Chapter Text
“–Allen?”
Barry starts at the voice, his joints protesting as he straightens from his microscope. With the rain pelting the window providing such excellent white noise, it had been easy to get lost in his work, even with the occasional punctuating clap of thunder.
He recognizes the woman in the door: Officer Hill, a newer addition to the force. He’s seen her around, but they haven’t talked. Her friendly smile is clear against her dark skin and hair, even with half the lab between them.
“Sorry, could you repeat that?”
“Are you going to be here much longer?” she asks. “I’m making the rounds to lock up.”
He glances at the clock above the door. It’s almost 11:30. When had that happened? If felt like only twenty minutes ago that he’d insisted to Patty that really, he needed to get this casework done, and wouldn’t be going to the happy hour. He’s happy Kristen has found her soulmate; he’d been late this morning picking up a last minute gift. But this new evidence could make the difference between the suspect sitting in a cell or going home to his family. There hadn’t been much choice between that and an invitation his coworkers only extended to be polite.
“Allen?” Officer Hill says, and Barry blinks at her. “You sure you don’t want to go home? You seem pretty out of it.”
It takes him far too long to realize that she’s asking because he hasn’t answered her question. He smiles, going for sheepish and probably only managing shifty. “No, I’m just like that. And I’m going to be a while, so…”
There’s a long pause as she waits for him to finish the sentence. He doesn’t.
Her smile slips from friendly to forced. “Okay. Make sure to turn off the lights and lock up when you’re done.”
“Thanks. You too.” That doesn’t make sense. He fumbles an apology, but from the increasing strain in her polite smile, all he’s doing is compounding the awkwardness of his statement. She nods after another too long pause, says something about finishing her rounds, and leaves.
Barry sinks back into his chair, the tangled knots of his shoulders protesting as they’re unceremoniously jammed against the worn padding. The click of the door echoes through the lab.
The empty benches stretch away from him in all directions, the shadows strange and shallow with only the fluorescent lights brightening the room. The window spanning the entirety of the far wall is nearly black.
He stares out into the night, a question itching at the back of his mind. There’s something there, an aimless desire for answers that’s…
Oh .
His stomach drops. It’s his soul bond. His soulmate picked up Barry’s discomfort during the conversation and is so curious that Barry can feel it himself.
That, finally is enough to make him stop and focus on calming himself. He takes a deep breath, trying to find the dispassionate objectivism he needs for his work.
Instead, he feels irritation scratching at the back of his skull. Now that he’s looking for it, it’s easier to identify the feeling as not his own, and set it aside.
He turns back to his sample. The irritation turns to enthusiasm, his soulmate as easily distracted from him as ever. The eagerness bubbles up from his chest, casually brushing aside the detached mindset Barry’s trying to maintain. He spends a fruitless minute staring into the illuminated negative space around his sample.
Now that he recognizes it for what it is, his soulmate’s enjoyment is a lonely echo — a window into someone else’s happiness divorced from him entirely. The empty lab looms as he pushes back his chair and scrubs a hand over his strained eyes.
Maybe Officer Hill was right, and it’s time to go home. He’s usually much better at managing his soul bond.
Thunder cracks, shaking the building. The lights flicker and go out.
Barry sighs and unplugs his microscope. It’ll be another minute before the backup generator kicks in. He stands, stretches, and starts a lap around the lab. The pull of his muscles is a welcome distraction, the effort of picking his way through the darkened room just challenging enough to force him to focus. The chill air soothes the flush burning his cheeks, a side effect of the secondhand excitement, and he stops to gaze through the rain-streaked window.
Lightning flares, splitting the sky in forked streaks of light, sharp, crisp lines refracted a hundred times over through the rivulets on the glass. The afterimage lingers and his eyes trace its path. He’s always found lightning fascinating, and the storm tonight is the biggest he’s seen in years. He’d been afraid of it, as a child, when the seemingly random light and noise had seemed the wrath of some capricious and wrathful god. But his mother had sat with him, and explained charge and discharge, action and reaction, and for every storm after, he’d been drawn to the window as he’d been tonight. Because what is lightning if not a natural demonstration of the power of science, of many forces performing exactly as they should, but in the most spectacular manner? Once he’d understood, he couldn’t look away.
He watches for another minute as the lightning appears and disappears over the city, Central’s many lights seeming dim in comparison after each strike. Then he frowns. The CCPD’s power should be back by now, and there’s something in the air. His hair stands on end and he takes a step back, staring into the blackness of the sky overhead.
