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It was rare for Amnesty Bay to entertain newcomers, and rarer still for Thomas Curry to entertain them in his own house. This was known especially to Arthur Curry because Tom Curry was his father, and he had grown up in his father’s house, in Amnesty Bay, where almost everyone was known to everyone, and no-one was entirely unknown.
Arthur knew his father’s friends. He knew his father’s truck (had, had known it, for now the vehicle that sat solitary in his driveway was new, and all that was left of the previous one was unsalvageable). He knew that occasionally there would be people who made trips to the lighthouse that his father minded to inspect it, or to lend a hand when Tom required assistance with repairs (though he rarely did, and these days he had another set of capable hands to call upon).
Arthur could predict with almost frightening accuracy the best time of the day to visit his father in Amnesty Bay—which, according to Tom, was all of the time; yet Arthur, who traveled freely and unencumbered most days, was sure to come around only when his father was alone. This was primarily because Arthur, like his mother, traveled almost exclusively by sea to Amnesty Bay. And because Amnesty Bay had grown wary of the sea that lapped at its rocky shores as of late, and also because the Aquaman had made more ripples in the world than he had ever intended in the last few weeks alone.
Yet no matter how predictable Tom’s daily schedule was, and no matter how well Arthur knew the tides and the people of his hometown, the fact remained that the world had recently begun to impose upon him a series of increasingly unpredictable (and worse, unavoidable) situations; and since it seemed that he could fall to his knees and beg for the universe to stop throwing him curveballs all of the goddamn time and still receive nothing so much as a whisper of mercy in return, he had found himself forgetting to do so more and more as of late.
And so it was that as Arthur closed the front door to his father’s house, he discovered that yet another event which would force him to roll with the cosmos’s strange and unusual punches was already occurring, and the facts were:
One, that the only vehicles in Thomas Curry’s driveway were his truck (new) and his truck (old).
Two, that only Atlanna and Arthur traveled to that house in Amnesty Bay without the use of a vehicle.
And three, that Barry Allen, dressed as though he had prepared to go to battle, was seated at the dinner table in Arthur’s favourite chair on land, slouching in the direction of Tom Curry in an obviously casual manner which suggested they had conversed for so long a time as to become friendly with one another.
Arthur did not immediately take in the other details of this scene, which included such notable points as an open book filled with photographs on the table in front of Barry, and the empty dishes in the sink, and Barry’s helmet, which sat nearby on the kitchen counter like a trophy, or a rather unusual conversation piece.
“Oh, hey, Aquaman,” Barry said, lifting his hand and flashing what could have been a two-fingered wave or a lazy peace sign. “‘Sup?”
Arthur looked at his father, who sat at the corner next to Barry in the same chair that he preferred to sit in when only Arthur was around (and when his friends were around, and when Atlanna was around).
“You’re in my house,” Arthur said.
Barry snapped to attention almost immediately, but there was no such reaction from Tom, who gestured rather invitingly in Arthur’s direction. “There’s my favourite son,” he announced, so warm and fond that it eased Arthur’s concern over a possible threat to the world having arisen while he was politicking deep in the ocean and simultaneously raised new concerns about what precisely he had been saying before the door opened. “Come on over, Arthur, you won’t wanna miss this. I was just showing your friend here the most embarrassing photos I have of you.”
“I don’t get it,” Arthur said. He did, however, manage to take in the helmet on the counter, the dishes in the sink, and the photo album. He wasn’t entirely certain what question he was supposed to ask, and finally landed on: “Why?”
“Why?” Tom laughed. Arthur’s level of suspicion ticked upward. “Because I’m your old man, that’s why. What else am I supposed to do except embarrass you? You never bring friends around, so I thought I’d give Barry here a quick run through all of the—”
“No, I don’t get why you’re—why he’s here, like, in this house,” Arthur said, gesturing at one or both of the men seated at the kitchen table. His curiosity had made him uncharacteristically impatient, and that made him concerned. “What’s this supposed to be? Did I miss something?”
Barry, who had previously straightened up so quickly it seemed like something inside him should have snapped, relaxed visibly. “Oh, gosh, no, nothing’s happening here. We’re actually really all good on, uh, on things. Well, there is a thing, your thing, which I assume is kind of a long story? I heard about all of the, the”—he gestured vaguely in Arthur’s direction, or maybe at something behind him—“global catastrophe thing, all of the litter and submarines and warships and other detritus being pushed back onto, like, half of the world’s beaches coastlines—”
“Yeah,” said Arthur, folding his arms over his chest and refusing to give Barry’s casually-misplaced helmet a second glance. “That’s not news.”
“That was his brother,” Tom added.
“Oh, right, your brother,” Barry said breezily, as though the knowledge of a global catastrophe being caused by a deep-sea maybe-tyrant in order to warn of an imminent war on the surface was something one would casually forget. “Yeah, I’m not judging the Atlanteans or your whole family situation or anything, but I feel like maybe it wasn’t the best thought-out plan, you know, with all of the microplastics and things, and there were probably a lot of animals caught up in those plastics that were just minding their own business and suddenly were like, ‘whoa, just got yeeted out of the ocean—’”
“Yeeted,” Arthur repeated.
“Yeah, I hope those guys are okay. Anyway, I heard the news, along with every single other person on the planet, and I thought it would be nice, since we’re a team and all, to call you up and see if you needed any help with that, but then I realized I didn’t have your phone number. So I had to talk to Bruce, and he didn’t have it, so we checked with Victor and searched, like, the entire world for your phone number? And as it turns out, you don’t have a cell phone! Because why would you when you spend so much time taking your shirt off and jumping into the ocean and being the Great King of Atlantis now, apparently? So of course I called your dad, and he’s like”—Barry leaned back in his chair and slapped his palm on the table for emphasis, giving a starry-eyed look to Tom as he gestured—“um, super rad, if you don’t mind me saying. Like, clearly it’s a genetic thing with you guys, because you’ve got some stuff going on and your dad, well, obviously badassery is all in the… in the family here. It’s all right here.”
While Barry gestured at what were likely to be the most mortifying photos of Arthur and his mother and father in existence, Tom had sprouted a shit-eating grin and was obviously basking in the liberal praise. “You hear that? You can thank your old man for these good genetics.”
Arthur took a step into the room and tried to glance subtly at—oh, yeah, the photos were mortifying as hell. Well, there was nothing more he could do for his dignity. Arthur, meet punch. Roll with it.
