Snart thought he slipped away before being noticed, but Eobard had seen everything he needed to. And what was it the thief had said about peeking into the future? That was troubling too, another puzzle to decipher.
Barry wasn't making any more sense than before. He'd seemed as though he might be for a moment after their kiss while Bates was on the floor, but then the same usual ramblings began to sputter from his lips, and Snart sighed with the realization that nothing had changed.
They put Bates back in the Pipeline, Snart made sure someone would be coming soon to keep an eye on Barry, and then he left, trusting that Barry could take care of himself for a time. He could, of course, not only by eating and keeping himself clean and dressed despite the beard he'd grown, but he'd proven he could defend himself.
When Eobard wheeled into Barry's room a short while later where Cisco was building the time machine, he was drawing his symbols in the corner like usual. He hadn't touched the glass walls of the cube yet, inside or out, waiting for it to be finished, which it very nearly was, Eobard was certain.
He watched Barry for a while, waiting for some sign, some word thrown his way, some clue, but when nothing happened, Eobard put the break on the wheel chair, gripped the arms, and pushed upward. Slowly, he walked toward Barry, and only then did the boy pause in his work.
"Eobard..." he said quietly, causing Eobard to clench the fists at his sides.
Barry pivoted and put the cap back on his marker, and Eobard felt a spark at his heels, ready to fight, to defend, to launch himself at Barry if he tried even one-
But Barry didn't stand or rush forward. He finished pivoting and fell back to sit against the wall, posture relaxed as he looked at Eobard with a kind smile.
"Hi there," he said as though speaking to a small child. "Do you like The Flash statue?"
The breath escaped from Eobard's lungs.
"No," Barry answered an unasked question, "he wasn't that great or untouchable. He was just a man. All heroes are. Just a man who tried his best, like you can be too."
"Shut up," Eobard said, zipping over to loom above Barry. "That never happened..."
But even as he said it, he remembered-a man, older than this Barry Allen, crouching down beside him at The Flash Museum so many years from now but so many years ago when Eobard was just a boy.
I wish I could have met him.
"If you ever do," Barry said in the present, "I hope he doesn't disappoint you."
"Shut up," Eobard spat more heatedly. "You can't swindle me, Flash. Tell me what you're planning. Why is Snart involved? How? What is it about him? What did he mean that he can see the future? Tell me! What do you want-" He cut off at the echo of voices coming down the hall.
In seconds he was back in his chair, and Barry got up onto his knees to return to the wall, just as Caitlin and Ronnie came in.
"Oh! Doctor Wells," Caitlin said with a start to find him there. "Is everything all right?"
"I wonder what face you'll be wearing next time we meet," Barry said to the wall, and Eobard fought a sneer, knowing full well Barry was still somehow, somewhere, some when, speaking to him.
"Very little progress with Mr. Allen today, I'm afraid," he said and wheeled past them before anything more could be said.
⚡❄️⚡❄️⚡❄️
Cisco wasn't jumpy. He was afraid for his life, never knowing when the super powerful psychopath who'd been lying to them for years would vibrate a hand through his chest. Jumpy didn't do that justice.
They had the body. They knew for sure that the real Harrison Wells was dead. But Cisco had to finish the time machine. It would be easier to do that if his nightmares weren't haunting him in the light of day now of that vibrating hand and sometimes worse things. How many other Ciscos in other timelines or even universes had failed to stand up to this man? Cisco wouldn't be another one, he refused, even if he didn't fully understand what was going on.
But what happened when he finished the time machine? It had only been a day since they found the body, but it was all moving faster like Barry had said. Cisco could finish the cube in minutes and another vision assaulted him of carnage and lightning and Barry sobbing in the center of it all because his mother's killer had won.
Gasping for breath, Cisco left the Labs under the guise of needing one more part to make the finishing touches and seriously deserved an Oscar for how he smiled at Wells before heading out.