The glass explodes in a blinding flash of light. He throws his arms up as pain and heat engulf him.
And then, nothing.
He might be dying. That’s what this is, right? His life flashing before his eyes, the parade of regrets and roads not only untraveled, but not even begun? The feelings of worry and hurt and elation coming from some distant other place?
He knows where those began, remembers exactly where he was, what he’d been doing. He’d been in the family room, standing, with his book in his hands. The afternoon sun streamed through the window, the hour just late enough that the sun fell directly on the pages when sitting in his chair.
He’d taken a step, and then his skin was on fire. His entire body shudders like he’s been punched by a giant fist.
There’s a bang and his foot throbs, the pain sharp and in focus against the pounding ache in the rest of him. He‘d looked down to see his book lying open on the ground. His knees hit the floor and he’d tilted forward, dizzy and breathless.
Then, a force within him was pushing down. He’d clutched at himself, his eyes stinging, the pressure on his throat so great he could barely breathe. His chest felt ripped open, his rib cage pushed the wrong way round to cut through his skin.
It’s one of the two most vivid memories from his childhood. After all, how could he not remember the day he’d met his soulmate?
His mother, who’d come running when she’d heard his book fall, had gotten him the cold packs from the freezer, and a bag of peas too when it still hadn’t felt like enough. His skin showed nothing, besides a little red under the ice, and though the cold is little distraction from the heart deep ache trying to strangle him, it was something real that he could touch and see and understand.
But he knew what this was. His teachers had talked about it, and so had his parents. He’d seen it in his Flash comics, where the Flash and his soulmate used their soul bond to alert each other of danger.
He’d been waiting for it even. Soul bonds usually formed around his age. One of the two felt a particularly strong emotion, and it was shared between them.
His moment of excitement — he’d met his soulmate! — had quickly turned to panic. He’d met his soulmate, and his soulmate was hurting . What should he do? Barry didn’t know where his soulmate was, as much as he wanted to go help them, or just sit with them so they weren’t alone. But would they want that? Would they want that feeling through the soul bond?
He’d explained all of this to his mom, as best he could, in between thick, painful breaths. Then she pulled him into her lap, and into a hug. He’d squirmed, because really, he was too old for that, but not enough to unseat himself. The comfort of being with her is enough to dampen the pain and loss and rage warring inside him.
He wasn’t okay, but did his best to smile for her regardless. The last thing he wanted was for her to be upset too.
She’d smiled back at him, the two of them a matching pair in the afternoon sun. “If your instinct is to send them love and support, that’s what you should do. That’s what a soulmate is. Someone who needs what you have to give them, and has what you need in return.” She carded her fingers through his hair, saying the words calmly, plainly, like she already knew he’d try his best. And he would, because there’s no one he trusted more in the world, or tried harder to make proud. “So don’t get in your head about it. Be yourself. And maybe I’m biased because I’m your mother, but they’re lucky to have you.”
So Barry did what he thought would help; he sent comfort, and warmth, and every other good thing he could think of. He played with his dog, experiencing it so his soulmate could too. Sometimes he just focused on how much he wanted to give them a hug.
Sometimes it felt like his soulmate was fighting him. He’d get spikes of anger, or hurt, or pure, unfocused misery. But Barry took his mom’s words to heart and continued sending good things.
And soon, what he got back was happier too.
Then Barry’s mom was murdered, and he’d been the one drowning under an endless sea of emotion. There’d been confusion and loss and sadness and so many things in a jumbled mess, and he hadn’t known what to make of any of it. School and his parents and his comic books hadn’t prepared him this time.
He’d wanted to talk to his mom. She’d been the one who could explain anything, who could take questions he didn’t even know how to ask and answer them in a way he could understand. But even wanting had been enough to leave a hollow ache in his chest that threatened to swallow him whole.
He’d asked his dad. But his dad was always at work, and when he wasn’t he was tired and didn’t want to talk. That, Barry could understand. He didn’t really want to talk either.
His soulmate didn’t understand. Something must have gotten through the soul bond, as much as Barry ignored the empty feelings, because what he got from his soulmate had changed. Instead of a window into their life, what he’d received were attacks: a punch of joy, a slap of pride, a smack of frustration, frustration, frustration. The guilt got jumbled up in the pile with everything else; he didn’t want his soulmate feeling all these awful things, and the more he thought about it, the better it seemed that they not know anything at all.
