Archive of Our Own ^beta

“... well,” Barry says, “you could just show me.”

Eobard blinks. 

The realization that the Flash is asking to run with him has his inner ten year old crowing with delight. 

But -

“I suppose you could try,” Caitlin says, “your last checkup did show the … ‘speed force’ energy in your cells seemed to be stabilizing.”

Barry smiles. “So? What do you say?”

Hartley would like everyone to think that he’s completely disinterested, while Cisco openly wears his gleeful grin. 

“If my doctor says we can try, we can try.” He looks at his watch. “I had a meeting with Dr. Ishida in half an hour, but I doubt they will mind if we reschedule.”

Cisco whoops. “All right! We’re finally going to see the Flash and the Future Flash in action!” He jabs a finger at Eobard. “Are we still feeling ‘the Future Flash’? I forgot to ask.”

Eobard nods, more automatically than anything, the words ringing in his ears. 

---

And here’s the deeply annoying thing: it’s wonderful. 

Barry collides with the shipping crate twice before he gets the knack of phasing through objects, but even coaching him through failure is deeply satisfying. And to have it back, the rush of speed, the feeling as the speed force carried him through solid metal like it was nothing - it was right - it was how he should be -

Wonderful didn’t even begin to describe it.

Now - now they were running more for entertainment than training, and he found it hard to argue with more opportunities to run. 

But all good things...

He skids to a stop, finally putting his hands on his knees in clear view of the rest of the team. In the distance, he sees Barry turning around. He stands back up, putting his hands behind his head, still making a show of breathing raggedly.

“Hey,” Barry says, slowing to a stop beside him. “You need a break?”

He does not need a break. He does not want a break. He wants nothing more than to keep running - the rhythm of movement, the wind against him, the speed force coursing through him, full of power and connection, the feeling of wholeness he’s been deprived of for fifteen years on top of being trapped in this barbaric time - 

And to be running with the Flash - !

He grits his teeth and nods. No need to show everything he could do just yet.

Besides, he couldn’t run as fast or as far as he wanted, not now, as he recharged his powers slowly - so slowly - even with the sessions he’d kept hidden from the others. He’d be faster if he could charge all the time, but there was no easy way to keep that hidden from the others.

He looks over as Barry waves at Cisco, Caitlin, and Iris down at the end of the tarmac, Cisco already starting to jog in their direction. 

When he gets to them, he’s breathing nearly as hard as Eobard was pretending to. Eobard frowns slightly. Surely something as simple as exercise induced asthma would have already been diagnosed, even here in these barbaric times… no, what was he thinking, of course it wouldn’t be, because these times existed to make a mockery of the potential of anyone different. 

Every time had its ways to try; and this one was especially good at it.

“Are you alright?” Cisco asks.

Barry looks at Eobard, who nods. “Yeah,” he tells Cisco, “dude, are you alright?”

“Straight up F in gym, you know. Not all of us can be speedsters.” Cisco says, waving him off and handing over two of the high-calorie energy bars Caitlin had developed, and the team’s very own ‘speedster-ade’. 

“I’d like you to have Caitlin take a look at your lungs, Cisco.”

“What? This? No, no, this is fine. It’s always like this.”

He’s going to find out who Cisco’s primary care physician was before Caitlin and kill them. It will be unnecessary but deeply gratifying, and he can live with that. 

“Still,” he says with a smile, “we have to look after the health of everyone on this team, not just,” he adds, “the speedsters.”

If he’s right, Cisco will be more powerful than any speedster one day. But that doesn’t matter now.

“Alright,” Cisco allows, “but you,” he jabs a finger, “eat - Caitlin was saying your blood sugar was dropping.”

Eobard nods, and Cisco heads back to the tent.

Barry then sits down on the curb, pulling off his cowl. Eobard sits next to him, Barry tears open one of the energy bars and passes it over to him before tearing into his own, because he - this Barry Allen - is simply, easily, bafflingly kind.

“So,” Barry says, “that was really cool.”

He has to press his hands against the knees of his suit to keep them from vibrating, his inner ten year old flaps delightedly, safely out of view of his parents. 

He rubs his thumbs over the ridges on the knees of his suit. “I am … glad you thought so.”

“Yeah, of course!” Barry says. “It’s,” he waves a hand emphatically, “to - not be alone. You’re a really good teacher.”

Eobard adjusts his glasses. “I did get good teaching reviews as a professor.”

Barry laughs. “I’m sure I’d understand future-physics better if you taught it.” He sits back, contemplative. “It’s weird to think about the future that far out, you know? I mean, not for you, it’s your present, but -” he shrugs slightly, “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, knowing that the Flash is - going to be a hero for a long time.” He stares out along the tarmac. "I'm glad there's still a Flash in the future." Barry looks at him. "And I'm glad that it's you."

Eobard stares at him.

“C’mon,” Barry says, apparently done shattering Eobard’s reality. He stands up and holds out a hand. “Let’s go check in with the others, see if we should call it in or keep going.”