“Well, I can’t argue that, ‘cause there’s no way I could get a head this big from anyone but you. But I’ve actually got the trash thing under control, I really don’t need help with—”
“Oh, come on! You’re telling me you joined a hero’s league with Superman and Barry here and all sorts of other people like you, and you won’t even let them offer you a hand? Ha! Some son of mine, too stubborn to know when a gift horse looks him in the mouth. I know your mother will agree with me. Did he tell you much about his mother?” Tom turned to Barry with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye, while Arthur thought that he might simply burn a hole through the floor in his embarrassment. “Arthur’s mother Atlanna was the queen of that fancy kingdom down there, many, many years ago. Now, circumstances may have been different back then, but at least she knew when to accept help from some kind young fool when she washed up on his shore. Now look at where we are; her son inherits an entire kingdom and says he doesn’t need any help when his friends come knocking.”
“So wait, am I her son or your son? ‘Cause there’s a difference.”
“You’re our boy, of course,” Tom said proudly, ignoring Arthur’s intentional glossing-over of his character flaws. “Though I know who you got your heart from, I don’t know whether I should blame that stubbornness of yours on me or your mother.”
It did not escape Arthur’s notice that while his father was beaming at him like he had just lit the alcohol-soaked fuse that would soon explode into a raucous, drunken bar fight, Barry was also grinning from ear to ear, delighting in the exchange as if he were observing live theatre.
“I love this entire thing you guys have going on,” he announced happily, waving his hand in a circle to indicate all present in the room before resting his chin in his hand. “Honestly, Mr. Curry, I’m really, genuinely glad I came, even if we’re not on garbage duty, because I’ve never actually seen a lighthouse up close before and it seems like a super cool place to hang out.”
Tom raised his eyebrows. “You’ve never been in a lighthouse? Well, considering you helped save the world, Barry, and since there is apparently no other duty to see to, the least we can offer you here is your first lighthouse tour.”
The look on his face was one of genuine surprise, but the tone of his voice had become conspiratorial again, and carried the unspoken yet unignorable suggestion that someone would now need to take Barry to the top of the lighthouse. And that he had already volunteered a tour guide for the task.
Arthur scowled at the thought; if it intimidated even a single person in the room, he did an excellent job of hiding it.
“Well… shit. Since you’re already here…” Arthur turned and glanced at the front door—and the ocean that glittered beyond—and sighed. “Yeah, come on out. I’ll give you the… whole lighthouse… thing. We’ve got some time before sundown, but the light won’t kick on for a while after...”
Barry did not seem to take in another word Arthur said. His face lit up at Arthur’s acquiescence, and he leaned back in his chair and gave a quick fist-pump, hissed a triumphant ‘yes’, then turned to Tom as though expecting that he would require permission.
“You heard the man,” Tom said. “Get on out there and have a good time. You get a great breeze from the sea around this time of the evening.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Curry, It has been such a pleasure to meet you,” Barry replied earnestly. As he spoke, he stood from his chair, sliding it back into place against the kitchen table with the utmost care. “I would love to come back again if you’d—I mean, as long as it’s okay with you and your wife, I think it would be great to hang out, share some stories, we can talk about your tattoos and—”
“Barry,” Arthur said. “Lighthouse.”
The grin on Tom’s face had not left, and in fact, it was so wide that it looked as though it should have been painful; but he broadcasted nothing but fondness and sincerity, which was precisely the sort of thing that Arthur could expect of his father. It was not often that Tom’s goodness and generosity was extended to visitors here in Amnesty Bay, at the lighthouse that he kept—mostly because, well, there were none.
And until lately, Arthur hadn’t had many friends to bring.
“I’d love to have you back, and I’m sure Atlanna would love to meet you. Have fun, you two!”
☼
The thought of being alone with Barry was indescribably unsettling to Arthur. It was like…
like…
well. Unsettling would have to do.
It wasn’t simply the idea of having Barry in Arthur’s childhood home, walking the grounds that Arthur had grown up on, following Arthur along the same path toward the lighthouse that Arthur could trace blindfolded, backwards, upside-down, with headphones in, and completely shitfaced. He simply didn’t know Barry well enough to know what to say. So little time had passed between the events that had occurred in Gotham, Metropolis, and wherever-the-hell in Russia and now, and in those sparing few days Arthur had fought his brother, discovered an ancient desert kingdom, fought his brother again, found his mom, and had become a king. And between all of those events—between Steppenwolf and the Mother Boxes and the Karathen and the war beneath the ocean and now Barry in Amnesty Bay—Arthur hadn’t actually found enough time to have a genuine conversation with any of the super-powered misfits that had banded together to save the world.
Luckily, the ocean view spoke for itself, and the lighthouse did the rest of the talking for him. As they ascended the circular staircase within, Arthur found himself explaining the architecture and recounting the history of the lighthouse, and while Barry nodded and spun in slow, awed circles and followed Arthur ever deeper into the depths of the structure, he hoped desperately that Barry would simply keep making comments about the lighthouse and how cool the coastline was so that he would never need to admit that he knew jack-shit about who Barry was. He was only vaguely certain he knew Barry’s last name. He had no idea what Barry’s powers actually were, beyond the few things he’d witnessed firsthand in the field. He had no idea how old Barry was, or whether he was supposed to talk about going to college or working a boring nine-to-five, or where his parents lived, or whether he’d been born with his abilities or acquired them throughout his life in some tragic event, or possibly even a joyous one—
“So… oh, thank you.” Barry cleared his throat in what was likely meant to be a meaningful way, as Arthur held open the door that led to the lighthouse catwalk. “I’ve been, uh, kinda hanging onto this for a little while, I guess, but… while I was talking to your dad, I sort of realized we never really got to talk about how you found us in the first place.”
Arthur paused with one hand outstretched against the door. “You mean under the harbour in Gotham?”
“Yeah! I mean in general, too. Honestly, it was a pretty rad entrance, you coming out of nowhere like that in the middle of the water, but then we didn’t really get a chance to dig into that, you know? How any of us found each other, how we—I mean, I know Bruce was the one who brought us together, but I also can’t help but wonder, you know, how you… oh, gosh. Wow. Look at that.”
Whatever thought Barry was about to express trailed off into an awed silence as they stepped onto the catwalk; beyond the old railing that had prevented more than a few careless tourists from stepping off and plunging onto the jagged, rocky shoreline below, there was nothing visible but sea and sky, both of which were slowly beginning to take on the shade of blue that signalled the approaching twilight. As Arthur stepped forward and rested his hands on the rail, Barry seemed to shake himself from his reverie and joined him.
“Not a bad view, huh?”
Barry seemed beyond awestruck. He opened and closed his mouth a few times like an incredulous fish, searching for an adequate response. “Not a bad—no, definitely not, this is like, the best view. And you live like this.” Barry wrapped both hands around the bar and leaned out, looking over the side at where the land and sea met. “I mean, I know you kind of live in the ocean, I’m sure that’s cool, but this is just… did you ever think about running and just–just jumping over the edge into the water when you were a kid?”
Arthur chuckled.
“Not really. I would’ve hit the rocks and probably died, and then my dad would’ve killed me again after.”