He’d open up to them again, someday. After he got everything together. When he felt strong enough that any hint that someone was watching, that they might know how he felt, didn’t feel like a failure, like they’ve learned some secret he’d never meant them to know. When he was secure enough in himself that he could just be normal, and not constantly frightened that, this time, he’d scare his soulmate away for good.
But he hadn’t. It never felt like the right time. Not in middle school, because who would want to feel their soulmate being lonely, or ignored, or pushed down stairs? Or in high school, when he wondered if he inserted himself into fights not to save the victim, but because the attacks were his only meaningful interactions with another person. Or in college, where he started making friends, but that anxious flutter still made his heart rate spike at the thought that someone, somewhere, has found him out.
And now? Before he’d died and left his soulmate alone? He doesn’t really have an excuse.
Not that it matters anyway. He won’t have the chance to tell them.
Barry throws himself forward as a robotic arm slams into the ground behind him. The dirt explodes into dust and debris, pelting him with rocks and stinging his eyes.
The ship appeared an hour ago, silhouetted against the setting sun like some sci-fi robot squid as it advanced on Central City. Its initial attack had been streamed live, capturing, from a ground’s eye view, as the ship’s sinewy metal arms shot from the sky to level a gas station and toss cars as easily as a child throwing toys. Barry arrived on the scene twenty seconds into the broadcast.
The eight months of experience fighting thieves with gimmicks and telepathic gorillas had done nothing in the face of the primal urge to flee — the paralyzing fear response that took hold despite thorough understanding of the amygdala and hypothalamus. There’s him, on the ground, with a handful of rocks and speedy feet, and then there’s that .
The civilians were the kick Barry needed to ignore the pit in his stomach and the trembling of his legs and run.
Somehow, he’d gotten its attention and lured it to a sprawling, empty construction site outside of the city. He’d struck, spun, and vibrated the ship’s metallic limbs, doing his best to beat back the rising panic as each method of attack proved as fruitless as the last. Finally, he’d remembered that calling for backup was an option, and put out the SOS on the phone the Batman had given them all for this exact purpose. Green Lantern had replied almost immediately with a joke about the entire planet being his jurisdiction, and he’d be right over. The prospect of help had done wonders for Barry’s frayed nerves, though not as much as spotting the green light rocketing through the evening sky.
The feeling hadn’t lasted long. Green Lantern’s been here for half an hour now, and they haven’t made much progress. On top of that…
There’s a flash of green light, and Barry looks to the sky. Green Lantern unleashes another barrage of green bolts from his ring, the energy shooting through the air and striking the ship’s many limbs. One blast cuts most of the way through an arm, dropping the claw and fifty feet of mechanical coils. It thrashes as it falls. Even at his speed, his legs buckle at the rumble through the earth as it hits. The claw alone is the size of a sedan.
“Watch where you’re dropping those!” Barry shouts.
Green Lantern doesn’t react, though Barry can’t tell whether it’s distance or intentional disregard.
Green Lantern is one of a loose network of super vigilantes formed two months ago to confront a flying starfish monster. Barry had followed news of Superman for years, along with rumors of the Batman, Wonder Woman, and so many others for whom the internet hadn’t agreed on a catchy, comics-esque moniker. Meeting them in person had been surreal.
Even among such a pantheon, Green Lantern stood out. Not for being regal like Wonder Woman and Aquaman, a brilliant analyst like the Batman, surprisingly humble like Superman, or an honest-to-goodness Martian like J’onn: no, Green Lantern had been notable for being completely and unabashedly who he was.
Almost literally too. He’d introduced himself as Hal Jordan and nearly sent the Batman into a fit.
Not that that had slowed Green Lantern down. After he and Superman escorted the starfish back into space, he’d wasted no time hitting on Wonder Woman, and then Aquaman when she’d turned him down. Barry hadn’t known what to make of him, this glowing vigilante straight out of Hollywood central casting with an attitude to match.
He’s still not sure, honestly, even though they’ve worked together twice since. But he does have the best credentials to deal with alien technology, so however Barry might feel about him personally, he’s happy for his help.
The ship shivers, light from the three eye-like glowing spheres flaring, and shoots its robotic tentacles out at them. It’s quick, whatever it is, but even at the leisurely hundred mile an hour jog Barry has no trouble dodging them as the claws crash into the ground behind him. His stomach clenches at how easily they pull up boulder sized chunks of concrete and earth.
