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When Jay had gotten word from the team on Earth-One and it was explained to him that one of their young speedsters had been trapped in the Speed Force, he had immediately made the resolution that he was going to get them out.
He could have just ignored their pleas, but Cisco had come directly to him for help, and he had seen too many good people fall before. Those other speedsters, they were just kids; they had barely even started out their existence in the multiverse and now the Speed Force was threatening to take that away from them.
He knew what the Speed Force’s wrath could look like. He had seen it all before, back in the days when he was doing the same thing as the younger speedsters were doing now – making mistakes and failing to understand the consequences.
He had seen it all before.
And he wasn’t going to let them deal with it alone.
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He had chased after Barry Allen into the Speed Force, helping him to stop the mirage of Captain Cold and then breaking through to Wally’s prison. Kid Flash had been standing there in the dimmed hospital room, looking completely distraught, the beeping tone of the hospital monitors picking up the pace until they went flat. The poor kid hadn’t even recognised that they were there, entirely focussed on the image that the Speed Force was conjuring up for him, and that’s when Jay realised that the vague whispers from across the timeline were true.
The unfortunate speedsters who got trapped in here - this prison that Barry Allen himself had created - they really did have to go through their own personal Hell… And this young kid had just been through it over and over again.
Despite knowing what would come for him if he stayed here, he continued to stand resolute when Barry turned and noticed that he had made no move to leave the room. There always had to be a speedster here, he had explained, looking at the two kids with a soft expression. Those two had their lives ahead of them, and he had been around for too long. It was his turn to take his place in the speed force, so the others didn’t have to – they could move on and get on with their lives and forget about this whole ordeal.
Barry promised that he would be back at some point, that they would get Jay out of there and that everything would be fine.
Jay had told the other Flash that they would see each other soon – but truthfully, he was prepared for an eternity.
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Jay had never been in this situation before – he had only heard the rumours of what the Speed Force would do to the trapped speedster, but had never experienced it or seen it first hand until now. He had expected the room to contort and turn into something that he knew, but nothing happened. Seconds ticked by, then turning into minutes, and still nothing happened. Jay had always tried to be a patient person but just wasn’t good at it, and he soon found himself pacing back and forth, fed up, wondering if being forced to slow down and wait was going to be his hell in itself-
But suddenly there was a piercing pain boring through his head, stronger than he had ever felt before – and he found himself dropping to his knees, desperately trying to focus as the world began to spin around him. The room pitched forwards and he found his strength instantly being sapped from him, and was powerless as his head hit the floor with a dull cracking sound and the light went dark.
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When he blinked and slowly tried to open his eyes he was met by a familiar scene one that made something deep down scream this can’t be true but it all looked so real, just like it had done back then. He was camped out in what once had been a house, with the roof partially caved in and the interior entirely destroyed. To either side there were other men – some still asleep, some muttering to themselves, some with their heads bowed in prayer. They all still sat with their kit on, and everywhere he looked it was like a mess of muted brown-green.
As he looked over the men – some wounded, some desperately looking through their provisions and finding nothing there – he realised what this was.
He was back in France, he was certain of it.
He was back in Dunkirk.
Every feeling that this wasn’t real washed away as he was dragged into the memory; the sound of gunfire in the distance, the sobs of some of the men nearby. And then there was the distinct droning sound in the distance and everyone seemed to look up instantaneously, some looking determined because something was happening, some looking distraught as they recognised the noise.
That was the sound of oncoming aeroplanes.
The Luftwaffe were approaching.
Someone had shouted an order to evacuate the building and find cover elsewhere, it barely being picked up on through the sound of the planes drawing closer. He had expected the soldiers of the same countries to have banded together but instead it was like a mass swarm as they left the building; French idly mumbling away in broken English to the Brits, the British casually throwing about what French words they knew in return.
Everyone had become an ally here – the fear of death had brought them together.
The last of the group had barely made it across the street when the first bomb fell, and suddenly everyone was running, desperately trying to split up and find safety somewhere, somewhere. There were screams as the explosion burned some, the shrapnel hitting others, and then it happened again and again and again, and the sound was deafening and it was all he could hear, the screams and the explosions and the screams again and again and again and again-
And for the first time in the entirety of the war he found himself paralysed, standing against the wall clad in the British army uniform that he really shouldn’t have been wearing considering how he hadn’t even signed up with the Brits, but none of that mattered now because they were dying, all of them were dying, and there was nothing that anyone could do.
He was completely helpless as the visions took over. There were his fellow soldiers being shot or hit by shrapnel, bleeding out and being stranded in broken down buildings with no one to retrieve them. There was the piercing pain in his right leg from the multiple bullet wounds, and the feeling of hands trying to apply pressure to the wounds despite him saying that he would be fine. And then there was the nurse, the one who had followed after him when he walked out of the field hospital straight after being admitted, stating that there was no way that he could possibly be fine.