He knew where he wanted to go but feared being followed. Then, before he could second guess himself, he was whisked away by Barry's familiar speed, only blinking awareness when he'd reached a safe house with Lisa and Snart. They never looked startled anymore when Barry pulled things like this.
"What's wrong?" Snart asked after scanning his face.
"He's going to kill us all," Cisco said. "If I finish the machine. When I do. He's gonna... I saw it."
"Calm down, honey," Lisa came forward, taking Cisco's hands in hers. "Your visions?"
He nodded. He'd told her all about them. "If I stall, he'll know. What do we do?"
"This is what I need to free my dad," Barry said, coming forward to stand in front of Snart.
Snart always understood Barry's riddles better than anyone. "We have the body. That means we can get your father out?" he asked, and Barry smiled brightly. "That was the only missing piece I was worried about. If the machine is ready, it's time to bring everyone in." He caught his sister's eye, then turned to Cisco, looking serious and immovably resolute. "Everyone."
⚡❄️⚡❄️⚡❄️
Barry was a trip. Cute and crazy, just the way Hartley liked 'em. Sadly for him, Barry was spoken for, which seemed odd, since in all seriousness, Barry wasn't all there. But when he gathered them at a large building outside of town, he clung to Leonard Snart's arm like he was permanently attached.
Cisco and Snart had sent the word out, but Barry had personally retrieved many of them, and after several lightning flickers in and out of the warehouse, there were well over a dozen people present.
"Avengers assemble," Cisco muttered.
"Really?" Wally asked-Kid Flash himself, unmasked.
"You can't save the world alone," Barry said, squeezing Snart's arm tighter.
"What's the deal, Snart?" Rory asked more loudly, staying near Snart along with Glider and Peek-A-Boo.
"Is this everyone?" Professor Stein asked from beside Ronnie and Caitlin. "Does Dr. Wells need assistance to join us?"
Some of the crew had rather visceral responses to that question, like West, his daughter, and Pretty Boy Thawne. The people Hartley knew the least had to be the woman who could blow things up with a touch and the oversized Boy Scout with the shrinking suit.
Cisco held up a tablet to display Felicity Smoak, currently running Palmer Tech, and Oliver Queen. Quite the entourage.
"Wells won't be coming," Snart said, taking point, which was also a surprise, but then no one seemed to question it, not even the detectives. "Barry," he turned to the young man and grasped either side of his face in an openly intimate gesture to hold his attention, "I need you to cover everyone, all right? We need to be safe from prying eyes and ears, and they won't believe it if it's just me. Only for a few minutes. You can do it."
Barry reached up to cover Snart's hands with his own. "Like a lightning rod," he said and from the core of his being a spark began to form and slowly expand, startling at first, though Snart didn't seem pained to be encapsulated in sudden lightning when it shot outward.
The dome quivered after it was full, but it was through their connection, through touching Snart, Hartley realized, that Barry was able to expand the bubble further with a pulse to fill the entire warehouse and everyone in it.
Rory and several others flinched, on guard, but it was then that Barry drew Snart's hands down and kept one held in his own as he turned to address them. His eyes were clear and centered like Hartley had never seen before.
"Did you just cure his crazy by holding hands," Hartley said, "coz that, oh Captain, my Captain, is one queer trick."
The audible groan from Cisco made the pun entirely worth it.
"This can't cure me," Barry said, like a whole, complete person for once, "but it can give me a few minutes of focus. I'm sorry for how much I've worried all of you."
"Barry?" Iris stepped forward with a gasp. She lunged to hug him, but he could only return it one-armed since the other hand had to hang onto Snart.
"It's me. And I can stay this way, soon, but I need all of you to help."
"Anything," she said, and while not everyone expressed the same sentiment as deeply, no one looked ready to leave.
Hartley shouldn't be so devoted to a man who'd merely talked nonsense at him and sang, but there was something about Barry that had coaxed him to listen and to try another method when he'd been so angry at his parents for rejecting him, and angry at Wells for disappointing him. Now Wells was excluded in this little get-together, and Hartley wondered how deep it went.
