Building Blocks

In his youth, he'd played with Lego.

Lots of kids had. He might be the fastest man alive (Wally's surging speed notwithstanding), and only one of two speeders on this planet (that he knew of), and the finest forensics examiner the CCPD had had in a decade (suck it Julian), but Bartholomew "Barry" Allen had enjoyed Lego. In that, he was normal. He'd played with Lego. Iris had played with Lego. Joe had bought them Lego sets ad nauseam, ranging from those rock monsters (seriously, did no-one remember the rock monsters anymore?) to the Star Wars sets. He'd like the Star Wars (and space) sets. Course kids these days seemed to be into ninjas (Oliver should like that) and knights (or maybe he wouldn't like that?), along with fairies (did the League of Shadows technically count as ninjas) and all kinds of other stuff (maybe he should ask him the next time their paths crossed over), but whatever, he'd played with Lego (no aliens this time though).

He didn't have to ask if Cisco had. You didn't build a representation of a future event like this if you didn't play with Lego. As in, actually play, not just follow the instructions for your X-Wing that your foster sister ended up breaking. Because the road to sharing an apartment together was lingered with all kinds of hurdles. Some of them included smashed X-Wings. Others included the unfortunate reality that three months from now, a speedster would kill her right in front of his eyes. A speedster whose control of the Speed Force didn't even appear possible, even after everything he'd seen over the last few years. Time travel. Doppelgangers. Time wraiths. Metahumans. When he'd fought Thawne, when he'd fought Zolomon, he'd at least understood them. Understood why and how they were faster. Had come to understand their motives, as twisted as they'd been. Perhaps, sooner or later, he'd understand Savitar's too. And now…

He picked up a red brick and tossed it over the diorama. Now he had only three months to understand all that. Three months in which he had to change a series of events in order to change the outcome that the diorama showed him – one spaceman facing two other Lego figures, one of them with homicidal tendencies, the other smiling, as if not aware of the fate that awaited her. He tossed another brick – why did Lego men smile? They'd get lost sooner or later. Or stepped on. Or thrown out. He tossed a third brick, and-

"Hey."

Looked at Cisco, who wasn't looking at him, but rather looking at the diorama. As if he'd just taken a can of aerosol and defiled the Mona Lisa.

"Sorry," Barry murmured.

Cisco didn't look at him. His eyes were fixed on the board, and his hands were on the red bricks that he'd tossed aside. Before long, they were back in the buildings they belonged to. Red bricks for a red man. There was a lot of red in his life.

"You know how long it took me to make this?" Cisco asked.

Usually blood. "I dunno. Hour. Two?"

"Three."

Oh, and 'seeing red' – that was a phrase that could be applied to Francisco Ramone right now. Better than when Caitlin 'saw blue,' so to speak, so there was that.

"Huh. Three." Barry began walking round the table. Around the section of Central City that would be his arena in the near future. "Not bad. I mean-"

"Yeah yeah, I know, you could have built it in seconds." Cisco took a seat and rubbed his forehead. "Can't all move as fast as you."

"Yeah, well, you still built it." Barry picked up the red man that represented his future self. "Me? I tended to follow the instructions."

"Eh? Well, your loss." Cisco stretched out an arm, took the little spaceman, and looked at it. "Well, least you didn't have a brother messing everything you built up."

"No, I had a sister for that."

He phrased his words carefully, in both tone and pacing. Dante…that was a name that even now, he knew better not to bring up. Dante Ramone had been killed by a car. A far more mundane version of death than "time travelling speed god," but both knew the unspoken truth. Death by time travel. In the case of John's daughter, obliteration by time travel. Cisco slowly handed the red man back. One man, in a world where Barry wondered how many people had existed pre-Flashpoint, and how many of them were new. How many had popped into existence because of his actions, and how many were removed. Was there a way to count? Could he even bear the answer?

The spaceman provided no answers. He just kept smiling. Even after Barry put him back on the table to face the Savitar stand-in.

"Too close."

He looked at Cisco. "What?"

"Too close." Cisco walked over and moved the spaceman back a rivet. "You were there."

"You're counting?"

"No, measuring." He made a strange motion with his hands. "Mathematics, bitches."

Barry shot him a look.

"Sorry."

The fastest man alive began pacing round the table. "Fastest man alive…" he called himself that, but really, how much truth was in it? Thawne had outmatched him almost the entire time, before his true colours had been revealed. Zolomon had done likewise. And now, Savitar. A man, a god, something else? He didn't know. But he was faster. They were always faster. Even Wally was on track to becoming faster.

"Y'know," Barry said. "We might want to put another spaceman on the table." Cisco looked at him. "For Wally."

"Right, Wally." Cisco sighed.

"What? You don't think he can get faster than me?"

"Faster than you? Sure," Cisco said. Barry supposed his look betrayed his surprise, so his friend kept talking. "Hey man, I know it's weird, but the math doesn't lie. But…"

"But what?"

"But I think if it comes to a race you'd still win. And I don't know if that's still the best way to go about it." He picked up the red spaceman again. "We take you out, how we know Wally's going to be there?"

"Future can change, Cisco."

"Yeah, but how much?" He picked up a red brick. "I take one brick, picture's still in place." He took another. "Two bricks. Three bricks. Four. What's changed? You're still there. Savitar's still there." He paused. "Iris is still there."

"And H.R." Barry pointed to the police Lego man, the one that represented Harrison Wells 3.0, as he liked to call him (or 4.0…there'd still been an original Harrison Wells on this Earth at some point, even if he'd never met the man). "He's there."

"Right. But what's changed? We pick bricks up, we chip away at the boulder, but…seriously, what's changed?"

Barry opened his mouth…but closed it. The metaphor of bricks…H.R. hadn't used that metaphor. He'd used dominos. But then, it was Cisco who was the scientist. Cisco who would look at the problem from the standpoint of mathematics rather than literature. The man who sought to understand a universe rather than create one. And from the standard of maths, not only was he far too slow to reach Savitar in time, but how much had they changed? How much did they have to change? If, three months from now, those news headlines said something completely different, how did that translate into, well, anything?

"Anyway," Cisco said, giving Barry a pat (or hit, it was somewhere in the middle) on the shoulder. "We'll work it out. Don't worry."

"Yeah. How?" He was too tired to sound as anything other than a man who was approaching the end of hope. "How does the math work out?"

"Law of probability." Cisco smirked, walking backwards to the door, holding up his hands in mock protest. "We've solved every other problem that came our way so far."

"And what about the Law of Averages?" Barry asked. "What happens when we find a problem we can't solve?"

The smile disappeared. The hands dropped. Cisco didn't say anything for a moment. Maybe he was surprised that he knew what the Law of Averages was. Maybe he knew that Barry was right, and that sooner or later, they'd have to fail. Maybe…maybe a lot of things.

"Night Barry."

He walked out. Maybe this. Maybe that. Barry sighed, turning his gaze back to the diorama. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Was that a song? Maybe. Could he somehow save the woman he loved? Maybe. Would he? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe…

He gave red spaceman a shove. He fell over.

Right now, he didn't like Lego very much.