“That is so cool,” Barry breathed. He seemed to be drinking in every detail of the distant horizon, where gulls were little more than distant Ws and Ms and the sides of the clouds, too, had begun to take on the final spectacular colours of the sunset.
Then Barry turned around and glanced up, taking in the weather-worn glass face of the lantern room.
“That’s where the light, the, uh, the beacon shines out? Just spins around like…?”
He twirled his finger for emphasis and Arthur, following his gaze, nodded. “Yep. That’s where the lantern stays. I’d say we could stay here so you can see it, but if you look directly at it you’ll probably go blind.”
“That is so cool,” Barry said again, and Arthur found himself oddly impressed by his ability to emphasize entirely different words to make it a brand-new sentence. “So like… this whole thing’s probably just kinda weird for you, right? I mean, you could have been any old Atlantean who showed up to help us fight, you know? But instead your dad’s the lighthouse guy and your mom’s the actual, literal queen of an entire race of people. And now I’m standing here with, I dunno, the bonafide King of the Seven Seas.”
Arthur chuckled quietly and rested his elbows against the wind-worn metal railing. He’d spent so many years on this catwalk gazing up at the flaking paint and rusted metal that the structure felt more like an old friend than a building; bringing Barry this far felt like something closer to introduction than a tour.
“Technically speaking. I’m really just king of some of the seas. Atlantis is a lost kingdom, but it’s only one of many. There are other kings, other kingdoms… and I may be king because of my blood, or because of some… weird rite of… whatever, but I’ve never wanted to rule anything. Honestly, I have no idea how to…”
He exhaled, shook his head, looked back at Barry, and found himself floored by the expression on Barry’s face—wide-eyed, but full of respect and admiration.
“I feel like that’s something we can unpack later, because I have a vested interest in learning more about multiple underwater kingdoms? But if we can backtrack for just, like, a second—that’s exactly what I mean. There are countless other kings of underwater species out there—”
“Six,” Arthur said, thankful that Barry was leading the conversation in a direction that he could easily follow. It was always so much easier to talk about things other than himself. So much easier to let the world speak through him than to speak to the world. “There are six kingdoms. There used to be a seventh, but it’s lost in a desert.”
“Six other kingdoms,” Barry repeated. “So you mean there are six other kings?” He waited for Arthur to confirm with a tilt of his head, and then blew out a gusty breath and, bracing himself against the rail, rocked back and forth on his feet. “Whew. Wow. So out of six kings… statistically speaking, the chances of one of those kings coming to help us are like—well, the numbers don’t matter, I guess, because what I’m trying to say is that I’m really glad it was you. I’m glad you came along when you did and held back that water in the access tunnels, and that you decided to stick around after. Like, you probably could’ve just peaced out after seeing the big, spiky, hammerheaded alien dude, but you didn’t, and I just think that’s… you know. Really cool of you.”
Arthur huffed a quiet laugh. He’d been called a hero before, and he’d been thanked by more people than he could count; he took great pride in letting most of the praise and thanks slide off his back like rain on a waterfowl, but there was something about the casual sincerity of Barry’s words—because he was a hero, too, he’d played as great and important a role in those events as any of them had—that struck Arthur in a place he simply could not ignore.
“You could have, too,” he said after a moment. “Any of us could’ve bounced at any point, and you were injured more often than anyone else. Most other people would’ve probably said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ and walked away. But you stayed. And you activated the Mother Box that changed Superman… you ran and charged up Victor enough to get him into the Unity… I mean, all those people you helped save before, too…”
Arthur turned back to the ocean, rested his arms on the railing, and gazed out over the water. The sun must have been close to setting entirely; the last light of day had turned the distant water into a field of diamonds, but it was fading quickly, and soon a deeper blue would begin to rise over the ocean, dragging the twinkling night sky along with it. “I dunno, Barry Allen. I think anyone who can keep getting back up, keep jumping back into the ring the way you do… I think that’s pretty damn cool, too.”
Barry cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I just… I was just doing what I had to. Everyone else was counting on me for something, so. You know.”
It was strange. Arthur was terrible at accepting praise, but Barry almost sounded sad, and the way he shifted his weight and hunched his shoulders as he gazed out at the ocean suggested that there was something churning in his mind beyond simple sheepishness.
Arthur had no idea what to do with that. All of a sudden it seemed he had too much information and too few questions to match up. Was Barry normally this humble? Did he understand the magnitude of his contributions? Hell, Arthur had spent his first night as King of Atlantis completely fucking plastered because it had been easier to revel in his victory with drunken celebration than to face it outright. It was possible Barry had responded to the enormity of the situation by retreating into himself, because he didn’t seem the sort to get wasted in the wake of a recently-prevented alien invasion.
Goddamnit, Arthur thought. He’s too interesting to be humble. It added a layer of mystery to him that was as charming as it was intriguing. And he sure as shit was intriguing.
“Well, even if it was the bare minimum, you did a damn good job of it,” Arthur said. He lifted a hand and awkwardly patted Barry twice on the shoulder. It felt odd to touch Barry’s uniform, or armour, or whatever he called it; Arthur had expected it to feel like plastic, or maybe metal, and hadn’t fully considered whether touching the electricity-dispersing wires might discharge a mild electric shock, or worse. Strangely, even though Barry was standing almost completely still, he’d expected the suit to give off a subtle vibration at his touch. It didn’t, of course, but he found himself wondering what it felt like to touch Barry when he engaged in hyperspeed, or whatever the hell he referred to it as. Would the wires grow hot enough to burn? Would the plates rattle, or seem to flicker in and out of existence under his fingers? And what the hell would it feel like on the inside?
“So,” Barry said at last, drawing the vowel out into something lengthy and topic-changy, “now that you’re the king, what exactly does that mean for us?”
“For…?”
“For the—us,” Barry repeated, gesturing emphatically at himself and Arthur, and sort of in the direction of the ocean as well. “You and me, and Batman and Wonder Woman and—you know, the whole world-saving superhero team, united by Bruce and Superman and a world-threatening alien invasion. Are we supposed to just go about our lives like everything’s cool? Like, I go to my job at the lab, you go to your throne in The Lost Kingdom of Atlantis, Bruce goes back to throwing vaguely bat-shaped knives at people…? I go back to Central City and keep working through school while we wait for the next alien invasion while you try to keep everyone down there from killing everyone up here until aliens come along again and try to kill us both… wait a sec, didn’t your dad say something about the sun setting? I swear I thought we were gonna see…”
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it,” Arthur said, watching as Barry turned around and traced the trajectory of the sun all the way toward the west, then began to circle away from him to the opposite side of the lighthouse. “It kinda feels like we’ve all got our own stuff going on right now. I know we didn’t exactly get a chance to sit around and introduce ourselves, but I get the feeling everyone has their own personal…” He trailed off, failed to find something to say, and cleared his throat. “Each of us has something to continue to work toward, even when aliens aren’t actively trying to kill us. So long as whatever we’re doing is fulfilling and meaningful… you ask me, I think we’ll all be together again at some point, if and when it’s necessary. King of Atlantis, doesn’t matter. Billionaire CEO, millennia-old Amazon warrior, half-human half-Apokoliptian cyborg, lab… student…” Jesus, Arthur. Get it together. “I guess that’s what it means for us.”