He did not expect the answer to be that Wells was actually a time-traveling imposter. That was a new one. The fact that none of them doubted Barry for even a second said quite a bit about how he'd connected with everyone in the room over the months since he woke from his coma, and a few admitted to Timelessness of their own.
Snart was no surprise, but also Cisco, Palmer, Stein, and Rory.
"That seems unfair."
"Just be happy the reset button changed you," Cisco said to Hartley. "You were a much bigger dick the first time."
First time? Barry wasn't the only trip, it turned out.
"You people are out of your minds," Hartley said with arms crossed and a scrutinizing stare. But when all eyes were on him, he grinned. "So how do we help?"
⚡❄️⚡❄️⚡❄️
Len didn't get nervous before a job. He felt elation. A thrill. But today he was scared because he had more to lose than his life or freedom by getting thrown in jail.
They had precious little time to build a plan within Barry's Speed Force cocoon before Wells would start to wonder where everyone had gone. They had to act, today, and every single one of them would be at risk.
Cisco's job was the hardest, because he had to return and finish the machine as if he was excited instead of terrified, and he wasn't the best liar. He wore an extra set of comms so Len and several others could listen in. Barry was with him, doodling on walls like always. Wally was there too, but holding back in a different room, pretending to train while ready to zip in if a speedster's powers were required, which they would be times two.
Wally wasn't as fast as Wells, because originally Barry hadn't been either, but now he should be, and with everyone else helping, that might be all they needed.
Len would have been fine to storm in and aim his gun at Wells's head, but Barry wouldn't have it.
"I can save him too. I have to try," he'd said.
Len could feel it in his Timeless bones that Barry Allen was always like that-the martyr hero, too good for his own sake, ready to put others first every time. Len knew better than to try to fight it, though some of the others tried, Queen in particular.
He and Felicity would be in person instead of over a tablet when the time came, having left Starling the moment the plan was decided. The rest were on standby in the Labs, just outside of it, or close enough to get there when they were called.
Wherever Barry was trapped, this could be what set him free, what pulled him out of the Void he still had one foot in, where Len was certain now that he must have been once too.
"I remember sometimes, what it was like to be unmade," he said when the lightning in the warehouse had fizzled to nothing and the others started to depart. "I won't leave you there, Barry."
"I'm gonna set him free, and I'm not leaving here until I do, view, you," Barry said, but instead of pressing a palm to his head in his faltering, he fell forward and let his forehead press against Len's. "If you wanted to get away, you should've taken something faster than a train. I already do. I already do."
Len knew Barry was trying to tell him more than gibberish, but it was enough motivation to succeed.
Now, listening in on the comms, Len rolled his eyes at Cisco's attempts at small talk with Wells. The bastard had been in the room with him since he returned from their group powwow. Either he suspected treachery or he was just that vigilant. Neither was a plus for them.
Len's entrance would be through the garage of STAR Labs with Lisa, Mick, Shawna Baez, and Raymond, who was hidden in one of Mick's pockets in his Atom suit. It wouldn't be long now before the trap was sprung.
"Just have to tighten this last seam..." Cisco said. "Looking the way you imagined it, Barry? If this thing's really a time machine, maybe we can do something about those embarrassing photos on your Facebook page, huh?"
The tremor in his voice gave him away, but Wells hadn't called him on it yet. Then again, he didn't need a head start if he sensed foul play. If they weren't one step faster when it counted, Cisco would be the one to pay for it. Luckily, their plan provided him the perfect bodyguard who could be there in a blink.
There was no whir to signal when the machine was ready, just a shuddery sigh from Cisco and the words, "I guess that's everything. Want to get inside, Barry?"
"I think I'll take a turn first," Wells said, and it might have been completely innocuous from anyone else, but from him it sounded threatening and that was the only cue Len needed.
