Chapter Text
It was a cold day and the wind was whipping around him, making his jacket collar ruffle in the breeze, but instead of chilled all Barry felt was numb. He almost wished he felt nothing at all, because nothing would have been more welcome, but that wasn’t what numb really was. Instead all he just was oddly disconnected from him body, trembling beneath the surface of his skin while he stood in an illusion of stillness staring down at the headstone.
WALLY WEST
Family. Friend. Hero.
Despite the numbness and his frozen form, Barry’s mind was racing and aching to leave and take off, chasing the horizon that he knew he could never reach no matter what speed barrier he could beat. He knew that he should be thinking about what a great hero Wally had been and how many lives he had saved. This was a Justice League memorial to The Flash despite the name carved into the granite and he should be honouring all of Wally’s countless victories. It’s where his mind should have been focused; Wally the Hero.
But he couldn’t. All that he could think about was the time, a time from before the universe had changed and reset, that twelve year old Wally had been sitting at their kitchen table and had laughed so hard at something Iris had said that he snorted sharply and grape juice had come flying out his nose, which made them all laugh even harder, gasping as they sucked in air and eventually tears had been streaming down all of their faces while Wally tried to mop up the mess with his hands before Barry had finally had the sense to grab a towel from the sink. It had left a faint stain on the white, laminate table top. Years later, Irey had asked about it while she and Jai were over, sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal with her legs swinging under the table and it had just made them laugh hysterically all over again even though they couldn’t remember what they had been laughing at initially. Irey had just stared at them all like they were crazy and shared a ‘these adults are all crazy ’ look with her brother before they raced out of the house to climb a tree in the backyard.
Now that memory, as focused on it as he was, was threatening to be tarnished by the new one of him having to be the one to tell Iris that Wally was gone, vanishing from their lives again. The image that was now burned into his mind of her crumpling to the ground and then the way two of them had clung to each other on the couch, grief raw and palpable flowing between them with the same, but unstained, table of this universe just in view from where they sat.
He wished he was still feeling the sharp torture of that moment. Now all that was left was the numb, though now with a growing dull pain behind his eyes, a dim aura swimming across his vision, multi coloured lights shaking and vibrating momentarily before disappearing as quickly as it started. In a normal human, it would probably be warning of an imminent migraine, but for him these moments came and went as fast as they started, his enhanced healing stopping them in his tracks before they had a chance to latch on, just quick flashes and shaky vision for seconds before receding back into nothing. Just enough for him to acknowledge that something wasn’t right and everything was affecting him more than he was aware of.
Barry sighed and shifted on his feet, trying to distract himself with even the smallest amount of movement. He supposed he was remembering the younger Wally from the other timeline was the truest way that he could; as his sweet nephew who grew up to be an amazing man and father who just happened to be a hero, not just because of his powers, but because of his heart.
The sun was starting to set in the distance, the sky just beginning to get dark in a way that was unrelated to the weather. The funeral had ended some time ago. Iris had left right after the service with Wallace, neither of them in the mood to stay any longer than was necessary and both of them wanting to avoid small talk with those who remained afterwards. Standing still in a graveyard in Keystone wasn’t how any of them wanted to remember Wally, but Barry couldn’t seem to drag himself away, finding it impossible unable to just leave Wally’s coffin there alone, not after everything that had happened. He wanted to run, either by himself or with Wallace by his side, just so that he could maybe feel closer to Wally if even just a second instead of the void that had been growing inside of him, but the message from his brain wasn’t travelling to the rest of him and he remained frozen in place.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there alone with his nonsensical thoughts fogging up his brain, only vaguely aware of the droplets of rain hitting the ground, when a slap hit him hard across the face. Barry stumbled backwards, barely able to keep his feet under him to remain upright and rubbed the sore spot before looking up to see his attacker.
Donna Troy was glaring at him, the Amazon towering over him in fury, flanked by an even more livid looking Garth on her left and Lilith to the right, who was almost glowing, but not in any way that could be described as good.
Titans. Only two of the original team remained and Lilith who had been there almost just as long. Wally and Roy gone. Dick in a medically induced coma after being shot, still in critical condition with an outcome impossible to guess, but rumour had it that they had to be prepared for the worst. Donna, Garth and Lilith may not have been related, but they had lost half of their family in one cruel and devastating day and it was etched all over their faces and the pain leaked out from their bodies, physically and spiritually.