He paused. Barry was just visible on the other side of the lighthouse, still looking in the direction of the sun, which had begun to descend toward the treeline and had become obscured by clouds. “This time of the year, the sun sets a little north of west, so we don’t really get the sun setting over the water, but through part of the year we get the sunrise over the ocean. The sunsets are still nice, but you don’t really get the full effect of the sun going down on the water… say, have you ever heard of the green ray?”
Barry had wandered out of view. “Green ray?”
“Yeah. Sometimes, when the atmospheric conditions are just right as the sun sets, or rises, you get this weird phenomenon that looks like a green ray, or sometimes it’s just a flash. Jules Verne wrote a novel about it, Le Rayon vert.”
“Le rayon vert,” Barry repeated from the other side of the lighthouse. “Sounds cool. What exactly is it?”
Arthur pushed himself away from the railing and began to circle around the other side. “Just an optical illusion, but it’s—beautiful, I guess, and elusive. It’s a quick flash of green right on the very edge of the sun, there and gone again. Easy to miss if you’re not watching closely.”
“And this is a scientific thing?”
“Yeah. There’s some science to it, but the story’s a little more romantic about it. ‘If there be green in Paradise, it cannot but be of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope,’” he recited, remembering the careful, yet hungry manner in which he had devoured the translated text. He’d always liked the poetry of Verne’s work, but rarely had occasion to speak poetically; yet something about the setting sun disappearing behind the cloud, whose edges glowed with the sun’s final light, reminded him of the protagonist’s search for that elusive phenomenon. “It’s said that when you see the green ray in the first or last light of the sun, you can read your own feelings, and someone else’s too. Makes it impossible for the person seeing it to be deceived by sentiment.
“Only thing is…” Arthur turned and glanced back at the ocean, where the darker blue of night was only beginning to creep upward on the horizon, seeking to smother the last reds and golds of the setting sun. “Even though the sunset shifts through the year, the sun doesn’t set on the water on this part of the coast, so to find the green flash—ray,” he corrected himself, “at sunset, you’d need a good view of the horizon. Just the sunset, no clouds.”
The setting sun had found a small space between the clouds, and now gilded the tops of the trees with late-day gold. As they stood together, the cloud covered the sun, and the faint bit of light dimmed once more.
Barry hummed quietly, thoughtfully. “Probably no chance of seeing it tonight, huh?”
“Probably not,” Arthur agreed.
“Well… I don’t know a lot about Jules Verne’s work, except that it doesn’t actually take eighty days to go around the world, but you know what? This whole place does give me really big Mufasa-and-son vibes. Like, I can just imagine you and your dad up here, looking at the sun rising on the ocean and setting on the land, like–like ‘everything the light touches is our kingdom’, you know? And all of the trees and rocks and stuff is his kingdom, and all of the water is your mom’s kingdom, literally, because she’s the queen… and now it’s all yours, too. Land and sea. I mean, technically you’re only king of some of the sea, I get that. And we still have a president here so you can’t be king of the land, either. But you’re still, like. You know. Up here on a lighthouse with me.”
As he spoke, he gestured with his hands, and finished his soliloquy with a final vague flourish before sagging back against the rail with a small, dopey grin. It looked shy, and private, and almost too much like admiration.
Oh no, Arthur thought. He thinks my parents are cool. He thinks I’m cool.
If there was a title Arthur deserved even less than that of ‘king’, it would probably be that one.
“I guess it is kinda like The Lion King,” Arthur said after a moment. “Except it’s…”
There was that discomfort again; how the hell was he supposed to take this conversation? Accept it quietly and return the compliment? Pretend he was entirely oblivious to the fact that Barry Allen, established superhero and Mother Box-jumpstarter, thought he was anything special? Should he just end the conversation?
“Except it’s my brother and not my uncle, but even if he did take the throne back, he probably wouldn’t let the Atlanteans eat all the—uh. Actually, you know what, he probably would. I mean, you’d be okay, maybe, but the rest of the humans on land…”
“Turned into bone cages for talking birds,” Barry said, shaking his head with a small smile, the kind that suggested they’d shared a private joke. “Guess that settles it. Your brother stays in jail—I mean, oh, god, he is in jail, right? You guys didn’t, like… to the death? Should I be sorry for your loss?”
Arthur, who had almost caught himself wondering whether he was capable of creating inside jokes without realizing it, laughed loudly at the mortified look on Barry’s face. Now that was funny. It hadn’t even occurred to him that there would be details of his life that he should be sharing with his new friends, especially regarding such matters as undersea politics; it only now seemed obvious that these were matters on which he was most knowledgeable, rather than Bruce, who he’d expected would… well, debrief people on these sorts of events, or something.
“No, he’s fine. He is in jail, and he’s working through some things of his own. No threat to the rest of the world.”
“Good,” Barry said, relaxing visibly. “That’s good.”
They lapsed into silence and returned to gazing out at the sun, which was setting invisibly behind the wall of cloud. The occasional cry from a gull pierced the comfortable quiet, but this was a sound Arthur was able to easily drown out. There was little he enjoyed more than the sound of the surf, and admittedly, he was quite pleased to be able to share this with Barry. There were certain parts of his life he would never fully be capable of sharing with people, but a simple sunset by the ocean was, as far as he was concerned, one of the closest things in the world to a divine experience.
As the blue slowly began to deepen over the sea, Barry broke the silence.
“Do you think someone could’ve seen it somewhere else? The green ray?”
“I guess. Long as there was nothing blocking the sunset.”
Barry made a soft sound. “I guess whatever the green light touches on the other side of the world is someone else’s kingdom, huh?”
“Yeah. Guess so.” Arthur paused to drag his fingers through his hair. He felt somewhat remorseful now about having brought up the flash—the green flash, that is. Having brought it up in conversation. In his defence, he hadn’t been thinking of the location of the sunset or whether the conditions could be met.
But maybe there was a way they could still see it.
“I mean, you could always stay here until sunrise,” he said lightly. “We could probably catch it coming up over the ocean.”
Barry glanced sideways. “I thought you said it only happened at sunset?”
“I didn’t say it was exclusive to sunset. All we need to find the green flash is to see the first or last sliver of sun on the horizon.”
