After the two Barries reached their agreement, the rest moved quickly.
The other Barry dissolved into a streak of gold and went invisible somewhere above the street, watching from a height as this universe's Barry and Henry guided Nora through the airport. Nora was skeptical of everything Henry told her — every explanation landed slightly sideways against what she remembered — but the skepticism only sharpened her determination to get to Central City and see it for herself. And despite all of it, despite the wrongness humming at the edges of every familiar thing, her instincts kept returning to the same conclusion: these are my husband and my son. Whatever else was true, they would not hurt her.
Jude watched the three of them board the plane Bruce had arranged — efficient, comfortable, handled with the quiet thoroughness of someone who had never in his life needed to worry about logistics — and felt the particular satisfaction of a complicated problem that had somehow resolved itself without anyone ending up in the hospital.
He turned to the other Barry, who was still watching the plane climb.
"What about you? Anything else you need to handle while you're here?"
Barry shook his head slowly, like a man surfacing from a long thought. "No. Honestly — there are people waiting on me. Cisco and Caitlin can't babysit Central City indefinitely. There are still active metas." He paused. "I should get back."
Still the Flash, Jude thought. Even when he's standing in another universe next to his mother's plane, he's already thinking about going back to work.
He put a hand on Barry's shoulder. "Can you find this universe again on your own?"
"Probably not easily." Barry's tone was honest, if slightly sheepish. "Your universe is a long way from mine. I'm not sure I could retrace the route without a reference point. Speaking of which—" he tilted his head "—how exactly did you use my Speed Force to get home? I don't remember lending it to you."
"Don't worry about that."
"I'm a little worried about it."
"Barry." Jude kept his voice pleasant. "I can find your universe. When you need to visit, I'll bring you through. You don't need the coordinates."
"You can locate it that precisely?" Barry exhaled. "Okay. That's — okay. Good. I was going to offer to stay a few days to calibrate the position on the Speed Force spacetime map, but if you've already got it—"
"I've got it. And Barry?" Jude looked at him steadily. "Don't go trying to remember the route yourself. It's better that you don't."
Barry opened his mouth, presumably to ask a follow-up question about that.
Swish.
The follow-up question went unasked, because Barry was gone. In his place was a brief displacement of air and the faint smell of ozone, which faded after a moment.
Jude stood on the pavement and looked at the empty space where a man had been standing.
"I hope everyone's alright over there," he said to nobody in particular.
Then he put his hands in his pockets and went for a walk.
He didn't usually wander. Wandering was a luxury that assumed you had somewhere comfortable to wander back to, and most of his time in Gotham had involved either having nowhere to be or having somewhere to be very urgently. The middle ground — an aimless afternoon, no missions, no immediate fires — was novelty enough that he wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
He ended up at the GCPD without particularly meaning to.
Commissioner Gordon looked better than he had in months. The particular grey exhaustion of the previous year had lifted from his face, replaced by something that wasn't quite contentment but was at least functional. The files on his desk were still stacked in geological formations. He took one look at Jude in his doorway and had him physically redirected to the pavement outside within thirty seconds.
"Out. Don't come in here. Things are finally settling down and I am not going to tempt fate."
Jude accepted this with dignity and walked to the DA's office instead.
Harvey Dent did not look up from his desk.
He was in one of his deep-work states — the kind where the external world existed primarily as ambient interference. Jude stood in his office doorway for several minutes and conducted what was, functionally, a one-sided conversation. Harvey's contributions were: "mm," "yeah," "uh-huh," and one "hm" that carried the faint suggestion he might have been listening to a different conversation entirely.
I made snacks for both of you, Jude thought, looking at the unopened container on the corner of Harvey's desk. Ungrateful. Both of you.
He did the math on the ingredients walking out. The calculation did not improve his mood.
He went to find Bruce.
Alfred answered the door with the apologetic warmth of a man who had spent decades delivering mild disappointments with maximum grace.
"Master Wayne has gone to the cemetery," he said. "He finally had a free afternoon, so he moved the graves of Master Thomas and Mrs. Martha there — and planted two trees himself, in the grove by the woods." A small pause. "He seemed to feel it was important to do the planting personally."
"I'll go," Jude said, leaving the container of snacks on the entry table. Alfred accepted them with a slight bow that managed to convey both gratitude and the gentle observation that he'd noticed Jude had not brought them for himself.
The sapling grove had grown.
That was the first thing that struck him. The last time he'd been here — when he and the children had brought the first few trees, when the cemetery had been recently emptied of its more dangerous inhabitants — there had been perhaps a dozen saplings, small and uncertain and newly planted. Now the grove ran for a respectable stretch alongside the cemetery wall, the trees tall enough to offer actual shade, their canopies just beginning to suggest the eventual density of a real wood.
The cemetery had apparently hired groundskeepers specifically for the grove. Someone had considered folding it into the formal cemetery grounds, but there'd been enough objection that the plan was shelved. Let the trees grow. Let them become something.
Bruce was standing among the newer saplings, still, in the way he got when he was somewhere between mourning and composure — not grief exactly, but the quiet aftermath of it. His expression, from a distance, was calm. That was something. A year ago it would have been carved stone.
"The cemetery had plans to expand into this area."
The voice came from beside Jude — a man who hadn't been there a moment ago, or who had been there quietly enough that Jude hadn't registered him. He was tall. Considerably tall. Built in a way that suggested either a very dedicated training programme or a genetics situation that most people would consider unfair. He was watching the grove with an expression of uncomplicated warmth that seemed, in Gotham, slightly incongruous.
"Most people objected," the man continued. "They said: let them grow as they are. Landscape trees. Frame them in, let them become part of the place naturally."
"Sounds like the right call," Jude said.
"I think so too." The man nodded toward the densest part of the grove. "There are a few hundred trees here now. Growing well. People come to see the tree they planted — watch it getting bigger." A small smile. "It helps, apparently."
Jude looked over at Bruce. "His expression is calm, at least. That's progress. He used to stand here like he was personally apologising to the universe."
"I heard there was someone who started all this," the man said. "Brought children here first, when the area was still — considerably less peaceful." He glanced sideways at Jude with mild curiosity. "Apparently there were several hundred gangsters present at the time. I've always admired that."
Jude developed a sudden interest in examining a nearby sapling.
"Plenty of people plant trees," he said. "You don't need to track down the first one. The point is the trees." He cleared his throat. "How many have you planted?"
"A dozen or so. I've come a few times."
Jude extended his hand. "Jude. I'm from Gotham."
The man shook it. His grip was — notable. The kind of handshake that suggested someone had spent considerable time consciously calibrating how hard not to grip.
"Clark," the man said, with an easy smile.