The Real Past

Barry runs fast.

He feels his body shatter the sound barrier and carry on, and gain even more momentum.

His powerful body continues to evolve after being pushed through the physical limits of the universe.

Channeling the power of his origin, he starts sensing the power of space-time around him. His vision starts shifting, and soon he finds himself inside the space-time tunnel, moving faster than anything.

His eyes see glimpses of the past, present, and future as he continues to run. As he continues to run, he sees a black specter moving beside him. He turns his head to look at the specter as the specter looks back at him.

The specter then bows its head, as if acknowledging his presence, and then floats away.

'Was that a Time Wraith? Yes, it was,' Barry thinks. He is also not surprised to see the Time Wraith not attack him as its master. The Time Wraiths were created by the Speed Force to keep speedsters in check.

But since he is the Speed Force itself, he can do whatever the fuck he wants with time and space. The more Barry gets in tune with his other nature, the more he realizes that his human self doesn't have to make so many compromises.

He is the master of space and time, and he can make the active decision to choose a future for others.

If this were done by anyone else, it would be a huge problem. But Barry is a living god, a being that transcends entire multiverses. He cannot be held accountable by anyone.

But to not become a being that transcends reasoning, he will have to hold on to his humanity a little bit.

As he runs through the space-time tunnel, Barry locks onto the place, time, universe, and the exact location from where he disappeared from the future, and with just a thought, Barry breaks the universe's barrier and arrives back in his original time.

Barry stops and looks around. It's still a few days away from Christmas. There are lights everywhere, and people walking around with smiles on their faces.

Nothing seems to have changed.

But to confirm, he quickly runs to S.T.A.R. Labs and sees Caitlin, Cisco, and even Dr. Wells busy with their usual stuff.

He then turns to Joe's house to check on Joe and finds him there, looking through some of his pending cases.

And last but not least, he runs to Iris and sees that she is hanging out with Eddie.

'Everything seems to be fine, for now...' Barry thinks and returns to his apartment.

He then takes off his clothes and takes a shower, but during the whole time in the shower, he can't get something off his mind.

Barry walks out of the shower, already all dried up, as he uses super speed to dry himself. He lies down on his bed and goes through his thoughts once again in his mind.

'Wasn't Ares a little too strong? If I were not there, how would Diana have survived?' Barry questions. He couldn't think of any possible way in which Diana could have defeated Ares. He was just too strong, too overwhelming, and too experienced for Diana to handle.

'Maybe I can do this,' Barry thinks, and enters the speed force. Surrounded by a storm of lightning, Barry calls for his other self.

His old form materializes before him.

"Can I look into a timeline and what would happen in it if I weren't involved?" Barry asks.

"We can do anything, Barry. When you are here, just think of it, and it is possible," his former self says and disappears.

"Okay, I just need to think of the timeline, and I should be able to see it," Barry murmurs and begins thinking about the timeline he entered and what would have happened if he hadn't been there.

And just like the speed force said, Barry materializes in the past again, but this time, he is just in an astral form, looking at Diana fight against a bunch of German soldiers.

The battle is much harder-fought as Diana has to do a lot more of the heavy lifting with no Barry present to save the innocent. Barry saw how his absence caused a few civilian deaths from the flying debris and bullets.

Diana manages to save the village with a few scratches on her skin, which heal quickly.

Barry then fast forwards the time and watches everything from Diana and Steve taking shelter in the village, to them making love, then going to the German high command, failing to save the villages as they get bombed by the gas bombs.

Diana then goes on to fight and kill Ludendorff, only to be disappointed to see that the war didn't stop. Her fight with Steve leads to him going on his own to stop the gas bombs from leaving the airbase, and then Diana finds out that the real Ares is none other than Sir Patrick, Steve's boss.

Diana then goes on to fight Ares alone. Steve sacrifices himself by taking control of the cargo plane filled with gas bombs and crashing it into the ground.

Seeing this, Diana bursts into anger and channels her divine energy to fight back against Ares.

Barry watches all this happen and thinks that Steve's death must have led to Diana unlocking her full potential, but what he sees next shocks him to the core.

Just when he thought Diana was going to win, he saw Ares laugh at her face and tell her that he was just playing.

Ares then proceeds to power up and brutalize Diana, just like he did to her inside that forest.

He beat Diana to a bloody pulp and then killed her.

'What the fuck?' are the only words that came out of Barry's mouth when he saw this.