He was at the room already, the others tight behind him, many others in positions nearby, and he peered around the corner to see the machine glistening in perfect clear glass like nothing more than a box to play a game in like a toddler would enjoy more than the toy inside. There was Barry in his corner, Cisco at the cube, and Wells in his chair, ready to strike.
"I think Barry gets to go first," Cisco said.
"Something to be nervous about, Mr. Ramon?" Wells asked, the threat slipping into his words again, hardening his expression as his hands slid to the armrests like he might push right out of the chair.
Cisco flinched, which Len knew was the only tell Wells needed to know he'd been made.
"Now," he hissed, and Peek-A-Boo blinked into the room to grasp Cisco's shoulders then away again just outside the door where they took off running for the Cortex.
Before Wells could give chase at lightning speed, brighter lightning surrounded him with Barry grasping him from behind, halting him two feet out of his chair, and Wally zipping in to confront him head-on.
Len could admit that despite their numbers, everything after that happened faster than he expected.
Wells phased out of Barry and Wally's hold like a phantom, then came back with a fierce punch across Wally's jaw, sending the boy soaring across the room to strike the opposing wall.
Cisco came over the comms that same moment. "Round two! No room for error!"
The Cortex had Caitlin on standby for injuries, while Iris, her father, and Detective Thawne held back, waiting for a moment when it might be safe to intervene. The real fight was up to the metas and to Len's Rogues.
Stein and Ronnie had been down a different corridor and came in next, reaching to clasp hands and merge as Firestorm, but Wells knew better than to allow that. Throwing Barry off of him, he was between the pair in seconds, bursting them apart toward different corners of the room.
Len forced his team to hold back. They had to be careful, smart, look for the right opening, and let their fellows pull their own tricks.
Like Queen, who raced in past Len, while Felicity joined Cisco on comms, watching it all from the monitors.
Queen shot an arrow at Wells that burst open at the last second as a net to catch him or at least trip him up, but as expertly as a dancer, he blurred to let the net pass through him, then pivoted, grabbed it as it flew past him, and hurled the net back at Queen.
"Exits are all on lockdown if he tries to run!" Felicity said, but Wells didn't look like he planned to go anywhere.
They needed to get Barry into the machine. They'd hoped Wells would have let him in unknowing, but they hadn't been foolish enough to truly believe it would be that easy. Now the goal was to immobilize him long enough for Barry to do whatever it was he had planned with his symbols.
Len fired interference while Queen got untangled, the others trying to shake off being treated like ragdolls, and Barry attempted to grapple Wells again. The right burst of ice at least made the mad speedster second guess his steps.
Then Queen had another arrow, one that sparked this time, and he took a desperate aim that easily could have hit Barry. It didn't, but Wells still caught it and stabbed it into Wally's shoulder when the boy zipped forward once more to help.
He cried out and fell with a shock rippling through his body. Iris and Detective West's voices echoed over the comms and from down the hall in their alarm. At what point was Len allowed to say screw it and shoot to freeze, to kill? But he knew he wouldn't until the last possible second because Barry had asked him not to with such pleading.
Dangerous as Wells was, Len ducked inside at last with Mick and Lisa fanning out along the walls to keep their distance, Len inching closest to the cube. Stein and Ronnie tried once more to connect, but Wells was too much for Barry to hold him while in such a rage, and he threw the pair apart with more force, enough that Stein would have been seriously injured if not for his connection to a stronger, younger man.
Flames erupted from the end of Mick's gun as he chased Wells with a trail of fire to lead him into a path that Ray was telling him, so that at just the right moment an itty-bitty Ray enlarged to normal size with a well-placed punch.
Or it would have been if Wells didn't expertly dodge and drive a vibrating arm toward Ray's chest before he could raise his hands in defense.
