Work Text:
December, 2019
“So…what do we do now?”
Lex’s question fell into heavily into the room, the weight of it crushing their shoulders and backs, to say nothing of their spirits. The agonized, shocked faces around Tally told universes of different reactions and possibilities – none of which answered his question of course. Kara’s eyes brimmed with panicked tears, and Sara’s fear had melted to something far, far more dangerous. Barry was already turning away, pressing his hands to his head, whispering something incoherent but Tally was willing to bet it was Iris’s name, over and over, as he tried to orient himself with what had just happened.
It was Kate who broke first, charging Lex with no words at all. J’onn J’onzz caught her just before she got to him, swinging her back and away. “No!” he roared. “We cannot change what he has done!”
“He killed Kal!” Kara shouted.
“He messed with the Book of Destiny,” Sara said. “There’s no way of knowing what else he could have changed.”
“I didn’t change anything besides writing my name in place of Superman’s!” Lex shot back. “It’s not my fault the Book likes me!”
Kara lunged for him, grabbing at the half-crumpled page in his hand, and he yanked it away, stumbling backwards and falling. J’onn, who was still holding Kate, backed away and let the man thud hard into the floor.
“Dude, you just rewrote the one thing that maybe could have told us how we’re supposed to do whatever it is we have to do!” Ryan snapped. “There’s a reason he was a Paragon and you weren’t! He was the Paragon of Truth! How are we supposed to know what’s right now?”
“I have to get back to Iris,” Barry said suddenly. “I have to…I don’t know why we’re here and I don’t know what being a Paragon of Love is about but I need to make sure Iris is safe before we do anything else.”
Oh crap, she should have known this was coming. Barry’s devotion to Iris eclipsed his senses at times. Tally whirled and ran in front of him. “Wait, Barry!”
He hesitated, the panic in his eyes already augmenting the lightning flickering around his body.
“Barry, the universe is gone,” Tally said.
The room felt silent at her words and even she couldn’t believe they were coming out of her mouth. But even as she said them, she could feel the truth of it in her chest. Earth-38 had just…vanished in that curtain of red light. And all the Earths after it. Gone. That was what they had been rushing to stop, what the Monitor had pulled them together for. To stop it.
They had failed. The universe was gone. Ren was gone. Again.
“You’ll come out of the Speed Force into nothing,” she said, her hand subconsciously drifting to her pregnant belly, trying to protect the life within from the wave of agony cresting in the room. “There’s no Iris to catch you.”
“That’s not true,” Barry shook his head, his face red with building emotion.
“Barry…”
“It’s not!’ he shouted. “This can’t be it! Oliver, Iris, Joe…Harry…I can go back and get them! I can run through time and save them and bring them here! This place exists outside of time, right? So I can go back in time and get them!”
“It doesn’t work like that!”
“How do you know? How much time travel have you done? You’re not a speedster, Tally! You’re just a girl from another Earth. You don’t know what I’ve done, what I’ve had to learn to fight this. You don’t know, so don’t tell me I can’t do it!”
“If you enter the Speed Force, Barry, you’re going to die when you come out of it,” Tally said frantically. “We can’t lose you too, Barry. We need you. Don’t you dare walk away from this!”
“I’m not walking,” Barry snapped back. “I’m running. And I’ll be back before you know it.”
Tally moved to grab him, even though she knew it was a lost cause.
As she suspected, her hand closed on air.
He was gone.