Eobard stares at Barry’s outstretched hand.

---

Eobard leans on his hands at the podium in the time vault. 

‘And I’m glad that it’s you.’

Eobard grits his teeth. “Gideon, show me the future.” 

“Of course, Professor Thawne.”

The paper, the headline - it’s all the same. 

It’s - less reassuring than it should be. 

The future has to be the same. The same enough - that there will be a Barry Allen fast enough to reset the timeline, to rip a hole in spacetime to let him go home. 

The same -

The same Barry Allen who was the Flash in the future.

He couldn’t be The Flash. Eobard Thawne would never be The Flash; The Flash in the future had taken that chance from him, sealed his destiny away, a prison he’s spent years trying to break free from. 

The Flash in the future…

… or a future?

He destroyed the Flash, and remade him. This Barry Allen - 

‘Nothing is forgiven. There will be a reckoning.’

- is not the same Barry Allen who had earned his hate. 

He’s known that for a while now, he realizes. Known since before he’d taken this Barry Allen’s - his Barry Allen’s - hand, on the tarmac this afternoon. Known, but had not put it into words until now. 

It irritates him; the belated realization. He should be faster than that. 

And if that’s true -

- of course the future is different, it was always going to be different. The particle accelerator had gone on in 2014, not 2020, and there had been no accident - no explosion, thanks to the efforts of his team. There was no Tess Morgan, no Nora Allen, Henry Allen in prison - these things and many others had created butterfly effects, as Cisco had so aptly pointed out. That he had recreated enough to preserve certain keystones of the future, such as the Flash’s disappearance, did not mean the whole future was the same. He had always known that.

But that the Flash could be different, different enough that he hadn’t earned his hate this time - that hadn’t occurred to him. Not before really meeting this Barry Allen. 

And if this Flash hadn’t earned his hate by now - then maybe he never would. 

Maybe in this new future, his destiny was free. 

He shakes his head slightly, running one hand through his hair. The plan, ever since he had been trapped here, had always been to restore the future - his future, his home. Barry Allen goes back and saves Nora Allen; he goes back to the future, newly restored to be his future. Win-win, from a certain point of view. 

From there, he could find a different way to cut himself free of the destiny the Flash - his future’s Flash - had trapped him in. Hopefully one that wouldn’t leave him stranded for fifteen years in barbaric times.

One that would let him finally defeat the Flash. 

Finally destroy him. 

He turns, hands gripping the podium tightly. That plan had never changed. Before he had revealed his real name, revealed that he was from the future, told the story of being the Flash in the future - he had had other plans to ensure that it happened; contingencies if the others discovered his identity on their own, contingencies if they didn’t.

And now, with the story he’d spun, he had also set himself up for an easy excuse to develop time travel, to return to the future, as well as a cover for anything the others were likely to discover about him. He’s rather proud of it. From there, it was only a matter of getting Barry to use time travel to go back in time to save his mother - and he did hope that wouldn’t take too much prompting to lead Barry, or one of the others, to come up with the idea, that would be tiresome. 

And no matter what, no matter the barriers he hadn’t anticipated, no matter how much he had come to love working with all of them - 

The endgame remained the same. He would go home, to his restored future. 

But if this future, this future he had created, could be better - if he could already be free?

If he could be the Flash?

It was a supposition, an enormous one, barely meriting being called a hypothesis. Fate had already proven to be tricky once, why would that change?

And to risk losing his home on such a guess? To risk fifteen years of work?

To gain what he’d always wanted, for much longer than fifteen years?

To go back to a future where he could be the Flash…

Where he could be a hero. Where he could be anything.

Where he could be free.

He had remade the Flash, what reason would his new Flash have to tie him to his old destiny? What right?

But what right had the original Flash had in the first place?

No. This Barry Allen would not. He would make sure of it. 

He would make him perfect. A Flash worthy of his youthful idolizing.

This Barry Allen would be a Flash who would not tie him to his old destiny.

He paces, thinking. If he were to keep the timeline in place, to gamble on this Flash, his Flash, being different, being better... 

That would mean no timeline reset. No giving Barry Allen the life he always wanted. And… 

Henry Allen is a problem. 

Barry is never going to stop looking for the truth about his mother's death - not until Henry Allen is out of prison. The questions he had been asking ever since he'd discovered his powers showed that.  Even more so, his questions since Eobard had revealed 'the truth', since he had spun the lie he had told the others, claimed that he had fought the Reverse Flash, and that he had saved Barry but couldn't save his mother. Barry was now determined to use Eobard's knowledge to learn about his mother's murder, the Reverse Flash, and how to find him.

It was one of his better works, inserting himself into those events as the hero rather than the villain: it kept suspicion off of him, and the motivation of defeating the mysterious Reverse Flash was driving Barry to get faster, much faster. 