Joan, her name had been – the nurse who dragged him back inside and kept doing observations on him and kept laughing every time he tried to leave.
Joan, the nurse who he had began to love…
And the nurse who had never been retrieved when the field hospital was bombed in.
As the visions swept over him he found that he had never felt so helpless before.
But then it hit him, that old story from the Great War – the one that his father had told him after watching it first-hand. The story of the woman who crossed No Man’s Land, making her way across the grounds and drawing fire from the Germans. She had got them all across safely, and as the lightning coursed across his fingertips and the fear sapped he realised that he might be able to do the same.
And suddenly he was running – faster than he ever had before. He could see where the bombs were about to fall, he could drag the other soldiers out of the way before they were hit; he found himself desperately grabbing the wounded and rushing them to safety, continually pushing harder and harder to go faster. And as he ran he caught sight of the beach, and realised what he had to do, and he was picking up the pace again, grabbing soldier after soldier and running them out to the beach where they could be left in the safety of the British trying to get them out. He didn’t care about nationality, everyone was getting saved today; there was no way that he was going to leave someone behind.
Eventually he had managed to get the rag-tag group of soldiers out, and stood alone again in the city, watching the Germans continue to advance. How many Nazis do you think you can take out by yourself, Jay? He couldn’t help but ask himself as the few Nazi soldiers who were left started to fire upon him. Do you really think that you can take out the Luftwaffe?
He didn’t know if he could.
He didn’t think that he could.
But he was going to try.
Without thinking he had sprinted forwards, hitting the opposition over the backs of their heads with their rifles to knock them out – but there was a larger number of them approaching than he realised, some to the left, some to the right. He slid under the oncoming hail of bullets and explosives and began to run to the left to take out that group; but suddenly an item just bouncing off of the ground caught his eye and the distinctive shape was all he could notice. He had tried to backpedal then, but had known it was too late – and had felt that too at the ringing in his ears, the blinding flash of the explosion, and the searing pain spreading across his body.
He had tried to force himself back onto his knees, but as soon as he did there was a bullet going through his shoulder, another going through his shin as he tried to stand, and then three tearing through his torso. He found himself toppling over, screaming at himself that he should be able to get up, that he had to, that he couldn’t let all of those stranded soldiers down…
He could see three figures not too far away, people that he had somehow missed – they were being lined up like it was an execution… He could hear the sobs of someone who had been trapped beneath the rubble of a fallen building, and sticking out from beneath a destroyed tank there was a hand, outstretched as if it was trying to reach him.
Everything seemed to fade into slow motion.
The German footfall seemed to get progressively slower, and the sound of gunfire and explosions became more muted than before.
Three gunshots crackled out from nearby, just audible against the white noise that was becoming all that he could hear, and the sobs from nearby stopped.
As everything faded to grey all he could do was look out at the outstretched hand and think I failed them.
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Following that the Speed Force went through other situations at a rapid pace; watching countless of his colleagues fall, failing to stop the Crime Syndicate again and again, being held captive and having his identity stolen by Hunter Zolomon for what felt like a lifetime. The Speed Force seemed to like to taunt him, constantly showing him images of people or places but continually keeping them away from him, powerless to do anything about the past that was now haunting him. And between the flashes of memories there was always Dunkirk, that was the one that it always went back to, leaving him to wallow in the feeling of fear and failure.
He had no idea of how long he was in that prison for – time, which had always been on his side, now seemed like a fleeting construct to him as the flashbacks went on and on. They always ended the same, with him on the ground, unable to move, with the sound of screams and gunfire and explosions from all around him. The Speed Force knew where to find him at his most helpless, and how to continue to create that feeling within him now-
But that changed when a strip of blue light rippled through the broken buildings in one of the versions of the vision and he was running towards it, the beam of blue becoming larger as he reached it and turning to red as he ran alongside it. He hadn’t even considered that he would one day be freed, but here the opportunity was, and he was picking up the pace until he was sprinting as fast as he physically could, cursing his age that was slowing him down…
But then he could see it, just in front of him, where the Speed Force ended and reality began. He sprinted out, knocking the figure standing in front of him out of the way – Savitar, that’s who it was, he realised as he blinked and tried to focus on the other speedster through the image of Dunkirk that seemed to be burned into his vision.
He had stood there then, different thoughts flitting through his brain like lighting, ones that still said you failed – but we’re here now – did you save all of them? – I saved those I could – was that enough? – I don’t know. But whatever the situation, I’m always going to try.
One part of him still felt like he was trapped back there, stuck amongst the rubble with foreign foes approaching, knowing that he had failed… But as he breathed in the cold night air, focussing on the ground beneath his feet and the Star Labs team who were walking out to meet him, the other side felt something entirely new.
Hope.