The silence left behind by the Black Flash was heavier than any sound. Barry stood alone in the vast, dark chamber, the only light coming from the fading gold sparks at his feet. He took a slow, deep breath, the kind that comes after holding it for too long. The air still tasted of ozone and fear.
His eyes swept across Zoom's throne room—the twisted metal, the monitoring stations, the containment cells that had held Jesse and Jay. This place was a monument to pain. It couldn't stand.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the Speed Force not as a tool, but as a part of him. It hummed in his veins, a river of limitless energy. When he opened them, his lightning flared, not in a burst, but in a sustained, brilliant wave of gold that erupted from his core.
He began to run.
He didn't run in a straight line. He became a living storm, a whirlwind of pure speed that shot through every corner of the sector. He didn't just break things; he unmade them. His vibrations tuned to the resonant frequency of the concrete, the metal, the very wiring in the walls. Support beams shattered into dust. Consoles exploded into showers of inert components. The black throne melted into a puddle of molten slag.
The room groaned, buckled, and then imploded in on itself as Barry shot out of the entrance, a golden comet trailing destruction. He didn't look back. There was nothing left to see.
---
Back in the main lab, the fight was over, but the tension was a live wire. Reverb, Killer Frost, and Deathstorm were contained in shimmering energy fields, but their hatred pulsed against the barriers.
Caitlin, her skin returned to its normal tone but shivering slightly, watched her frozen double with a complex mix of pity and relief. Firestorm kept a wary eye on the snarling Deathstorm. Dr. Light's palms still glowed, ready.
Then, a flash of gold. The air popped.
Barry stood in the center of the room, his suit smudged with concrete dust, his expression tired but clear. The oppressive weight of Zoom's presence was gone.
"It's done," he said, his voice cutting through the static of the containment fields.
The three doppelgangers seemed to feel it too. Reverb's arrogant smirk vanished, replaced by a look of stunned defeat. Killer Frost stopped pounding on her prison, her icy glare losing its fire. Their leader was gone. Their purpose had evaporated.
"What… what did you do to him?" Reverb asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Barry looked at him, his gaze flat. "I gave him a new job. One he can't quit." He turned to the others. "We'll find a place for them. A proper prison. They're not our problem right now."
He walked past them, his focus already elsewhere. In a quieter corner of the lab, Jesse was kneeling next to Jay Garrick, who was now sitting up, sipping water from a cup Harry had given him. Harry himself was hovering, his usual gruffness replaced by a raw, open worry as he looked at his daughter.
Barry approached, his footsteps soft. Jay looked up, his eyes, though weary, were sharp and intelligent. He had the bearing of a soldier.
"Jay Garrick," Barry said, offering a small, weary smile. "I've heard a lot about you."
"Most of it probably bad, thanks to that impostor," Jay replied, his voice rough but steady. He looked Barry up and down. "But you… you're the real article. Thank you. For me. For her." He nodded toward Jesse.
"It's what we do," Barry said simply. He crouched down to their level. "There's something you should know, Jay. On my Earth… you have a doppelganger. A man named Henry Allen. He's my father."
Jay's eyebrows raised in surprise. He looked at Barry with a new sense of familiarity, as if seeing a ghost of a relative. "Is that so? Is he a good man?"
"The best," Barry said, his voice thick with emotion for a moment. "It'd be good for you two to meet one day. I think you'd like each other."
A genuine smile, the first in a long time, touched Jay's lips. "I'd like that."
Barry then turned his attention to Jesse, who was practically vibrating with a new kind of energy. Tiny, golden sparks still occasionally flickered at her fingertips.
"And you," Barry said. "How are you feeling?"
"Alive," she breathed, her eyes wide with wonder. "I can… feel everything. The air moving, the electricity in the walls… it's like I'm awake for the first time."
"That's the Speed Force," Barry said. "It's a gift. But it's a dangerous one." He looked at Jay. "I have to get back to my world. Our city was under attack when we left. I need you to do something for me, Jay."
"Name it."
"Teach her." Barry nodded toward Jesse. "You know what it's like. The rules, the dangers. How to run without getting lost. She's going to need a teacher. She shouldn't have to learn it all alone."
Jay placed a firm hand on Jesse's shoulder. "It would be my honor."
Harry watched the exchange, his throat tight. He looked at Barry, and for once, there was no sarcasm, no deflection, just pure, unspoken gratitude. "Allen… I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything, Harry," Barry replied. "Just take care of your family."
At that moment, Cisco came over, clapping Barry on the shoulder. "Dude. You look like you just ran through a demolition derby. Also, you know, saved the multiverse. Again. No biggie."
Barry managed a tired chuckle. "We saved it, Cisco. All of us. I just… closed the book."
Cisco's smile was bright, a beacon of normalcy in the weirdness. "Yeah, well, this chapter was insane. Evil doppelgangers, speedster grim reapers… I'm gonna need a long vacation. And maybe a new playlist."
He looked around at the battered but victorious team, at the reunited father and daughter, at the freed legend.
"We did good, man," Cisco said, his voice softer. "We brought them this far."
Barry followed his gaze. He saw Caitlin, finally at peace with the power inside her. He saw Ronnie and Stein, a perfect, fiery union. He saw the hope returned to Harry's eyes. He saw a new speedster born and a old one freed.
"Yeah," Barry said, a real, warm smile finally breaking through his exhaustion. "We did."
He took one last look at Earth-Two's STAR Labs. It was still a broken world, but now, it had a chance to heal. The light was finally breaking through the cracks.
"Let's go home."