Mick's fire took a sharp turn back to Wells but didn't get to connect because Hartley arrived to intervene, blasting Ray and Wells both. Ray was down, but for the moment, so was Wells, shaking his head to slough off the buzz of a sonic boom. He recovered faster, however, speedy healer that he was, and even as their numbers converged to take him on together, he snarled like he was ready to strike the first killing blow on whoever touched him next.
Len stared at the certainty he saw in Wells's eyes, like slow motion unravelling, like what it must be like for Wells and Barry and Wally, only for Shawna to return before it could escalate, with Bette this time, appearing at the cube right where she had blinked away with Cisco.
"One more move and I blow this thing to pieces!" Bette cried, hovering an uncovered hand above the machine.
Everyone froze, Barry included, giving those who had been down the chance to rise, but that hesitation cost them, because Wells wasn't taking any breathers. He took off only fast enough for another speedster to follow, a tool in his hand when he appeared in front of Bette, something long like a crowbar that he struck across her face, the skin contact enough to start the reaction from her powers, which he threw toward the people near the door.
A bright burst of light encapsulated it in a shock of gold from Lisa's gun, and while it gave a poof with the explosion, it was muted and uneventful, causing the clump of gold to clatter to the floor.
Wells all but roared at how they worked together, all of them against him, his eyes wild as he screamed out a name Len knew wasn't going to respond the way the man expected.
"Grodd!"
A true roar sounded, and for a moment, Len expected something prehistoric to burst up through the floor. Instead, it came like galloping from the opposite hallway where Stein and Ronnie had first entered, and when it appeared, it was too large for the doorway and cracked the sides during its powerful push inside.
Len had known, more or less, from some of Barry's rambling who the final member of the group was, but he hadn't expected what it would be like to see a giant gorilla in close quarters.
Wells looked at them triumphant, but the large beast grunted and held back from attacking.
Brother speaks truth, a resounding voiced rumbled as if right into Len's mind. Father only lies.
The rage that appeared on Wells's face at those words was the exact desperation that might make him deadly, no matter how many of them there were or how powerful, but Barry was there once more, grabbing hold of him in the brief startled moment where Wells realized he'd been betrayed. This time Barry seemed to have him, maybe only because Wells was tired and could no longer phase, or because Barry was in step with him even when he tried.
"Len!" Barry cried, nodding toward the machine.
Barry was the only one who could hold Wells, and maybe not for long. Did he mean for Len to use the machine himself?
"I don't know the symbols!" Len said.
"Yes, you do." Barry smiled, sweet and strange and wonderful like always.
Len dove for the cube while the others circled Barry and Wells, Cisco following along and telling Len how to get inside over the comms. Shawna had already helped Bette get away, leaving the path there free, and Wally zipped to where Barry's marker had been dropped so he could toss it to Len just as he scrambled inside and closed himself in.
He should have felt silly scrunched in something even smaller than a five-by-five cell, setting his cold gun at his feet and popping the top on a marker to write nonsense on glass while a battle raged outside, but as soon as he was sealed in, he realized how silent it was, even with his comms. Maybe it was the material, the shape, the nanomachines throughout giving off pulses of tachyons, or all of the above combined, but Len was alone despite what he could see through the glass.
At first, he waited for the symbols to merely come to him-was that what Barry had meant-but when they didn't, when he couldn't sift through the madness to remember the sequence, he realized he didn't have to remember or squint toward the distant wall where Barry had written symbols most recently. He could be in those moments, the many moments in Barry's presence, watching him write the symbols again and again.
Len had practiced enough now that it was easy to fall into a calm state and project himself when he wanted-his kitchen with Barry writing on the counter, his bedroom where the walls were all covered, so many napkins and other surfaces at Saints and Sinners-Len could see them all and began to write in present day even as he existed simultaneously in the past.
He didn't have to think, and without trying, he soon pushed into the future too, where Barry was teaching that same language, the equations, the code to a young pair of twins that looked suspiciously like Iris and her kind-hearted detective.