It was as though the sun had begun to rise on Barry’s face. Slow realization dawned on him in visible waves. “So… we could watch the sun rise from here, and see it.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe. Maybe… but that would mean sleeping over here at your place, and I know I just met your dad, but I get the feeling he’s the kind of guy who would have, like, the gnarliest sleepovers, you know? And I could sleep on the couch, because you probably need a whole bed to yourself, you know, single child syndrome and all, but we’d need to set an alarm and I didn’t bring my phone in my—”
“I don’t live with my father.”
“Oh,” Barry said. “Well, I mean, that’d be cool if you did. Like, Arthur Curry and his old man, you know? Just a dad and his son, just having a… a great time. I mean, I’d love to join you guys, but I feel like… I dunno, it’s getting kinda late, and since you don’t really need my help with the whole garbage thing, and because I have to work in the morning, I should probably just…”
“Wait a second, wait a second.” Arthur turned to face Barry, resting his elbow on the rail, and scratched idly at his beard as he thought. The idea of staying in his father’s house with a guest until sunrise was completely out of the question; it seemed that all they needed was more time, just one more sunset, and that was something they could easily find. If not here, then somewhere else. “It’s fine if you don’t want to stay and hang out with my dad all night, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t still try to catch the, uh… how fast can you run, exactly?”
“How fast can I run?” Barry looked genuinely taken aback by the question—understandably so, since Arthur probably should have known this by now, but in his defence, it wasn’t as though he’d never needed to ask. “Uh. I can go pretty—is this a hypothetical question? Like, am I supposed to say I can run faster than the speed of light and do something weird with the sun to catch the sunset before it ends, or…? Or, wait, I’m sorry, is this a real question? This is a real question, isn’t it. Do you want actual measurements in like, miles? Or do you prefer knots? Kilometres? How exactly do you measure speed underwater without the imperial and metric systems, anyway, by fish?”
“Yeah, this is a real question,” Arthur said, feeling more than a little sheepish. Goddamnit, Barry had talked about this before. He’d broken the goddamn speed of light by running the length of Superman’s ship. Of course he was fast. “I guess I forgot about the, uh… wow, nope. No, actually, just forget I even asked. How long would it take you to get to the west coast from here?”
Barry laughed incredulously. It was kind of nice to hear, even at Arthur’s expense. “The west coast?”
“Yeah. Could you get from the Atlantic to the Pacific in under… four hours or so?”
“Four hours,” Barry mouthed. His brow wrinkled, and then his eyes narrowed, and his face performed a series of increasingly baffled facial gymnastics as he wrestled with the logistics of Arthur’s question. “Like, the west coast of America? You’re asking if I could run from this lighthouse on the east coast to the west…? Okay, uh… yes, to really answer your real question. Yes, one hundred percent.”
His own question lingered in the silence that followed, and Arthur waited until Barry made it obvious that he was waiting for it to be spelled out. “The sun sets on the west coast in about four hours,” Arthur said.
“Oh.”
“We could still catch the sunset. I can move by sea, you by land. We can get to a different time zone before the sun sets, and find somewhere clear enough to see the sun flash.”
Barry’s face split into a grin full of understanding. “Oh, that’s definitely doable. Yeah, I can do the west coast no problem. I’d totally be up for watching the flash go down with you. At sunset, the–the green flash, when the sun goes down. I mean, I can actually—if you wanna leave right now, I can race you. I’d be happy. Honoured, even. Oh, wow, that’s such a cool idea. I will see you there!”
As he spoke, blue arcs of lightning began to crawl across his body as though he were a living Tesla coil, and suddenly Barry ceased to exist in the spot directly next to Arthur. Arthur, who was still getting used to the idea of watching the world become a person-shaped blur until his brain processed the fact that he had just watched Barry leave a shower of sparks behind, did not even realize that they hadn’t had a chance to decide where to meet.
Well, shit. There was no way he could scour the entire west coast in time. He’d need to call—but he couldn’t, because Barry hadn’t brought his phone, and because Arthur didn’t even have a phone number to call, and even if he did, would Barry be able to pick it up if he—
“Oh, my god, I am so sorry,” said Barry, who had arrived and brought with him a gust of warm evening wind and a new shower of sparks. He had his helmet on now, and blue lightning continued to crawl over his entire body, conducted by the wires, arcing occasionally to the catwalk floor and the nearby railing. Arthur hadn’t had much time to see him like this up close, fresh from a brisk run somewhere around the speed of light; he almost wanted to reach out and touch Barry’s shoulder again, just to see whether he would feel a spark. “I probably should have asked—where are we going, again?”
☼
The sun still stood high above the horizon when Arthur arrived at Sheringham Point, and it sparkled brilliantly across the span of the Pacific Ocean. He broke the water’s surface with enough speed to send him high into the sky, soared over the low yet unscalable outcropping of rock on which the Sheringham Point Lighthouse had been built, and landed in the grass on both feet, where he sank nearly an inch and a half into the damp soil.
After flipping his hair out of his face and straightening up, he saw standing on the lighthouse balcony a helmet-less Barry, who had a takeout container in one hand, a fork in the other, and a slack-jawed expression—presumably not in awe of him, because that would have been too flattering, but of the sight of the three grey whales that had accompanied Arthur on his final stretch along the Canadian coast.
(It had occurred to Arthur somewhere around the Cayman Islands that he should have taken into account his own speed and method of travel; more specifically, the time and distance required to travel along the coastal United States against the Gulf Stream, pass between Central and South America by way of the Panama Canal, and then double back to fight his way north to Canada with the Davidson Current at his back.
Barry had been given the easy route. All he’d needed was to follow a few road signs, and it wasn’t as though the Canadian border was difficult to cross when you could move faster than the human eye.)
“You brought whales!” Barry called out, jabbing frantically at the air with his fork. “Did you know the whales were there? Did you bring these whales here?”
Arthur turned toward the sea. The whales were already departing for their regular migratory route, and as he lifted a hand in farewell, each responded to his silent well wishes by spinning in lazy circles and spouting water into the air before submerging themselves once more.
“Nah,” Arthur called back, turning away from the water and back to Barry, “I ran into them on the way. If anything, they brought me.”
He took the long way around to join Barry up on the lighthouse. It had taken a bit longer than he’d expected to find his way here, though luckily Barry had been understanding about the delay, and had even brought him his own container of takeout to make up for being, well, just a little bit faster.
But it had worked out just fine; the sky had gradually begun to take on the colours of the sunset, and there was a pleasant yellow-orange that tinted the few clouds that dared to cross the sky, which filled Arthur with a minor unease that, at least this time, had nothing to do with being with Barry.
Or maybe it had everything to do with being with Barry. Arthur wasn’t certain yet whether it would be possible to see the green ray this time. There was a possibility that the sun might set on the distant landscape of Vancouver Island, as opposed to directly over the sea, and though Arthur had seen a few green rays before, he wasn’t certain as to what the optimal conditions were; he knew only that the conditions needed to be just right.