He grabs a piece of rebar, turns, and charges back towards the attacking arms. Using his body’s forward momentum, he shove the bar into a joint of a grasping claw. The rebar snaps with a crack that cuts through the roar of the battle and Barry flinches back as six inches of jagged, twisted steel flies past his face.
He hurls the bent rod at another claw and digs his fingers between the plates covering a metallic arm. He shakes his hands faster and faster, the strain resonating up his shoulders. But the vibrations don’t resonate through the ship in the same way; a fist size chunk breaks off in each hand with no additional damage to the armored plates. What is this thing? Nothing he does is having any—
A flash of green pulls his attention upward. Maneuverable as Green Lantern is in the air, the dozens of arms attacking him have him on the defensive. The green sphere he’s conjured around himself flashes each time it’s struck, the blows accelerating in frightening syncopation.
Barry ducks under another blow aimed at his head. “You okay up there, Green Lantern?” Barry shouts, then realizes that between the speed he’s moving, the distance, and the noise of the fight, there’s no way Green Lantern can hear him. He circles the ship towards his teammate, coughing as even more dust lodges in his too dry throat.
The arms near Barry, apparently finding catching him as frustrating as he’s found hurting them, turn around and shoot out towards Green Lantern. Green Lantern turns towards them and another arm strikes his sphere from above, spiking him like a volleyball straight towards the ground.
Barry sees the moment the protective bubble around Lantern bursts into shards of green light. Lantern hurtles towards the ground. He’s moving too fast. At this speed, Barry won't get there in time.
The lightning crackles around the edges of his vision, a promise, and a threat. Barry knows what waits for him there. He pumps his legs faster.
But the more time he spends running on his own, the clearer it becomes that he won’t make it. The green light is gone, Lantern’s body a dark speck against the setting sun. He’s in free fall. He won’t survive unaided.
Barry grits his teeth and reaches for the lightning. It gathers around him at that slight invitation.
The world goes quiet as the lightning crackles through him, the sounds of the battle going from chaotic roar to a dull hum. The swirling, frantic dust particles slow to a crawl. The already low light dims.
He’s practiced, sometimes, with people around, and knows that if he goes fast enough, they practically stop entirely. He can move past them without them realizing he was ever there.
That, of all of this, had been the most familiar.
There’s one other difference. Removed as he is from most external stimuli, his soul bond sings strong in the back of his mind, a stark outlier in this cold, quiet world between the seconds. The contrast brings it into focus; the unbroken wall of frustration he’s been feeling in this fight wasn’t his own, but the resulting swell of gratitude certainly is. The separation helps him gently set the frustration aside, and focus on reaching Lantern in time.
He’s there with time to spare. Barry uses it to run in circles, creating an updraft to slow Lantern’s descent until he drifts down low enough for Barry to pluck him out of the air. He’s cool to the touch, and Barry reminds himself that it’s a side effect of the speed he himself is moving. He’ll need to wait until he’s returned to the standard flow of time to assess Lantern’s injuries.
He runs them up a mound of earth on the far side of the construction zone and tips Green Lantern gently onto the ground, moving just slow enough to check Lantern’s vitals as the man returns to consciousness.
Lantern blinks, the motion obvious through the whited out lenses of his mask, and Barry lets out a shaky breath.
“Damn, that thing packs a punch,” Lantern says, levitating himself upright in a flash of green. “Haven’t been smacked that hard since that throw down with Kilowog in the mud pools.”
Barry doesn’t know what a ‘kilowog’ is, but that’s going to have to wait. “Do you have a way we can communicate during the fight?”
Green Lantern grins at him. He looks completely unfazed by his smackdown, and, if Barry’s being frank, just this side of manic.
Lantern holds up his hand with his glowing ring. “You know who you’re asking, right? With this baby, I can make anything.”
Green Lantern explained his ring when their group had first met. Basically it can make anything he can imagine, so long as he wants it hard enough. The objects he makes are solid light, a concept Barry hasn’t fully wrapped his head around; the constructs don’t follow the laws of physics as Barry understands them, and he considers himself pretty well versed in mankind’s related knowledge. He still has so many questions, but he’s not convinced Hal has answers; it becomes more obvious with each subsequent explanation that the information shared is almost as new to Lantern as it is to Barry.