Maybe in those moments, Len was more like a speedster, connected as he was, strangely, differently, to the Speed Force, because in the next moment that he blinked, he was surrounded and the work was done. Every wall of the cube was scrawled over to cover the glass, even beneath him.
He turned toward where he'd last seen Barry, unsure what to do next or what to expect, when lightning, red and yellow mixed, headed directly for him in a jumble that phased right into the cube to join him.
Len's breath caught and everything froze for half a second before it erupted as though Bette had touched the cube after all.
When he blinked again, he was on his back, free of the cube because the cube no longer existed. They were in the Void now, but the storm was calm, symbols hovering in the atmosphere like afterimages expanding outward the way Barry's Speed Force bubble had expanded until everyone who'd been in the room or out in the Cortex was there with them, displaced, but similarly stationed to how they would have been in STAR Labs.
And in the center of it all was that lightning, almost orange in the mix of color, but the victor in the end was gold as Wells flew back with arms flailing to tumble onto his ass much like Len had but on the opposite side, while between them stood a beacon that formed brand new the way Len only truly understood in his Timeless memories.
The lightning around Barry burst outward to form a suit as expertly made as anything by Cisco but from the Speed Force itself-head-to-toe red with accents in gold-as he stood, lightning symbol proudly displayed, finally, as The Flash.
⚡❄️⚡❄️⚡❄️
My name is Barry Allen. And I am the fastest man alive.
The voices dimmed, the chaos cleared, so much more powerfully and completely than any stolen moment with Len.
The Speed Force did indeed howl as Barry shed his chains, but still it bent, as he knew it would, and gave way to its creator's will with a sneer like it resented that it, alone, was not enough. It was so much, but not everything. Barry needed more. He needed everyone with him here today. He'd known how to achieve that, but he'd needed them all to play their parts.
Now, he stood before Eobard as his true self, the suit Cisco had once (would once) design manifested from his heart and soul and his connection to something more than himself. None of the others had costumes. Not more than a parka, though the Atom suit was close. Firestorm had never connected, and Wally hadn't wanted to take the time to don his when the enemy was in their midst.
It was only Barry who stood out, stood above the rest, above Eobard and all his manipulations. But to stand above was not his place. It wasn't what he wanted. Even now, despite everything he knew, everything he'd been through, everything he would go through again, Barry wanted nothing more than to stretch out his hand.
So he did, quite literally, reaching to help Eobard up, while they remained momentarily encased in a private space built by science and will and loopholes.
"You're free now," Barry said, aware of the awe in some of the others' faces. "You can change your own future, change this present, without consequence. That's what this is. It's all I ever wanted, to reset everything we all did wrong and try again. There will be no ripple effect from this moment, no disaster or paradox by anything changed. If you want, you can go home and live an entirely different life, just like I'm going to live mine."
It came as no surprise that Eobard did not take Barry's hand, but he'd still hoped.
The man hurried to his feet at normal speed. The code was unique to Barry. No corrupted connection to the Speed Force could exist here, only a Flash and those held most dear.
"And if I go back to ensure you suffer for the rest of your days?" Eobard spat.
"Then I'll beat you. I'll always beat you. But I am offering you the chance to be saved with everyone else here. I loved you once," Barry said honestly as he took a careful step closer to his counterpart. "Like a father, a mentor, a friend. Even after I found out the truth, I was never able to hate you."
Eobard's hands shook as they clenched into fists. "You have no idea what's ahead of you."
"I know exactly what's ahead of me," Barry said. "Zoom. Savitar. DeVoe. This wasn't only about you. It was about them too. About all of it. I figured out the equation to beat them so that not even The Thinker will see me coming. He'll lose just like you did-again."
"It never works out that easily," Eobard snarled, angry that Barry would dare challenge the natural order, regardless of how often and thoroughly he had done the same. "There are consequences to messing with Time-"
"I know. Maybe some I can't predict, but whatever happens next, I'm happy. You couldn't take that away from me."