But there would be other sunsets, and other sunrises, and even if some freak accident left them hoping to see the green ray another day, Arthur was quite content to simply share this view of the ocean with a friend.
Still, he found himself hopeful. He couldn’t have imagined a more optimal set of conditions, for although the sky was mostly clear, the occasional cloud drifted lazily across the vast horizon, and the tide still lapped against the rocky cliff face with enough force to create the same soothing background noise Arthur remembered from his childhood in Amnesty Bay. It was as close to perfect as anyone could ask for, and it struck him suddenly that he’d never sat at the shoreline with anyone who understood just how important the sea was to him.
He’d never sat at the shoreline with anyone who he could talk freely with about who and what he was. And to be perfectly honest, it felt great. Great to just relax and watch the sun sink lower on the horizon, creeping ever closer toward the ocean and the shape of the island.
If Arthur did not see a green flash today, then at least he could admit to having spent some pleasurable time in the company of a different Flash entirely.
“It’s kind of crazy, you know,” Barry was saying. They had moved from the lighthouse to the grassy lawn as the sun slid further down in the sky, and Barry sat with his helmet in his lap, tracing idly over the angular line of one cheek. “Ten years ago… twenty years ago, even, I wouldn’t have ever thought about trespassing on Canadian soil. I mean, I wouldn’t have thought about much of anything because twenty years ago I was a baby. Not, like, a baby baby, but a toddler, I guess. I was a toddler thinking about–about how big and scary the world was, and thinking about my mom and my dad and figuring out how to walk around on the carpet without falling flat on my face, if that’s what toddlers even think about. And now I’m basically doing the same thing. I’m in my twenties and thinking about how big and scary the entire universe is, because I watched a bunch of aliens try to take over the world and I just learned that there are six lost kingdoms under the sea and one in the desert for some reason, and a secret paradise island, and… now I’m eating poutine in Canada, waiting for the sun to go down so I can watch le fantastique rayon vert with the king of the ocean.”
Arthur watched Barry’s fingers as they traced along the side of the helmet, which glinted in the light of the setting sun each time he shifted it in his hands. “What’s so crazy about that?”
“Uh,” Barry said, obviously taken aback by the question. “What do you mean?”
Arthur lifted a shoulder and gestured out at the sea. “You said it’s crazy, all of this. The world being so big and scary, especially with all of the things we’ve seen and done in the last few weeks… but it's the same thing we’ve always known, isn’t it? That there are other worlds out there that we know nothing about, both here on our own planet and out on someone else’s. That there are people capable of… capable of the same things that we can do, people who shared our powers and thought that they were the only ones struggling with it alone. Only now we know about each other. We’ve got a reason to stick together.”
He could tell that Barry was looking at him and not at the ocean because a relatively new feeling had suddenly washed over him like a particularly powerful tide; it was Barry’s laser-focused attention, and it felt as though someone had begun to drill a hole in the side of his head. Though Arthur was beginning to open up to the idea of speaking more freely about the thoughts that had crossed his mind more recently of late, it still made his skin crawl to think of being so forthcoming about… well, everything.
But he wanted to try. And there was nobody better to share his thoughts with.
“That’s some serious self-reflection,” Barry said after a moment. “I mean, I guess business networking is more important than ever now. Especially because the Atlanteans are kind of… not so cool with us landlubbers. Not that they’re—I’m not implying that they’re wrong to be mad about us contributing so much to global warming and filling the ocean with litter and ruining almost every single existing ecosystem, exactly. I just feel like… I mean, you’re the king, and you’re half-human. Not that they should hate half of you—”
“They do,” Arthur said, effectively stopping Barry mid-sentence. He even stopped fidgeting with his helmet for a moment. “Or, at least, some do. They accept me because of ancient law and tradition, not because they’re a progressive society.”
“Oh,” Barry said softly. “You’d think they would be.”
“Yeah. You’d think.”
Arthur let his gaze drift up into the sky, and Barry returned to tracing a finger over his helmet.
“I feel like the right thing to do is to ask how you feel about being king,” Barry said after some time. “You know, ask about politics, let you vent a little ‘cause it probably sucks that half of you belongs to an underwater race of maybe-bigots, and that your definitely-a-bigot half-brother tried to murder you and is sitting in jail while you have the crown, and you’re an international legend in the ocean and on the land, and your mom’s actually alive and still totally hot after being gone for, like, literal decades… what? Your dad and I had a lot of time to talk, I’m just saying.” he said, holding up his hands in a ‘please don’t hurt me’ gesture as Arthur turned a hard, suspicious stare toward him. “But I also feel like… it’s probably kinda awful, so if you wanna talk about it, or if you don’t wanna talk about it, we can do it. Or not do it.”
Arthur, still reeling from the unexpected emotional gut-punches that Barry had struck him with so effortlessly in calling him a legend and calling his mother attractive in the same sentence, shook his head. Then he laughed.
“You know what the craziest part of it is for me? We saved the world from some crazy motherfucker, we brought back Superman, I almost got killed by my brother who no longer wants to kill me because my mom, who’s actually alive, wouldn’t want him to do it, and now I’m the half-breed true heir to the throne of Atlantis, despised by half the population, and I have to pay taxes.” He snorted softly. “I don’t own property. I don’t even know if I have a royal bank account in Atlantis.”
“Is there a chance you’re, like, committing tax fraud?”
“I have no idea,” Arthur said.
Barry began to laugh.
This time Arthur couldn’t help but join in.
☼
The sun continued to set.
The horizon was now remarkable shade of yellow-orange, and the ocean closest to the horizon had been dyed a similar colour; a haze had drifted across the sky, threatening the clarity of the perfect sunset they were hoping to find. They were close now to seeing the green ray, their second sunset of a very long and surprisingly enjoyable evening—yet more and more Arthur found himself hoping just as much for some small, inconsequential thing to happen at the very moment of the green ray. It might be as simple as some bird flying in front of them to obscure their view, or a whale breaching the water’s surface with a powerful spray of water. Hell, Arthur could command it if he so wished.
If they didn’t catch this sunset, there would need to be other sunsets, or else Barry would never catch a brief glimpse of that fabled green. The two flashes would be destined to meet another day.
He had a pretty good idea of what that journey would look like. Jules Verne had written an entire novel on it, after all.
“I have to say… even though your brother sounds like a complete sociopath and your kingdom sounds like they’ve got a lot of really weird outdated policies, I’m really glad you got your mom back. Your dad seems super happy, and you… I mean, I really only knew you for, like, a couple of days before you found out your mom was alive, and I know we didn’t really talk about family or anything, and I get the feeling you’re kind of miserable about Atlantis, like, still in the figuring-things-out stage, but you seem a lot happier now, too. Like, a lot more sure of yourself. I dunno, maybe I’m just imagining it, but you just seem… better.”