A green headset fits itself over his cowl and Green Lantern’s voice sounds in Barry’s earpieces, “Testing, testing. This is your Lantern speaking. Do you copy, Flash?”
“Hear you loud and clear, GL.” Barry taps the headset. It’s solid, smooth, and giving off none of the energy he associates with electronics since his accident. But it’s also working flawlessly, has no discernible weight, and, despite being translucent, Barry can’t see any internal wiring.
A smile creeps onto his face. What an amazing time to be alive.
Green Lantern grins back. Barry hasn't spoken; is he smiling at his own joke? Barry’s not sure he’d be surprised.
Something dark moves in Barry’s peripheral vision. Lantern notices it at the same time and takes to the air towards the approaching ship. Barry circles in the opposite direction. He’s made a couple laps when he notices a conspicuous absence.
Where are the severed claws? He sees gouges in the packed earth where he’s sure they’d fallen, but no sign of the massive claws themselves. When he studies the ship, he doesn’t see any missing limbs, and the only dents are on the main body despite Lantern cutting through some of the limbs. It must have some way of healing itself.
Deliberately slowly, and enunciating every word, Barry says, “Do you know anything about this ship? Because what we’ve been doing isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“The perp’s a Myrmiton drone. The ring says it has a weak point, but it’s not translating it right!” Lantern shouts into the earpiece. He smacks away an attacking claw with what looks like a massive claw machine. “So unless you know what a ‘dzirak’ is, I’m open to ideas!”
Barry tucks this information away with his other fascinating Green Lantern ring factoids, and fans the air in front of him to try and disburse the infernal dust the battle has kicked up. His eyes are starting to water, and he blinks through it at super speed. “Can you put it on the defensive? I can watch and see what areas it’s protecting.”
Lantern snorts. “Do all your plans involve someone else doing all the work?”
But Barry can hear the smile in his voice, and sees the dozen Lantern-sized sushi knives materialize in the sky a moment later.
Lantern charges the ship with the whoop. “It’s a beautiful day in Central City, folks. Clear skies as far as the eye can see. And you’re in for a real treat, because if you look out the windows to your left, you’ll see a robot squid getting diced by your hero in green.”
“Focus, GL.” Is this guy for real?
But even through the running narration, Green Lantern’s doing an admirable job chopping away at the attacking drone, lopping off every arm that comes within reach.
But that’s not the point, this time. Barry focuses, gathering the lightning around him, and watches.
The clang of metal on metal falls away, the brilliant flashes of green light from each strike dulled to sparks. He can see the change in Lantern’s body language telegraphed frame by frame, the shift in his shining silhouette as he banks away from the ship but sends his constructs flying straight at it. Even at his speed, they trail green afterimages across his vision.
The ship flinches back in slow motion, its many arms writhing and contracting around the ship’s body to form a shield. The knives slice through the outer layers, some even penetrating all the way through to the ship, but not where the arms are most closely packed.
The knives dissipate into the air and the ship’s arms fan out like the limbs of an angry octopus. Many are missing claws, or half their length, the missing limbs falling slowly out of the sky. Only one of the three glowing cores has gone dark. But none of that matters, because Barry saw what he needed.
“It’s the core!” Barry shouts, then again slow enough for Lantern to understand. “Clockwise from the one you took out!” Barry takes off running, heading straight at the arms flying towards him. “I think I can get in and out before it can protect itself!”
Green Lantern curses into the com. “Good, because I’m over this hydra act!”
“I’ll need a way down!”
“Leave that to me. Go get ‘im!”
Barry has to focus to understand the drawn out syllables, but he’s glad he did. Lantern’s attitude and complete lack of fear is contagious, and Barry needs that fearlessness to pull this off.
He reaches an arm and leaps onto the claw. He’s not at full speed, but it’s moving slowly enough to not upset his balance. The surface is smooth, smoother than anything he’s run on before, but his feet barely slip as he keeps putting one after the other.
His stomach drops as his eyes follow the long stretch of the arm to the body of the ship, still small in the sky. A steep incline in his impromptu path is approaching fast. It’s something he’s considered; theoretically he should be able to run on vertical surfaces. He’s done the math, and at the speeds he’s capable of, the effect of gravity should be negligible enough for him to correct for any slippage as he runs.
The cold hard numbers fizzle and die in his head when he makes the mistake of looking down.
