Within Seconds: Flashpoint Edition

Barry Allen Is At Fault For Everything!

"What I think Mick was trying to say is it would be nice if we knew who was in charge around here," said Jax. 

"Maybe we should take a vote, choose someone we trust," said Ray.

Cisco jumped at the chance to throw in his opinion. "Well, I trust Oliver. He has my vote."

"Appreciate that, Cisco, but Barry put us all together. It should be him," said Oliver, sharing a nod with Barry.

"Fair enough," sighed Cisco. 

"Okay. Cool, all right, well, I guess as Team Leader, first thing to do is start out by... Uhm, uh.." he stuttered, thinking, if he was Parker, or even Oliver, what would his first step be.

"Doing a test run," coughed Oliver.

"Let's do a test run, yeah,! Uh..."

"Against Supergirl."

"Against Supergirl! All right, test run against Supergirl," decided Barry.

"So, we're supposed to pretend we don't hear him?" asked Sara, pointing to Oliver. 

"So, just suit up," said Barry enthusiastically as he ignored Sara. "Look alive! We're training to fight aliens so lets train by fighting an alien!" 

"Do it!" encouraged H.R.

"Stop," muttered Barry, waving his hand for H.R. to disperse with the rest of the crowd. He called for Oliver and Kara to join him quickly.  "I was excited about the two of you meeting each other. Oliver was the first person to train me."

"Really? Well, you did  really good job," complimented Kara sweetly. 

"It's 'cause I didn't hold back. I shot him. You can't hold back either," said Oliver flatly, almost as if he was unimpressed with the girl before him. 

"He did shoot me," remembered Barry. 

"Wow. Okay. Are you sure about that? I just met these people--"

"These people need to understand this isn't going to be easy. Don't hold back. Especially not against me."

Kara watched Oliver walk away, a frown on her lips. "Wow. Does he not like me?"

"He's like that with everyone. He'll warm up to you," he assured.  He grabbed Melody from Kara's arms, and shushed her as she sobbed into his chest. Kara hesitated to leave, unsure of what to do to help. "She'll be okay. Go ahead." 

"I can take her, Barry," offered Felicity. 

"I was going to give her to Cisco," said Barry.

"Let me. I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to make a baby stop crying."

Barry continued to hesitate, knowing he and Cisco could do better to soothe Melody than a stranger. Felicity rolled her eyes and offered her hands. Barry placed Melody into her arms, rubbing her back as she bawled. His baby barely noticed the change.

"Go train," said Felicity.

"I'll be fast, Mel, I promise," said Barry, kissing her head. 

Felicity turned the sobbing baby to face her, trying to smile, though it came out as a wince. She tried to hug her and then pat her back and then even feed her, but that wasn't the issue. The issue was she was Kara's biggest fan and she wanted to see her in action.

Cisco approached. He took less than two seconds to assess the information, then said, "She wants Kara."

"What?" asked Felicity. 

"Face her towards Kara. Make sure she can see her."

He and Felicity took a seat at the computer desk. She moved the chair slightly away from the desk for Melody, from her lap, could see the training session happening across the warehouse. She whispered and pointed, unaware if Melody could differentiate between the colors, but it did stop the sobbing. 

"She probably likes the red," said Cisco, a soft smile on his lips. "Reminds her of her father."

"Speaking of her father, I, uh, I couldn't help but notice that things are a little bit tense. You don't need to be able to Vibe to figure that out," said Felicity casually. 

Cisco rolled his eyes. "Okay, so, apparently it's, like, illegal to be mad at Barry, but guess what? He screws up, just like the rest of us."

"Yeah, and when he does he feels bad about it, like the rest of us," defended Felicity. Her voice softened. "Losing Parker wasn't his fault. It wasn't anyone's fault but--"

"It's not about her."

Felicity tilted her head knowingly. 

"Not entirely. Of course I'm hurting from losing her. We all are. But I honor her by being the best Godfather I can to Mel," explained Cisco. 

"What's the deal with you and Barry, then?"

"Felicity, he took it upon himself to change the timeline. Because of it, my brother was killed. So there's no amount of feeling bad that could ever make up for that."

Felicity had no rebuttal to that. 

Meanwhile, Barry was being drowned in more news about how his decision to save his mother had ruined everyone's lives. Jax and Professor Stein had gotten a hold of a message they were desperate for Barry to hear. In private, they were letting Oliver and Barry listen to it. 

"A war is coming, Captain Hunter, and, at some point, you're gonna be called back to Central City to fight it. So, you need to know that while you and your team have been in the temporal zone, I made a choice that affected the timeline. As you know, whenever you alter the past, those changes affect the present and get compounded in the future. When you return, you will be in the new timeline I created, where everyone's past and everyone's future have been affected, including yours. When you come back, don't trust anything or anyone. Not even me."

Barry raised his head. "Where did you get that from?"

"We found it inside of a secret room in the Waverider," said Jax. "It was sent by you, forty years from now."

"'Forty years from now'?" repeated Oliver. "Barry, what the hell does this mean?"

"It means I screwed things up when I changed the past."

"What did you do?" asked Professor Stein. 

"I went back in time and I saved my Mom. I created a timeline where she's alive. It's called Flashpoint. I lived in it for a few months, until I realized that I'd made a big mistake, and I tried to put things back to how they were supposed to be, but..."

"But it didn't work," said Jax. 

"No."

"Wow. Barry, that's..." breathed Oliver. "Uh.. Uh, what's changed since you did this?"

"Cisco's brother is dead. Caitlin has powers. Park had our baby. She lived five months longer. Diggle has a son instead of a daughter--"

"What? John had a daughter?" interrupted Oliver. 

"I didn't just screw up my life, man. I screwed up everybody's lives and, apparently, everybody in the future. It felt like, when these aliens got here, that finally something happened that I didn't cause and, maybe, I could make up for everything I'd done to everybody, but I--"

Jax didn't want to hear much more of Barry's sob story. With authority in his tone, he said, "I think we should be on the up and up with everybody. We gotta tell them."

"We're going up against a bunch of aliens, and you want to tell people that their lives might have been affected?" asked Oliver. He shook his head. "No. One Sci-Fi problem at a time. You made a mistake, Barry. It's part of the job. But we can't deal with it today."