ALL THE KING'S MEN | BARRY ALLEN

22. HERE WITH ME

❛ chapter twenty two! ❜

twenty two | here with me—susie suh

       It downs on me that this is actually Bart, my Barry. That little nervous laugh permanently recorded makes one bubble out of my throat too. The bitter tears I've been crying tonight turn into happy ones that wash the others away along with the dark emotions that drowned me. Still, I'm so appalled by it all that I'm waiting for someone to swing that door open and tell me this is some sort of joke. Strangely and luckily enough that doesn't happen and I'm more than grateful for it. I stare at the the way the line rhythmically moves, going up and down with every word he pronounces. I can only cradle the piece of amusing technology in my hands with the biggest watery smile on my face; the words it's you spilling from my mouth over and over again without acknowledging it until they echo in the corner.

       "I accidentally travelled to the future and saw what Zoom would do to our world. . .I saw him kill me," his statement makes me cold to the core and feel myself filling with the stream of emotions he could've experienced in that moment and I'm overwhelmed by them.

       He tells me that he figured it happened a couple of months before the actual events took place, we were already trying to stop Zoom from causing what I had thought would be a temporary chaos, however, Bart had already seen that this wouldn't be temporary at all. He helps me remember the day after and the memory of us sitting at the dining table on a Sunday morning comes to my mind. He'd been so lost in thought and not himself at all; he had replied he was fine, that he had gotten into another argument with his mother and I believed him, for it happened quite a lot and wasn't strange to me anymore.

       "I couldn't stop thinking that I had just seen my future, our future. I couldn't accept, couldn't believe everything would be taken from us...stolen from us. I know, you might be mad at me for not telling you before, it's just, I couldn't bear the idea of you knowing about it, I didn't want you to carry such a burden or worry about it. I'm so sorry for leaving you like this. I'm really sorry Vee—" he pauses, "—but if I'm going to die I'll make sure you make it out alive."