His head swims, and he’s suddenly, horribly aware of the small, exhausted tremors running through his legs. His foot lands, then slips sideways. His stomach leaps into his throat. He tries to plant his other foot, but then he’s tilting off his narrow walkway and into the open air.
He throws out his arms, grasping at anything. His hand connects, and his fingers scream as his body weight jerks against them, and then they’re slipping too. He throws up his other arm, but it misses entirely. The lightning around him sputters and dies, and suddenly the mechanical limb he’s grasping isn’t calmly undulating but thrashing. He’s flung free.
“Flash!”
He thinks he hears Lantern. He doesn’t have time to process it, grasping at the lightning while twisting through the air. Finally, his connection sizzles to life, and he turns.
He’s close enough to the ground that he can line up his landing and roll. His shoulder hits the packed earth, and he swallows the cry that would come with it. But his lungs fill with dust at the sharp inhale. He coughs and coughs, his throat not clearing. He throws out his arms blindly, scrambling along the ground, but his eyes water and he can’t catch a breath.
The cloud of dust parts to show a claw hurtling towards his face.
Then, green. Barry shields his eyes from the sudden light. Green Lantern stands tall and unyielding between Barry and the ship. The claw hits Lantern’s shield with a deafening crack, and splits against the green surface like a wave.
Through Lantern’s translucent construct, Barry sees the claw, and then the arm, as it shatters into slivers and plates and millions of dark little flecks of something . He watches one in slow motion as it flies from the force of the impact, then shivers in the air and heads upwards, back towards the ship.
That’s how it’s healing itself , Barry thinks, dazed, before another shattering crack brings him back to the present.
A fissure splits Lantern’s shield, darkness bisecting the green light of the construct.
“Flash, can you end this?”
Barry can hear the strain in Lantern’s voice, and the shake in his outstretched ring arm now that he’s looking for it. But Lantern doesn’t look away from the oncoming attack, even as another crack forms on the face of his shield.
Barry finds himself nodding. And even though the fear still sits heavy in his gut, clawing at his limbs and telling him to flee, his legs don’t shake as he pushes himself up. “Yes. Yes, I can do it.”
“Then go!” He can hear the strain in Lantern’s shout. “We’ve got this!”
Barry takes a deep breath. “We’ve got this.”
And he runs.
He calls the lightning and it finds him instantly, sparking brighter with each step as he backs up, then sprints towards the ship. The explosion of metal slows, the parts gently floating away instead of violently shooting through the air, lit by the brilliant green of Lantern’s ring.
His soul bond is right there with him, the frustration from earlier gone and replaced by pure, unshakeable resolve. Barry mentally thanks his soulmate as he reaches the attacking arms, embracing that conviction and adding it to his own.
The segments of the metallic cylinder blur beneath him. But he’s barely looking, concentrating on the ship far above him.
He borrows more of his soulmate’s determination to run faster still as he approaches the sharp incline. The lightning responds eagerly, filling him with power and speed. In the thrill of the acceleration, it takes him a moment to realize that he’s running near vertical. But he focuses his attention back on the drone and puts his next foot forward.
It’s so much bigger up close.
Eyes glued to the ship, he pushes the thought from his mind. There’s the dark core. His eyes lock on the one clockwise from it. It’s not a sphere, as he’d thought, but a multifaceted polyhedron pulsing a dull, angry red. The limb he’s run up will bring him close, but not close enough; he’ll have to jump to reach it. The ship's limbs are packed thicker here, but that’s no comfort against the slither of cold down his spine at the thought of nothing under his feet. He only has one shot, won’t be able to build up the momentum if he hesitates…
He gathers his soulmate’s resolve around him and throws himself forward.
His fingers close around the edges, digging in between the core and metal casing. For a terrible moment it holds, but then his body’s momentum carries him forward and it jerks along with him. He yanks.
He hangs from his arms for the briefest of moments, and then it comes off in his hands. A moment later the metallic limbs before him fracture, ever so slowly breaking apart at the seams.
And then he’s falling.
Barry’s stomach leaps to his throat, and he clutches at the core in his arms. Panic overtakes him, and the lightning vanishes. The ground, so far away a moment ago, rushes towards him. He doesn’t like heights, can’t even do roller coasters, and now he’s in free fall from twenty stories up.
