And after he's been hooked I'll play the one that's on his heart
Oh.
Oh.
Oh...
What a beautiful thing forever was, but lonely, Barry discovered, because with eternity stretching out around him, powered inexplicably by his own unstoppable Force, he couldn't return home, not without becoming mortal again. All he had were the voices and an endless loop of memories from before and yet to come.
Run, Barry, run!
It wasn't Hell. The Speed Force hadn't lied-Nora, she hadn't lied. It was harmony, pure and endless, a sense of wholeness and oneness with everything and nothing. What should have been overwhelming came easily because he was Time and Space and Energy all his own.
Timeless.
Every hour, every minute
The prison he'd worked so hard to create for Savitar dismantled like disintegrating paper when he willed it to reunite with the power it was born from-him. It was all him. He was-
He was.
Barry!
The voices weren't always in synch. One had a way of standing out, teasing specific memories to the surface as if to stir in him the will to be something else. With such power at his fingertips, he could have tapped the cosmos and changed the very nature of creation. But there was warmth here, cocooning him close, like it didn't want him to leave.
Echoing through Time and every dimension, it wanted more-more breadth, more bearers. He knew without trying that in its embrace he touched every part of reality, every moment of probability, containing the knowledge of every place and Time that ever was or would be.
How could he be lonely when he was so full?
Barry got into a fight.
Oh, yeah?
And he won.
Ah, way to go, slugger. Oh, and uh, no more fighting.
The voice again, singular and unique from the others, contradicted the memory.
Don't listen. Fight, Barry!
He...he had to keep fighting. He didn't belong here. The lightning hadn't opened his eyes, he'd opened something else. He was the conduit, but his creation, like all children, wanted freedom without losing the comforting touch of home.
The Speed Force didn't need him, it merely wanted, yearned like consciousness, like he yearned, for something more. But in the end, it could only bend to his will, however it may howl.
No strings on me
It was time to go home, but it wouldn't be easy once he left, a slog through quicksand drowning in the flood. Then he would know Hell, because the full scale of power would overwhelm him finally, and he might never crawl his way back to the surface.
Nora. Henry. Eddie...and Ronnie. Snart.
You can call me Leo
No.
Len
The list was longer, so long it wounded Barry, but here, he could see them all as they were, at their greatest and at their downfalls. He saw every memory that was and every future that could have been. And sometimes that voice standing out from the others seemed with him instead of a distant echo, like the disconnect between dimension and Time.
He wished there was a way to save everyone, but there would still be losses, and one great loss he couldn't risk changing, because he knew where toying with his mother's death led.
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Timeless ❄️ColdFlash⚡
FanfictionA voice in the Speed Force reaches Barry in his Timeless state to convince him to come home. Barry misses that voice once he's back in real-time, but he has to set things right and save as many lives as he can. While that means Iris will be with Edd...