The unease that flooded Arthur’s body settled more quickly this time, as if it were being drawn away on an ebbing tide. It seemed a strange thing to acknowledge in the moment, but Arthur hadn’t realized that people had perceived him in this way. That people, especially Barry, were still perceiving him. Of course, he’d had no reason to think that other people might look at him and assume anything about the richness of his life beyond the attitude he affected and the image he projected—which was calculated, and as genuine as he could safely allow himself to be. Yet here Barry was, circling again and again back to the topic of Arthur. Arthur and his problems, and his powers, and his everything, as if there could possibly be anything about Arthur that someone like Barry might find interesting.
If he had been uneasy before, he was terrified now by the thought of just how much attention Barry had paid to him. And worse, he couldn’t be certain whether he had returned the favour, or whether it would be appropriate to.
(Even though he wanted to. He wanted to know more about Barry, who felt to Arthur like a lightning storm that never quite seemed to rain. How boring could he have been to find Arthur fascinating? How boring could he have been, the man who could cross a continent in the span of minutes, who made fast friends with the parents of someone he barely knew, who was capable of waking long-dormant alien technology?)
“And,” Barry continued seamlessly, “I guess I’m kind of in this weird stage where I can’t really figure out if, you know, we can talk about this stuff? ‘Cause I think it would be just… mind-bogglingly cool to talk about Atlantis, but I also want to respect your boundaries and not talk about Atlantis, which means I’m okay with not talking about it, but I also would totally be down for listening if you ever wanna. Y’know. Tell me about the deep, dark ocean.”
Arthur considered that for a long moment.
“Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. There was something you said… back in Superman’s ship, just before you woke the Mother Box up. You said when you approach the speed of light, some weird shit happens.”
Barry’s face glowed sunset-pink. It had probably been glowing like that for a few minutes now, but Arthur had been too busy watching his knuckles to notice.
“Oh,” Barry said quietly. “I didn’t realize you heard that.”
“We were all there,” Arthur said. “And it was kind of a memorable thing to say. But I was thinking… if you’re interested in talking about all of your… stuff… the speed thing, the lightning, all that shit… maybe I could tell you a thing or two about Atlantis.”
Barry scratched at the back of his head. The shift in his body language was the least subtle thing Arthur had ever seen, and Arthur now knew that the fidgeting he’d been watching had not been a nervous energy, but a rather comfortable one. “I, uh. Yeah, that's really complicated, I dunno… so…”
He took a breath. Arthur could see that he had begun to rotate his helmet in his hands, face growing redder and redder as he spoke. “So things happen, you know? And sometimes they’re not, you know, huge things, but these teeny-tiny little things. Just small little occurrences. And sometimes, for reasons that I will not get into and reasons that I can’t—well, I could—but I won’t explain them, because it’s super interesting but it’s not… the thing is, sometimes if I… approach the speed of light... these things start to unhappen.”
“Unhappen,” Arthur repeated.
Barry nodded sagely. He had stopped turning his helmet, and it now stared up at him with dark, empty eyes. “Yeah, I guess that’s the best way to describe it. Unhappen. And the thing is… how much time do you have, here? I mean, I could literally spend all night talking about this, ‘cause it’s kind of—technically speaking, it’s a lot to take in, and...”
How much time did he have? What a question.
Realizing that Arthur hadn’t responded, Barry glanced up, and finally noticed that Arthur had simply held out his hand to indicate the sun, which was still at least a few minutes from sinking out of view. It had only begun to brush the tops of distant trees, and looked as though it would set on the water after all; the haze that had crossed it earlier had vanished from sight, and he found himself thinking for the first time—selfishly, almost, it came so easily—that if he really wanted, he could block the green ray from sight.
They didn’t need to let the conversation end here. There could be another sunset.
No, Arthur thought then. Absolutely not. That was selfish as hell. There was no way he’d dragged Barry all the way out here only to intentionally sabotage their efforts at the last moment. He knew that the green ray was only an illusion, hardly the preternatural phenomenon that the novel made it out to be. All of that flowery bullshit about heightened perception was just that; the green ray couldn’t possibly grant anyone the ability to understand better the feelings they were experiencing, and it certainly couldn’t grant further insight into someone else’s emotions.
Except Jules Verne hadn’t been talking about telepathy.
Arthur had read the novel. Christ, he’d read it in French and English both.
“Okay.” Barry took a breath, and when he spoke next, it was with the pace of someone who had weighed each word carefully, and knew that wherever he placed them, the impression would forever remain. “Okay, um. So when... time unhappens—like, these teeny little moments, the span of milliseconds, even,” he said, pinching his fingers together, “they still have to occur in a linear sequence of events. Like, for example… sitting here! We are sitting here, having this conversation, and in a few seconds more of these teeny moments will have happened that involve us sitting here. But sometimes there are teeny moments that will have simultaneously occurred and not occurred because that time has unhappened, and something else is now going on, and whatever sequence of events that unhappened totally gets lost in the grand scheme of things.”
“Because it unhappened.”
“Exactly. So, not at all like us sitting here, because that is definitely happening. We are definitely watching the sun go down. But… see, the thing is that these moments only unhappen if I make them unhappen. If I tap into the Speed Force and move faster than the speed of light, that’s when things get weird. So I guess what I was talking about there in the ship is... the thing about these moments happening and then unhappening because I’ve just moved faster than the speed of light is that they already have happened, even though they technically haven’t.”
Arthur’s mind felt like a perpetually-spinning wheel on a perpetually-loading screen. “Like, uh… a timeline split. So you can have moments that occur linearly for you, and then… unhappen for you… but because the moment already existed...”
Barry took a deep breath and lifted his chin to stare hard at the horizon. It looked for a moment as if he wanted to correct Arthur, or elaborate, or argue… but then he exhaled, and nodded. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Except that timeline doesn’t continue, it gets wiped out completely.”
“Except for the person who experiences it.”
This time Barry didn’t even nod. He simply sat in the glow of the sunset, staring down at his helmet, cheeks pink from the light reflecting off the lightly-scratched surface.
“That’s kind of fucked up,” Arthur said, frowning. “Cool, but fucked up. So in theory, you’d be the only person who would ever remember these moments passing.”
“Yep.”
“Because you’re the one who’s making them not happen, but because you already experienced them, they both exist and don’t exist. So even if things turned out for the better, you’d be the only person in the world to remember something that didn’t… something that never fully came to pass.”
Barry’s voice was very small. “Yeah. Schrödinger would have a field day with me.”