There’s a flash of green, but all he can see is the earth speeding towards him. Lantern missed! One arm clenches the core, the other pinwheeling as quickly as he can in a desperate attempt at an updraft, but it’s too little, and he’s falling too fast—
His vision fills with green and he grunts as he slams into something. It knocks the breath out of him, and he curls forward.
His entire body aches from the impact. But he’s stopped falling, and sags forward against the construct.
The green light intensifies and Barry rolls to the side to see Green Lantern drop to the ground next to him. The dirt around them is littered with tiny pieces of the ship. The mounds of black specks look like a spilled truckload of beans, and Barry has to bite his lip to keep himself from laughing hysterically.
“Told you I’d catch you,” Lantern says, voice strong and confident like there had never been any doubt.
Then he tips his construct to put Barry back on his feet. Barry catches a glimpse of it before it dissipates into formless green energy. It’s unmistakably a giant catcher’s mitt. Even from the briefest look, he could see the stitching Lantern had apparently thought integral to the design.
Relief bubbles to the surface. Maybe it’s finally having his feet back on the ground, or maybe it’s this whole mission finally catching up with him. Barry laughs, doubling over as his stomach muscles pull him down around the alien ship core he’s still clutching desperately to his chest.
After a beat, Green Lantern joins in too.
“Dude, that was amazing!” Lantern says when he catches his breath. He slaps Barry on the shoulder. “And here I thought running fast was a lame superpower!”
“I’m not the one with the alien nightlight!”
It’s not a good joke, but he’s so keyed up that it doesn’t have to be. Lantern’s grin is almost as wide as his own.
“You know, you could have called for backup earlier,” Lantern says conversationally when they’ve calmed down again. “I saw the trails you’d left as I flew in. It couldn’t have been easy, holding that thing off from the ground.”
He doesn’t sound upset, but how would Barry know? He barely knows the man.
Still, he takes a look around, and grimaces. Even in the half light of dusk, it’s clear what a mess they’ve made of the site. The ground, once flat and even, is pockmarked with craters from attacking robot claws, and rings carved by Barry’s cyclones. He’s not proud to admit it, but when Green Lantern arrived, Barry had no plan, and no way to keep the ship’s attention. If Barry had tried to deal with this himself, who knows how many people could have been hurt.
“I didn’t think of it,” Barry says honestly. He looks Lantern straight in the eye. It’s strange; the man’s mask whites out everything except the barest hint of his irises, but the edges crinkle and widen, as animated as, he assumes, the eyes beneath. “But I’ll be quicker next time. I don’t know if I could have managed without you.”
Green Lantern’s posture shifts, his chest puffing out as a grin spreads across his face. From how blatant the rest of his body language is, Barry’s pretty sure he’s right about the eyes of Lantern’s mask; he’s clearly smiling, and the shape of the mask’s eye holes reflect that.
It’s… Barry hides his face behind a gloved hand. It’s amazing how someone this powerful can be so affected by such a simple statement.
A trill rings through the air and Barry jumps, head whipping around for the source of the attack. Then he realizes it’s his secret vigilante phone.
“It’s the Batman,” Barry tells Lantern. “I’ll give him the update, and come help with cleanup as soon as I’m done.”
“Fine by me. Picking up the millions of pieces of that ship sounds way better than talking to that killjoy.”
His ring glows, and then Lantern’s surrounded by a brigade of vacuum cleaners, which fly across the ground sucking up tiny ship pieces with gusto.
Barry answers the call, and is met with a modulated voice and the Batman’s established pass phrase. Barry responds in kind, only remembering on hearing the Batman’s clearly altered voice that he’d completely forgotten to add the extra vibrations to his own through the battle. He corrects himself now, hoping the Batman didn’t notice.
He gives the Batman the overview. It’s a familiar exercise, like the summaries he gives to detectives at a crime scene, until he hears the Batman’s modulated voice, or catches a flash of green out of the corner of his eye, or feels the pull of his sweat-soaked suit against his skin. Then, Barry can’t help being amazed all over again. In what world does boring Barry Allen get to work with people like this?
Barry makes sure to highlight Green Lantern’s contributions, which isn’t hard, considering that Barry hadn’t done much until the very end. The Batman sounds skeptical, but Barry holds firm. It feels like too little, for the amount of trust Green Lantern had placed in him.
Finally, the Batman is satisfied, and ends the call with a “Good work” and a reminder to call in any other suspicious activity. Barry agrees, wishes him a good night, and lets out a nervous breath when the call drops. Something about the Batman makes him feel like the new kid in the lab all over again.