Eobard seethed in his powerless state, like he would rip Barry apart with his bare hands if he could. "I won't stop. I will never stop."
But hearing that didn't scare Barry or anger him in turn. It saddened him with a great loss, wondering what might have been, if there was anything he could have done differently, but all his meddling still left it up to the people he connected with to make up their own minds.
"I wish you had some of that little boy in you," Barry said, remembering a time to come when he'd try one last time to reach Eobard.
"So I'd worship you like a fool?" he said.
"So you'd realize you were wrong. You hated me because you couldn't be me, but you could have been better. You could have been part of a legacy. I'd still have you as part of this family even now. Always." Once more, he reached out with Eobard barely a full arm's length away.
Still, he didn't accept it. "The Flash family?" he said like a curse. "You're a fraud."
Slowly, Barry let his hand drop and thought of everyone around him from friends and family to another half he hadn't even known he was missing until he got this chance to start again. "The only one pretending here is you. It won't change the truth."
"Which is what?"
Barry smiled and meant it with every part of him. "I still forgive you."
The howl that ripped through the Void was more wounded than Barry could understand, but he couldn't change what someone else chose for themselves.
Eobard rushed him, as fast as a too-human man could. Barry didn't fight, but let him paw and push and claw at him like an animal unable to accept defeat. He was too lost in his own loneliness and rage to hear the gasps that trickled through the others watching. He didn't know that someone new was on the approach. Maybe a few of the others who had touched enough Time and other worlds understood that they were in the presence of Death, but Eobard didn't feel it until a black-clad hand gripped his shoulder.
He spun, but there was no escape from what he found there. The Black Flash was always ready to bring speedsters home, and those who meddled with the natural order were not treated kindly.
"No-" Eobard tried to cry out, to turn back to Barry, but it was too late and he was too slow.
The lightning around the Black Flash was different, maybe faster than anything since Death was the one constant, and in seconds, they were gone, leaving only Barry at the center with the others circling him.
He'd meddled with Time too, many times, too many, but at last, all he'd done was put things right, and so he was left alone to put the timeline and the world back in order.
As he turned to take everyone in, he came to face Len, who'd been just behind him and who stood now ever in awe as the bubble burst, the work of the code completed, with STAR Labs rematerialized around them.
In the moments that followed, those who were in the Cortex came running to join them in the room that had been Barry's for months and were soon in the doorway. Barry was so happy to see them all, to be there with them as himself for the first time in so long. But one face still held his attention.
Pulling the cowl from his head, he stepped toward Len and couldn't help but grin. He had a feeling the beard didn't quite work with his mask. Maybe he'd shave it. Maybe he'd think of something new so he could keep it. He might have to ask Len's opinion on that.
Certainly he wished things had ended differently, that he could have saved everyone, but he was here now, and he'd fought for everything he had.
"Well, what do you say, Cold? Can we start again from the beginning?"
"No," Len said.
"No?"
"No," Len said again, small smile quirking at his lips. "You make me want to be a better me. I don't need to start over to fall in love with you."
He came forward and grasped Barry's face in gloved hands like this was the first time he was being granted the gift of daring to steal a kiss, and in some ways it was.
Their lips met, and Barry felt more grounded than ever before.
A few hoots and hollers responded, one of which was definitely from Hartley, but Barry merely laughed, because it wasn't a perfect ending but it was a happy one. Even Joe didn't look too disapproving when they pulled apart.
"Does this mean we can finally get a drink?" Mick called over the others starting to chatter and move in on Barry to embrace him. "Coz I could use one about now."
It was a whirlwind from there, but then, that was what Barry was used to. Even Grodd allowed a hug, or more like a tight squeeze of his arm and stroke at his fur before Caitlin was there, excited to see him and talk to him, something Barry knew was all Grodd needed to find his place eventually too.
"There are other worlds that need our help," he said before long. "And other people right here in Central. I want to do everything I can to help all of them."