There was a half-concocted question brewing unwittingly in the back of his mind; something about Barry, and the green flash of light, and the electricity from his body and the near-instantaneous, undetectable reversing—eliminating—of time. Would he know if Barry had done it? If some bird swooped in at the last second to interrupt them and Barry suddenly tapped into the Speed Force and reversed the flow of time to the moment just before, would he know it had ever happened in the first place?
If Barry simply chose to stand up, could he make it so that Arthur forgot about this conversation entirely?
Barry nodded solemnly, and Arthur, who had not looked away from Barry’s face as he’d been speaking, now recognized that he had unwittingly pried apart Barry’s armour and dug beneath that charming college-student front; there was something unbelievably powerful that Barry had tapped into, whether it was in his own mind or in the physical world. Something that was clearly eating away at him. Something that he had not intended to reveal, here in the warm, fast-fading glow of the setting sun, with a sea of glittering diamonds stretched out before them as far as the eye could see and the faint outline of the Canadian coast beyond that.
“So you’re actually a little bit older than you should be,” Arthur said suddenly. “Maybe by a few seconds, or by a few minutes over the course of a lifetime. But you’re stealing back time. Bit by bit.”
Barry, whose face had not entirely been cleared of that sudden cloudiness, glanced sideways at him. “Shouldn’t I technically be losing time? I mean, I’m talking about the span of milliseconds here, you realize that, right? I’m not, like, years older than I’m supposed to be.”
“Right,” Arthur said, “but still, you’ve experienced more time than someone your age should, which means you’re not losing time. You’re gaining it.”
“Yeah, but in doing so, I still lose time, because I’m a little bit older each time I—look, if—say the sun set right now,” he said, pointing at the gleaming disc of the sun, which now brushed intimately against the ocean’s surface and was doubled by the sea’s reflection. “And I decided to move faster than the speed of light and in doing so reversed the stream of time, thus erasing the green flash—”
“Why would you do that?” Arthur asked, decidedly not panicking, because he was certain—no, he was positive that Barry wouldn’t—
“To see it twice, or to rewind and watch from a different position or something, I don’t know. Point is, I’ve just watched it twice, so now I’m twice as many green flashes old, and—.” Barry buried his head in his hands. “Oh my god, this is too much. See, this is why you never talk about your powers, because you’re not talking about hypotheticals anymore, it’s—ugh, okay. I guess what I’m trying to say is… there are some little pieces of time that we can steal back, and, um. It’s just really easy to let those moments pass, I guess. Let them slip by, and by the time you’re done thinking about it, about whether or not that’s the path you want to take, the window’s already closed, you know? Sun’s already set on that moment, to be topical, y’know, so you have to… to just live with it.”
He continued to stare out at the water, lips pressed together in a grimace. There was something heavy in his face—something that suggested he was thinking about anything but the setting sun and the green ray.
Arthur could see the sun setting. And he thought that he could now see what Barry was trying to say.
“So in theory… you could choose to change any moment. You could change the course of time for the entire world.”
Barry nodded emphatically, set his helmet aside, and exhaled as he shifted in the grass. “Yeah. Yeah, you know, it’s actually—it’s, I dunno, a really crazy thing to, uh, to think about, I guess. Changing the world. That’s gotta be. Whew. Man. Wow. Is it just me, or is the sun actually going down right now?”
The sun had almost disappeared entirely on the horizon, and whether due to the impending sunset or the conversation, it seemed that the air around them had become charged with a strange energy. Perhaps the green flash did have some notable effect on one’s mind; Arthur didn’t think he’d ever spoken this openly and honestly with anyone, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever have the chance to hear Barry speak so candidly ever again.
“You don’t have to keep going,” Arthur said quietly. Despite the sunset, he found he could not look away from Barry. What he saw was not what he had expected from Barry Allen; what he saw was vulnerability, uncertainty, the look of someone far too young to be burdened with the weight of whatever sat upon his shoulders. He knew that feeling all too well. He knew how it could fester, untreated. And yet he had no idea how to help. “Listen, Barry, whatever happened...”
“I know,” Barry said quickly, and then winced. “Yeah, sorry, I mean. I know. I mean, how do you keep on acting like things are cool when you carry the weight of, like, the literal entire world and the lives of everybody you know, y’know? Oh, hey, Arthur, I think it’s finally happening, look at the sun, we’re gonna miss the...”
The sun was a sliver atop the sea.
(The conditions were optimal. There would never be a better time.)
It was then that Barry looked at Arthur, his brows knitted in confusion, radiating genuine distress at the thought of being the only one to witness the green ray in that single instant in time.
And in that single instant in time, Arthur leaned in and kissed him instead.
He would never be able to say precisely what had possessed him; the urgency in that moment had not yet passed, and yet the desire to share in the experience of such a rare phenomenon had shifted into the desire to alleviate a bone-deep hurt that he could not possibly understand.
He had learned long ago that there were certain things more beautiful and fleeting in nature than a twice-daily optical phenomenon (which, to be frank, was precisely the same description that could have been given to a stopped clock. Stopped clocks weren’t all that special, and there was green everywhere Arthur looked, most days).
Arthur knew now that sometimes, for reasons just beyond his understanding, it was possible to stop time, even if just for a moment. To see a sunset, or to save the world, or to share a kiss.
And he knew that if this was the wrong move—if he had miscalculated, if he had uncovered a wound too fresh, dived too quickly into waters he could not see clearly—Barry could ensure that it had never happened.
If he wished to look only at the green ray and watch the sun slip from view below the water line without the burden of having revealed himself and his insecurities and powers, he could do it a thousand times over.
There was something unbelievably powerful about Barry Allen. He wielded an ability that Arthur had only just begun to scratch the surface of. He held the weight of the world on his shoulders, and found comfort in poutine and whale-watching and sitting side-by-side in the golden glow of sundown. He may have made choices that altered the very fate of the world—and somehow, despite the sea and the sunset and the lighthouses and the way Barry’s eyes lit up when he laughed and the way he could traverse half of the continent and retrace his path to ask directions, Barry had spent the entire evening treating Arthur as though he were the most interesting thing that had happened to him in years.
“Oh,” Barry said against his mouth. “Wow. That’s amazing.”
It was then that Arthur felt the strange sensation of something moving his hair—but it was not the warm seaside breeze, and not the gust of wind that usually whipped up in the wake of Barry’s use of the Speed Force. It was Barry’s fingers burying themselves in his hair, Arthur realized, and he discovered in the same moment that he could neither keep himself from grinning against Barry’s mouth, nor resist the temptation to brush his fingers against the sun-warmed surface of Barry’s cheek.
In the seconds that passed, the familiar blue flashes of lightning—the ones that would crawl along Barry’s body, signaling his connection to the Speed Force and his subsequent departure from the linear progression of time as Arthur experienced it—never came.
And if any hint of green had been visible in the precise moment when the sun’s last light was extinguished on the distant sea, neither Barry nor Arthur bothered to see.