Is the Batman with the police too? He has the discipline for it, and his immediate instinct to investigate the scene could point in that direction. Any CSI would identify a dragging cape as potential evidence contamination, but a detective…
Barry freezes. He knows what this is.
He’d been thinking about his soul bond as a one way street, assuming that whatever he felt at super speed was too fleeting to pass along the soul bond. Or maybe it was, and it’s his relief after slowing down that had spurred his soulmate’s curiosity. He grits his teeth and does his best not to focus on the pounding of his heart or the numbness of his face.
There’s a flash of annoyance from his soul bond. This, at least, is familiar territory.
But it also reminds him of their support during the fight — unintentional as it had been. Given the time to finally respond properly, Barry focuses on the gratitude he’d felt earlier.
The annoyance from the soul bond diminishes, but doesn’t disappear entirely.
What was Patty doing tonight? They’ve been dating for a couple weeks, though not long enough to know if they’re soulmates. He’d been as surprised as he was flattered when she’d asked; he’d thought she found him kind of strange. And maybe she had. He’s wondered before whether the confidence necessary to be the Flash had crept into his everyday life. But whatever her reason, he’d said yes. She’s self-assured, and outgoing in the way he’d always assumed his soulmate to be. And he likes her, and has an easy time talking to her. They’d found they had a lot in common once they’d really talked.
It’s not all that unusual either, from the statistics he’s read. And wouldn’t it make a great story? Being soulmates with someone he’d worked with for years before finally connecting?
He should do something for her tomorrow. She’s been talking about the muffins from a coffee shop on the other side of the city she never has time to visit.
Barry stashes the phone and goes to join Green Lantern, who he finds cursing out his own ring.
“What is it?” Barry asks, jogging over.
“This thing is trolling me. It keeps telling me I got 98.7% of the ship, but won’t tell me where the rest is!” He drags a hand through his hair, dislodging a few wavy strands from his otherwise perfectly coiffed style. “I mean, I love this thing to death, but sometimes I think user-unfriendly design is a universal conspiracy.”
“Are they magnetic?”
Green Lantern’s expressive mask makes it clear he’s not following.
“The ship parts. So we can find them more easily.”
The most stereotypical horseshoe magnet Barry’s ever seen appears in the air before him. Lantern clearly has an eye for detail, given the engraved letters marking north and south, and the clear change in texture between the painted middle and the metallic ends. More importantly, the ship pieces in yet another of Green Lantern’s ubiquitous hamster balls all shift towards it, clustering up on that side of the sphere.
Grinning, Barry grabs the magnet construct, and runs a methodical grid across the site. By the time he returns to Lantern, he has a sizable clump of ship parts clustered at the ends of the magnet.
“What are we up to now?”
Lantern consults his ring. “99.4%”
It takes a couple more sweeps, but they eventually collect the entire ship and Green Lantern makes green spotlights and construction equipment until they’ve put the site more or less back the way they found it.
“You can go,” Lantern says as he lets the construction vehicles fade into nothing. “I still need to report this 314 to the Guardians and then I’ll be taking this guy off world. The ring recorded the whole battle, so I don’t think there’s anything else you need to do here.”
But Barry had stopped listening halfway through, having zeroed in on the language. “Jurisdiction,” “perp,” reporting back to superiors. That’s language Barry knows.
“The Guardians want you to fill out an incident report?”
Lantern snorts. “Pretty much. Guess it’s something space cops have in common with the mundane variety.”
“I…” Barry’s not smooth enough to navigate this pivot in the conversation. The cautious route would be to stop now, say his goodbyes, and sate his curiosity with the tidbits that Lantern drops without Barry needing to tip his hand. “Do you mind if I watch?”
He tries not to let his full body cringe show on his face. That had to be the most awkward possible wording while still implying his profession.
“Sure, if you want,” Lantern replies, incredulousness clear through his expressive mask. “But it’s boring to do, and probably even more boring to watch. So if you want to leave part way through, just know I’ll be jealously watching you go.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. But everything else about the Green Lantern Corps has been fascinating; it’ll be interesting to see something with a more direct comparison to Earth procedures.”
“It is pretty great,” Lantern agrees. His ring glows, and he brings Barry and the ship with him, chatting about the specifics of intergalactic paperwork as they find somewhere quiet.
Barry watches, rapt, the whole way through.