“This is your fault.” Donna’s voice was even, but the tone was full of choked back rage, as if she were struggling to restrain herself, like she was going to hit him again and the next time would be harder and she would absolutely break something in his face. He could practically feel a charge pouring off her, sparks of fury vibrating in the air between them.
“I know.” Barry kept rubbing his jaw as if would soothe away the ache, turning back to stare at the cold headstone again. Donna had held back considerably, she could have broken his jaw without blinking, but that didn’t mean that the hit didn’t smart. The pain made him feel better in some way. It was better than the numb and he wished that it radiated longer and a small piece of him sort of wanted her to hit him again; breaking him physically in the way he wanted to feel emotionally. Maybe it would finally be the thing that broke through to his soul to finally break down and grieve properly today instead of being this cold and empty shell. “I took Wally to Sanctuary. He wouldn’t have been there if not for me.” He deserved to be hit by Donna. By all of them. He needed the physical pain to stay because everyone else kept telling him that it wasn’t his fault, even when he knew it was. He may not have pulled the trigger, but… “His death is my fault.”
“No.” Donna clenched her hands into fists, arms held stiffly at her sides like it was a struggle to stop herself at just one hit, and glared at him. “Not just Wally. Or Roy. Or anyone else who died at Sanctuary. Everything that has happened is your fault.”
That was enough to jar Barry out of his own head and he frowned at the accusation. “Excuse me?” How was he responsible for Roy or any the others? He was feeling immensely guilty about Wally being there because that was on him. Barry hadn’t been able to help him on his own and he had been the one that suggested Sanctuary in the first place and he had handed Wally off to Clark and Diana, watching as they took him away, the last time that he was ever seen that smile, still filled with that something that made Wally so special; even when the tears were falling with an unstoppable urgency and he had nowhere else to turn, he had smiled.
The logical part of Barry’s brain knew that he wasn’t really responsible, that the only person to blame was the murderer themselves, but his heart? His heart kept repeating back everything that was circling since he had heard the news.
You killed Wally.
Wally was supposed to have been safe there. He was supposed to be getting help, learning to cope and starting to try and heal as impossible as it may have felt like to him at the time, and instead Barry had sent him straight into his demise. There was no doubt in his mind about it. He should have been able to do something to prevent it. Send him somewhere else. Help him himself. Found a way to try and reverse the damage to the Speed Force and pull their missing family through to this side from wherever they were trapped. Something that he could have said to make everything better so Wally wouldn’t have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
That was his fault. They were family. Partners. Teammates. And he had failed him.
But despite all that guilt, misdirected as it may be, that didn’t explain Donna’s claim. He hadn’t known Roy was struggling with his addictions again, let alone that he was at Sanctuary. He hadn’t even known some of the others who were there except through reputation. How could she be blaming their deaths on him?
“You caused more than just Wally’s death,” Donna spat out, pointing at the headstone. Her eyes caught Wally’s name and she faltered for a moment before pushing forward. “Flashpoint caused this. All of this. This world. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t messed with the timeline for your own selfish reasons. It wasn’t just your life. It changed everyone’s lives. You changed reality, for everyone.” She paused and a tear escaped her eye before she brushed it away. “We had just got Wally back, Barry.”
Those were words that Barry hadn’t expected but the truth smacked him so hard she may have well slapped him a second time.
She wasn’t completely wrong; Flashpoint had changed so much of their world and lives and that had been absolutely caused by him. Barry had gone back in time, thinking that he could stop his mom’s murder, and had absolutely created an entirely new world in the process; an alternate timeline that had rippled outwards from changing one small thing, where he wasn’t the Flash, Superman never was, Wonder Woman and Aquaman had been battling each other with the safety of the entire planet hanging in the balance. It was what time travel movies had always warned him about, what laws of cause and effect had taught him, and he had done it anyway without much thought as to what the consequences would be. He had done his best to set things right though, had jumped back to fix it, tried to erase his mistake and for the most part, it had worked. But it was those parts that didn’t work, the eraser marks left behind that could still be visible just under the corrections.
