even the big bang probably happened differently. Yet somehow, he still existed. Somehow, he still remembered where he came from. He was alone in what seemed like an alien world - no Bruce, no Clark, no John, no Hal, no Vic, no Diana, and so far not even Iris. Yet, this world wasn’t supposed to be alien - this planet was still called ‘Earth’. Though this was no earth that he knew.
That world, that timeline, was gone.
Only he, so far at least, remembered what once was.
With a sigh, Barry stood up and decided to accept it. He had no other choice anyway, it wasn’t like he was the suicidal type. He didn’t know how many of his friends if any at all exist in this new timeline, though at least this timeline is still better off than the one he recently erased.
Walking out of the library and back into the breezes and ‘sweet’ smells of the New City district, his attention was caught by a familiar voice:
“Barry? Barry, there you are!”
Turning around, Barry’s eyes widened:
“Iris?”
Indeed, it was Iris. Standing right there, her red hair still worn in that ponytail - her green eyes still glistening like emeralds in the light. There was no mistaking her for anyone else as she gave Barry a hug - he returned it, though was still pleasantly stunned to see her at all.
“I can’t believe I’ve found you here, I thought-”
“Well what was I supposed to do?” Iris interrupted, “I said I was just taking a bathroom break, and then I came back and you were gone!”
“Oh” realizing that she had a perfect memory of this timeline, Barry decided to play along. Rubbing the back of his head, he thought of an explanation and said the first one that came to his mind; “Sorry, I dozed off and got a little worried when I saw you weren’t there, thought you went sight-seeing without me...haha.”
“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt,” Iris spoke, a slight smirk on her face, though she did appear to genuinely trust him, “So, you been soaking up the literature of this place?”
“Oh, yeah. I was just skimming through some books. Fascinating history, can’t believe there was that alien invasion last year.”
“I told you not to remind me. There’s still people all over Central City that are homeless because of those attacks, but at least Shadow made sure those guys are gone for good.”
“He did? How did he do that?” Barry broke character, his memory of the Apokolips War taking over for a moment. Iris though, didn’t seem entirely amused by it:
“You didn’t watch my coverage of it?” she shook her head, “He used the eclipse cannon on the ARK to destroy Black Doom and his comet completely! I covered it live!”
“Oh, right!” Barry yet again had to rub the back of his neck nervously, “Sorry, I guess I just needed my memory jogged a little.”
“It’s alright, I’ve had those moments before myself.” Iris softly chuckled, “Anyway, you still up for hitting the beach before the festival tonight?”
“The festival?”
“The festival of the sun! They do it every year here and it’s the reason we came here? I’ve seen clips of it online, but this is going to be the first time I get to see it in person! They do it to honor their sun god, Solaris!”
“Oh right, that festival! What time is it gonna start at, again?”
“I think it’ll start at around eleven or midnight.”
“Then yeah” Barry smilled, “We have lots of time. Let’s hit the beach.”
“Just what I thought you’d say~”
With arms wrapped around each other’s waists, Barry and Iris happily departed the ‘bustling’ New City as Iris essentially escorted Barry over to where one goes to enter the vast coastline of Soleanna, known collectively as Wave Ocean. A beautiful yet expansive set of smaller islands and various rock formations well populated with sailboats, boardwalks, and last but not least orcas.
The latter proved rather beautiful for both Barry and Iris, as they sat on the sand and watched from their beach towels as pods of the massive creatures breached the water, jumping about as the sun shined down on them. This was a moment Barry had wished for back in the previous timeline, and it was a moment he never wanted to end. Seeing Iris smile, seeing her so happy and alive, holding her hand and experiencing it all with her, it made everything almost worth it.
Even as she rested her head on his shoulder as they simply enjoyed being on the beach, with the sounds of the waves hitting the shore and the smell of the salt water surrounding them, it was not just a highly pleasant moment of life. It was almost like heaven.
This world may not be anything like the one he remembers, but from what he can see it may just be more worth living in.
However, even as he enjoyed his moment with Iris. There was still the other side of his mind that remembered everyone else. Bruce, Clark, Lois, Diana, Victor, J’hon, Hal, Billy, Constantine, Zatanna, Arthur, Mera. Even Dick, Koriand’r, Damian, Conner, Raven, Gar, Jaime and the rest of the titans. As far as he could tell, only he and Iris seemed to exist in this world. As much as his heart was delighted to be so happily with Iris, it also ached for those whom he had considered his friends - he assumed his nephew Wally might still exist, though he was almost afraid to ask.
However, he couldn’t contain his feelings permanently:
“So, how’s Wallace been doing?”
“Wallace? Who’s Wallace?”
“Oh, nevermind” Barry said in a soft tone, not wanting to bother her with details she wouldn’t even be able to comprehend, “Just an old friend of mine I haven’t seen in a while.”
“Well you never told me about a Wallace before, but you know Rudy and Daniel have both said they want to name their kids Wallace when they have any.”
“Oh really?” that gave Barry a bit of ‘hope’, so to speak.
“Yeah. I think they should at least consider choosing separate names, but hey it’s their kids.”
“Right, haha.” Barry looked back at the shore, and could see that the time of sunset had now arrived, as the great star was just beginning to lower itself beneath the horizon - turning the sky a beautiful mix of orange and red as it did so, with the waters of the ocean reflecting that and turning a beautiful shade of dark purple the further it was away from the light.
Barry thought about bringing up the others, but one last look at Iris who was resting her head on her shoulders while smiling at the view of the setting sun made him know that asking about the Wallaces was enough. Unfortunate as it was, that was all in the past now. He couldn’t change it any further, and he didn’t want to - he just accepted it and turned his attention to what he could change.
He and Iris embraced each other, and shared a single romantic kiss before they turned their heads to watch the sun set.
As much as he wanted this moment to last forever frozen in time, Barry was now more than ready to witness the festival of the sun alongside his beloved. At least they still had a few good more hours to spare.