Soothsayer ⚡ Barry Allen

Distant Hearts...

Talia Al Ghul

"Take a deep breath," Talia instructed. "Empty your mind." The room was dim and she had started burning insense at the beginning of the lesson, sending calm through me. "You're going to a place, you know it well, it's somewhere you've been before." I pulled up my mental images of Barry, focusing on him while listening for her voice. As I breathed evenly I recalled the tenative way his fingers drifted over my skin, his boyish mannerisms, the smile that got me from day one. "What do you see?"

"Mental snapshots," I explained. "Good feelings." Talia sighed and scooted closer, trailing her fingers from my wrists over my palms to open my closed hands, a shiver running through me. It was too similar to what I was imagining for comfort.

"Think harder," she reasoned, her hand pressing over my heart, "with this." Taking a deep breath, I shifted my position and ignored the sensation her touch had caused while meditating. It had never been my thing before, but Talia helped induce my state as much as she needed before teaching me to do it on my own. I shivered again, a light frown to my lips.

"It's cold." I turned my head to try and follow an image, trying hard to recall it.

"Don't force it," she advised softly, opening up my hands again. I leaned back a tad, finding myself in Barry's lab, his head held in his hand as he wrote something down. I reached for him, but the image faded and Talia held my hand a short distance from her neck. I didn't realize how desperate I had been for him until I pulled my hand back with a quiet apology. "Everyone's first time can be a bit overwhelming."

"What was that?" I slowly asked; the one time I'd been to that lab, it hadn't been as cold nor had Barry been working like that. It wasn't a memory.

"To my understanding, you've had interactions with the Speed Force, yes?" I paused a second before nodding. "It isn't a substance which one can feed, nor is it unique to a specific individual. The Speed Force is everywhere, you just looked through the curtain of it." I took a deep breath and avoided her gaze, rubbing my thumb over my palm.

"You're saying I just looked through space?" I quietly asked, trying to regain the sense of myself.

"Time, more or less," she corrected. I felt depersonalized, like I'd had an out of body experience and my soul was reconnecting with my body, tingles similar to those Barry had left in me receeding down my arms. "The better you get, the more you'll see. Some people can communicate through it. You can see seconds or even minutes into the future, move as fast as a Speedster over short distances." I pushed my hair out of my face and took a deep breath, completely out of my depth.

The only legitimate contact I can say I had was when Frankie died, how everything had slowed except for Barry. I think Talia could see I still wasn't fully grasping this, so she gave a soft sigh. "The Speed Force is a living thing, it's a place, it's an energy feild around our planet, it's something that harbors in your soul," she tried, "it's all of the above. Sometimes, the Speed Force talks to you. I'm teaching you how to listen." I slowly nodded and took another deep breath, starting to piece things together.

If the Speed Force talks to the people who use it, it would explain Barry's nightmares. All the dreams that shook him to the core; he didn't know how to explain because there wasn't someone teaching him about it, he was teaching himself. With a soft sigh, I nodded and tucked my hair behind my ears, finally looking back to Talia. "Let's try again," I decided, ready to learn as much as capably possible. She looked me over for a moment before nodding, my eyes closing soon after.

⚡

I laid in my bed and rested a hand on my heart, the other over my lungs as I focused on my breathing. I hadn't gotten much further than glimpses with Talia, if not because I was a beginner than because though I used Barry as my "happy place" I didn't want to expose her to too much of my weakness. Besides that, it was easier to do when someone else wasn't around. I wasn't much of a tea drinker, but we didn't often have coffee, and I didn't often have a choice in the matter. Tonight I did, and I went for chamomile, if only to help relax myself.

I focused everything in me on Barry, incorporating as many of my senses as I could. The feel of his skin, the smell of his shampoo, my mental memorizations of his face. It hurt a bit, most of the recent expressions I'd seen on his face were pained ones, but I worked my way past it. I shivered again, despite the heat that hadn't yet left my room, adjusting to the electric glow that came from an almost excessive amount of screens. I blinked a few times to adjust and found Barry face down in front of his keyboard, his back at an awkward angle as he sat in his chair and one arm hung off the desk, softly snoring.

I looked around a bit, finding a window with a decent amount of sunlight coming through. Turning back to Barry, I took a deep breath, relaxing as I slowly came closer, not wanting the image to fade again. I was hesitant as I reached for him, my breath stuttering and a small smile forcing itself to my lips when I put my hand on his head. It sort of felt like my hand was asleep, but I felt a subtle texture of his hair under my fingers. His screens had their normal displays, but his clear whiteboard had turned into a wall of crazy focused on me.

Little snippets of my past, a picture of Snart, the Joker, my hotel in Dubai, following me decently until his path went cold somewhere in Pakistan. "Oh, smart boy," I sighed. "Your brain is too quick for your own good." I flinched away when his head turned under my hand, taking a few steps back as he pushed himself upright.

"Andy?" he grogily asked, blinking as he looked around the room. His eyes focused on me, or rather through me to the board, before he sighed and looked to his wrist. "Shit," he mumbled, pushing the sleep from his face as he stood. The image broke and I took a deep breath, taking in my beige ceiling slowly. I closed my eyes as tingles ran down my limbs, my breathing off kilter. Some part of him knew I was there, he'd been in touch with the Speed Force for far longer than I had. I ran my hands over my face and pulled them away wet. I didn't care that I was crying, I was too uplifted by hearing his voice and seeing the glimmer of hope on his face.