Chapter Text
Even though Barry had been up most of last night with Hazel, he forces himself to get out of bed early on Tuesday.
He’d gotten a text from Cisco as they were sitting at the beach, staring at the Pacific, that the device was ready that would allow Hazel to travel back home. He’d told Hazel the news right away, half afraid she’d decide to leave immediately.
But she had thanked him for the information and told him that it could wait until after they got a good night’s rest. “Arion is amazing, but I don’t want to overtax him, you know? Plus, I want to say goodbye to Caitlyn and Cisco.”
If it had only been Cisco, Barry isn’t sure she’d been so adamant about saying proper goodbyes. But the two women had become fast friends, both still refusing to tell him what their talk had been about during their “girls’ day out” on Saturday.
So, Barry arrives at STAR labs just as dawn creeps over the horizon, a carrier from Jabba’s with four cups in his hands. He doesn’t go in, though, instead heading around the main building and to Arion’s temporary stable. Caitlyn is already there, chatting with Hazel as she brushes Arion.
The women’s conversation tapers off as they spot Barry approaching.
“Good morning,” Caitlyn offers, a sad tilt to her mouth. Barry feels bad for her. He knows that Caitlyn has a hard time making friends, knows that she’ll miss Hazel more than either him or Cisco. But he also knows that Caitlyn will wear a smile on her face today until the very moment Hazel vanishes from their world before she allows her cracks to show.
“Morning,” Barry replies, handing her the cup with a frappuchino.
“Hi, Barry,” Hazel offers gently, not stopping in the brushing of her horse. She eyes the three remaining cups in his tray. “I’m not really a coffee person,” she says with an apologetic smile to her face.
Barry beams at her. “That’s why I got you a hot chocolate.”
Hazel’s smile turns soft and genuine. “Thank you.”
“So, are you exited about getting home?” Barry asks, taking a sip of his own cup. The decaf is bitter on his tongue, but the milk makes it bearable.
“Eager to see if my friends ripped apart the world trying to find me,” she replies. Or if they didn’t even notice I was gone, she doesn’t say. “Plus, I miss my own bed, and the bakery down the street and a map that makes sense.”
“How on earth don’t our maps make sense? This is Central City, in the centre of the country,” Caitlyn argues immediately, vehemently.
Hazel grins at her. “Next time I’m here, I’m going to bring a map from my earth with me.”
“Next time?” Caitlyn asks, happily confused.
Hazel shrugs. “Only if you’ll have me, of course. Shouldn’t be too hard getting here and back with that thing, should it?”
While Caitlyn is still making happy sounds at the prospect of seeing her new friend again, Cisco enters the shed, looking far more sceptical.
“It doesn’t really work like that,” he admits, holding up the device he built over the past week. “I programmed the correct frequency, but reverse-engineering this so you can come back isn’t exactly flipping a switch.”
“Good thing then that I’m best friends with one of the best engineers my wold knows.” She considers the device, the straps hanging loosely from its sides. “This goes onto Arion, then?”
Cisco nods.
Hazel puts away her brushes, gets saddle and tack, gets her horse ready to head out, just as she had the day before and the day before that. Just that today, she won’t return.
When Arion is saddled, Cisco explains her how to equip the device onto the horse. “Are you sure I can’t keep a sample of his blood to study?” he asks one last time as the device is secured. He asks it with a wink and a smile that is softer than most people see.
Hazel laughs. “What? Trying one last time to get your hand bitten off?”
“A guy can dream, can he not?” Hazel hugs him, Cisco hugs back. Arion stomps his hooves.
“Thank you for making sure I can return home safely,” she tells him.
“Don’t thank me yet, you don’t even know if it’ll work.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ll have much of an opportunity to say it once I find out. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”
“Likewise.”
Hazel turns to Caitlyn next. “I’ll miss you,” she says. “Thanks for taking me in this past week.”
There is something wobbly in Caitlyn’s eyes as she goes in to hug Hazel. “I’ll miss you, too. It’s been great getting to meet you.”
“A true pleasure,” Hazel agrees. They hug for a long time.
When Hazel finally pulls back, there’s something shimmering and wet in her eyes. She turns to Barry. “You ready to go?”
Barry isn’t, but changing into his Flash-outfit takes mere seconds. Soon, they’re running side by side, out to the fields where they first met just a week ago.
“This is it, then, I suppose,” Hazel says as they stand next to each other in a barren field, miles and miles and miles of sand and earth before them.
“You’re always welcome in Central City,” Barry tells her.
The corner of Hazel’s mouth twitches. “I’ll see if I can make time to drop by next time I’m in the area.”
“Make sure that you do.”
They hug, Barry activates the device on Arion’s chest. He won’t be able to throw them forwards as Kara had once done with him. But he’ll run with them, race them to spur them on.
“Ready?” he asks.
Hazel gets comfortable in the saddle, nods. “Set.”
“Go,” Barry says and takes off.
The world blurs around him, lightning crackling at the periphery of his gaze. Next to him, Arion’s hooves thunder into the ground. Hazel’s hair is whipping in the wind.
Then there is a crackling, a wheezing sound. Barry slows down, has no interest in getting dragged through the portal with Hazel and her horse.
For a split second, he sees it: the crackling cloud of black and grey and blue, the vortex of a portal that connects worlds, connects universes.
He gets one last look at Arion and Hazel, Speedster and Hero in their own rights. They vanish in a flash of light and Barry is left behind on a barren field. He slows to a stop, looks at where the duo vanished.
He takes a deep breath, turns around and does what Hazel and Arion did just a minute ago:
He returns home.