"Like who?" Shawna asked, more curious than some because she'd been a strange case that Barry had wanted to help once too.
"Young metas who don't know what to do. Good people who have hard times coming their way. Even a washed up PI who needs a second chance." He chuckled as he remembered the specific examples he had in mind, which he knew might fade at the forefront of his mind as this new timeline solidified. "We're a team now, all of us, and we're only going to keep adding to our ranks every member of this family who hasn't joined yet. We're practically a League," he chuckled at the joke, though no one quite got it other than Len, who eyed Barry like he could almost sense the tease of the future in his words.
There was celebration to be had, but there was also work to be done, which needed to start with a meta wing at Iron Heights so they could rid the Pipeline of its remaining occupants, though perhaps Axel might find a home elsewhere if the medication continued to help.
"First though," Barry said, ready to shed his suit for now and be himself again for a while, "we're going to get my dad out of prison."
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Henry was fully aware that he had missed quite a bit in the weeks and months since his first visit with a strange, disjointed Barry. All that mattered to him though was that today he was getting out because a body proved that Harrison Wells was dead, and the man's will left everything to Barry, including a video confession of having been the real murderer of Nora Allen.
If it had been less than well over a decade since Henry was locked up, he might have resented the man, might have hated him, but all he felt was relief and some mild trepidation over what to do next as he strode out of the Iron Heights gates to the car waiting for him with Barry leaning against it.
They hugged, and Henry almost worried he was squeezing too tightly, despite how strong he knew his son was.
Before he could say anything, he noticed the shadow of another figure in the car, but he could tell it wasn't Joe.
"Who's that, slugger?" he asked.
"I think you might have met before," Barry said with a sly but happy chuckle and a nod toward the prison. "When he was in there too."
"Snart?" Henry finally recognized the dim profile through the glass.
"There's a lot to tell you, Dad. But I promise I will tell you everything. Come on."
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Len wasn't sure what he expected that first night when a speedster in a STAR Labs sweatshirt had interrupted his fun. Or when that same boyish figure had slid in beside him at his booth in Saints and Sinners. He certainly hadn't expected to have what he had now, which was a second chance maybe. A new life certainly. And a man who loved him miraculously.
Along with the promise of tomorrow.
Nothing could have been better, much as Len appreciated the parts each of their friends and family had played, than being at Len's favorite safe house that night alone with Barry Allen for the first time truly with him.
"It's 2015. You're Leonard Snart. I'm Barry Allen," Barry said, crawling along the sofa to corner Len in ways no one else would have dared or been nearly as welcome. "We've only known each other a few months but already I know I love you."
He said it so easily. Len wasn't quite there, but as time wore on, he knew he would be.
"The stars still singing and screaming?" he asked, allowing Barry to settle into his lap and stroke his thumb along Barry's cheek.
"Yeah. But now I know how to focus on where I'm meant to be."
"And what does the future look like, Mr. Allen?"
"You can look yourself," he said, dipping down to press a kiss to Len's lips.
Len returned the advantage to kiss Barry again. Then again before he said, "On second thought, I'd rather be surprised."
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Timeless wasn't something Barry ever wanted to be again.
The thing about Time was that it was best when anchored, with maybe only a touch of déjà vu and occasional premonitions. His life might be a broken mug that could never return to what it once was, but that was okay, because the way the cracks had been filled made it better than it might have been, brand new and glittering gold.
Don't like the future, Flash? Change it!
A dead or maybe trapped and haunted Leonard Snart had called to Barry in his Speed Force prison, and he had listened and returned to do just that.
Now, Len's voice called to him from the next room or over the phone or from right beside him. Barry preferred that. He too liked that the future was unknown. Even if he hadn't been able to save everyone, he'd done all he could. He'd tried. And he'd keep trying, every chance he had.
Every hour, every minute...
Barry smiled within each new kiss with Len and had no regrets about the adventure ahead of them or even just the promises of tonight.
THE END