It almost seems like the Speed Force knows what he's going to do before he even does it.
He opens the breach, charging his way back through time to save his mother and right this wrongness that's settled heavy in his chest, things go sideways, as things usually do. He hits a bump, skids through a rift, and tumbles to a stop on the streets of Chicago, red suit and all. At first, he's angry, a rage that bubbles through him and over everything else, but whatever this place is, whatever kind of hole in the universe he's fallen through has changed him somehow. He's still fast, but some of his abilities are definitely missing. He can't travel through time. He can't open breaches.
All he can do is chase the rifts and hope that one day, one of them will lead him home.
None of them do. Others land him in worlds where things are just wrong. (Superman's dead? Kara's cousin? Can you even kill a Kryptonian?) But in the end he always finds his way back to Chicago again, to the constant shifting landscape, and as more and more time passes, the ache for his father and all that has been taken from him lessens, and he starts to ache for the things that he's lost instead. He misses Iris and Joe fiercely, wishes for the team at STAR Labs, wishes that he hadn't gotten so ahead of himself, but there's nothing he can do now.
All he can really do is keep trying to find a way home.
He gets word of another rift opening, months after he first arrived, and he darts toward it in a blaze of red and gold. He sees it there, open in the middle of the street and out of it steps someone so familiar that he stops before he can dart into the breach and feel it close behind him. Instead his arms close around her waist, pulling her out from in front of the oncoming cars and depositing her safely on the sidewalk, but part of him can't believe that this is really real.
It's entirely possible it may slip through his fingers again, get taken away so that he loses another thing he loves, but for right now, she's there. She's here. And he just stares at her for a moment before he takes the opportunity to verify that it's actually her.
because everything should have a riftverse au?
He opens the breach, charging his way back through time to save his mother and right this wrongness that's settled heavy in his chest, things go sideways, as things usually do. He hits a bump, skids through a rift, and tumbles to a stop on the streets of Chicago, red suit and all. At first, he's angry, a rage that bubbles through him and over everything else, but whatever this place is, whatever kind of hole in the universe he's fallen through has changed him somehow. He's still fast, but some of his abilities are definitely missing. He can't travel through time. He can't open breaches.
All he can do is chase the rifts and hope that one day, one of them will lead him home.
None of them do. Others land him in worlds where things are just wrong. (Superman's dead? Kara's cousin? Can you even kill a Kryptonian?) But in the end he always finds his way back to Chicago again, to the constant shifting landscape, and as more and more time passes, the ache for his father and all that has been taken from him lessens, and he starts to ache for the things that he's lost instead. He misses Iris and Joe fiercely, wishes for the team at STAR Labs, wishes that he hadn't gotten so ahead of himself, but there's nothing he can do now.
All he can really do is keep trying to find a way home.
He gets word of another rift opening, months after he first arrived, and he darts toward it in a blaze of red and gold. He sees it there, open in the middle of the street and out of it steps someone so familiar that he stops before he can dart into the breach and feel it close behind him. Instead his arms close around her waist, pulling her out from in front of the oncoming cars and depositing her safely on the sidewalk, but part of him can't believe that this is really real.
It's entirely possible it may slip through his fingers again, get taken away so that he loses another thing he loves, but for right now, she's there. She's here. And he just stares at her for a moment before he takes the opportunity to verify that it's actually her.
"Iris?"