This new and reshaped universe was close to the original timeline, but it wasn’t exactly as it had been before. It was broken but with a band aid on it, not really doing anything to fix the fracture underneath.
“Flashpoint was an accident.” It had been. He had been tricked, and none of what had happened had been his intentions but despite all his best efforts he couldn’t put it back together again the way that it was meant to be. All of the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t do a thing. Time was fractured and haphazardly placed back together into a way that mostly made sense. At the time, no one had noticed. Not really, anyway. There were things that didn’t make sense with vague memories and fractured histories that no longer seemed to make sense, but with just enough structure that everyone was willing to look the other way. Something was wrong, but everything was fine enough.
And then Wally came back out of the time stream and they had remembered before or at least parts of before. It was hard, but still fine enough with their knowledge of the changes existing and why, and they were moving on because there was nothing that they could really do now that the damage was done. Even Wally had been, even if he had had to go to Sanctuary to try and sort it all out.
But that didn’t explain Donna’s fury about it now in the moment because none of this was even about the Flashpoint. She was grieving, they all were, but this was about Wally and Roy and everyone else who had been killed at Sanctuary. Barry hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger on their lives. This tragedy wasn’t his fault.
Something in Garth seemed to break and he started shouting, meaning now that more people were starting to take notice of the confrontation between Barry and the remaining core Titans. “You erased people from existence, Flash! You caused our memories to change. Everything changed. Roy and Wally and everyone else at Sanctuary wouldn’t be dead if not for Flashpoint.”
Barry’s brain froze up, screeching to a halt and all he could do for several moments was blink, because that claim was so far away from anything else that it didn’t just missed the mark; it missed the entire target range. “What?” How were the two events, Flashpoint and Sanctuary, even related? It had been years since Flashpoint now. Things were changed, but they were settled. How did that have any effect on what had happened? “You can’t know that. Not for sure.”
Lilith’s eyes locked on his and the rage in the glare made him take an involuntary step back. “Maybe not, but can you honestly tell us that you know for a fact that Sanctuary even existed before the Flashpoint?” The words that Barry had on his lips dried up and nothing came out because her words stopped him in his tracks. Were they right? Was this some sort of by-product? A ripple in time that was still spiraling outwards. If so… “I didn’t think so,” continued Lilith, resignation etched across her face. “By causing Flashpoint, you created Sanctuary. By doing so, you caused that massacre, and who knows how many more deaths.”
That was when Barry noticed that they were now the center of attention, surrounded by the rest of the League who had circled around them, hiding them from any curious eyes of passersby in the cemetery, paying respects to their own loved ones. “Donna.” Diana grasped Donna by the arm, pulling her back and away from Barry carefully. “Lilith. Garth. This is not the time. We should be supporting each other during this time of grief, not attacking our friends and allies.”
“No, Diana. It is exactly the damn time. It is actually well past the time, it is just this setting that is regrettable.” Donna shook herself loose, Diana letting her hand fall without a fight, and went back to her place back beside Garth and Lilith, linking her arms with theirs, a physical show of their united front. “For a group who calls themselves the Justice League and finds itself fit to lead people like us, it is rather hypocritical that there is one among you hasn’t had to answer for their crimes when punishment is doled out for those outside our ranks for far lesser offenses.” Donna looked to Garth, who nodded his head a fraction, before turning back to Diana, who now had been joined by Clark and Bruce on either side. Donna squared her shoulders and somehow seemed to make herself appear taller, acting as their spokesperson, officially stepping into the hole that had been left in their tight knit group. “The Titans would like to lodge a formal complaint against The Flash and his actions that resulted in the events and repercussions of the Flashpoint.” There was silence, and then Bruce nodded once in confirmation that their words had been acknowledged, face giving away nothing of his thoughts, but Clark and Diana’s eyes widened. Donna turned her gaze to Barry, and now he could see it, the hurt and loss in her eyes as she spoke to the others, but straight at him. He swallowed deeply, already guessing what she was about to say. All the evidence already pointed to it. There had been nothing that he could have said today to change her mind because the decision had already been made. “You’ll find our deposition in the Watchtower servers. We uploaded it this morning.”