He could push Barry even further if he confronted him as the Reverse Flash - let him see the ‘Man in Yellow’. But - he frowns, staring at his old suit in its alcove, until with a sharp gesture he makes the wall opaque again, hiding it away - it didn’t make sense to risk drawing attention to the red lightning of his powers and how it resembled that of the Reverse Flash, not now that everyone had seen him in action. And if he’s grown attached to his new suit, the one for the ‘Future Flash’, the one he and Cisco and Hartley had made together - well, that was all the more reason to work towards a future where wearing that suit - taking that identity - would be possible faster.

But the fact remains - the fact that will always get in the way of that possibility, that dream - Barry Allen is never going to stop until he finds his mother’s killer and gets justice for his father, and, inconveniently, Nora Allen’s killer is him. 

Confession is an option, one he already has in place as a safeguard in ‘Harrison Wells’s will. 

(The one he told himself was a punishment; a reminder to Barry of his failure, of his debt.)

Of course, that confession was ultimately false - the real Harrison Wells had been miles away the night of Nora Allen’s murder. But Harrison Wells was already dead, no harm mattered to him.

He’d been dead for centuries. They all had, he reminds himself.

But that confession was not an option that would preserve the story he’d spun, not one that - when he managed to leave - would keep Barry Allen from hunting him down into the future. 

To have ‘Harrison Wells’ confess, and still preserve his story to the others … he would have to come up with a new story that framed the necessity of a false confession from ‘Harrison Wells.’ A story that would convince Barry Allen to accept such a miscarrige of justice… No. 

No. He needs another scapegoat.

He needs to create a Reverse Flash.

He has unfortunately been rather limited by Cisco’s discovery and Caitlin’s sequencing of the blood samples left behind at the scene - yes, it had been sloppy of him, but there are many things he wishes he could undo that night - such that they now expected the Reverse Flash to be an alternate universe version of Barry Allen. But still, given that they also expect the Reverse Flash to have his body duplication technology, he has some flexibility within those limits. Some flexibility in making a nemesis for his Barry Allen.

He came back to destroy the Flash, and ended up having to create him. He became the Flash’s nemesis in the future, and now he has to create a nemesis for the Flash in the past. That was irony for you.

He has to create a Reverse Flash that Barry can catch and bring to justice, releasing his father. One that can end that story.

End the story where he is the villain. 

There are possibilities - possibilities he should consider. No matter what he chooses, he should… leave his options open. 

Leave himself the choices he can, after the choice most important to him - the choice to be a hero - had been taken from him. 

He could get it back. He could get back everything, everything that had been taken from him.

And if he could have that, a future where he could be a hero - 

He hadn’t lied to Cisco. He wanted to bring him to the future. Wanted to bring all of them. Take them out of this barbaric time that did not deserve them, and give them the greatest sandbox of science and acceptance and freedom they could dream of -

They all had futures here, yes. But if he stuck to his original plan and Barry Allen reset the timeline, these versions would be artifacts, soon to be lost, replaced by versions of themselves in the timeline where Nora Allen had never died. These versions, his versions - those he could take and leave the new timeline intact.

But if he was to go back after Barry reset the timeline, go back to his original future and find a new way to free himself from his destiny - Cisco could never understand the kind of things that were necessary for that, and he was too smart for Eobard to assume he could keep it from him forever. 

Cisco had been uncomfortable enough with even the necessary lies of omission to Barry that he had, subconsciously or not, raised Barry’s own suspicions, and that had forced Eobard’s hand. He was clearly still uncomfortable keeping the truth of the DNA results from Barry. He cannot ask Cisco to lie for him again , not without risking his plans. 

There had been a moment, just a moment, when he had asked Cisco if he could make out the faces in his reconstructed hologram of the crime scene, a moment where he had feared that Cisco might put it together, who was attacking, who was defending. A moment when he had thought there was a chance, a small chance, that he might have to kill him to preserve his plans. It had been. Upsetting. More so than he might have expected.

He wants to tell Cisco the truth, the real truth, for him to know who he is, what he is willing to do to fight destiny. He wants Cisco to continue to care about him, to make jokes and watch old movies with him, maybe even hug him again, once in a while. 

He can’t have both.

He loves Cisco, more than Cisco’s ungrateful parents who can’t see the brilliant gem that is their son, certainly more than his own parents had ever even come close to having loved him, and he cannot ask Cisco to lie for him again. And if he can’t understand something as small as the necessity of that lie -  

No, for Cisco to understand what was necessary to free Eobard from his destiny, he would have to live through the kind of devastation Eobard had - and, of all the things he wanted for Cisco, he did not want that. 

(He wants Cisco to be happy. He wants the real truth to be that he had gotten to be the hero all along. He never gets what he wants. Not without a fight.)

Caitlin and Ronnie, this Caitlin and this Ronnie - they would not understand either. Hartley, perhaps, could understand the necessary greys between justice and vengeance, but the way he reacted when the particle accelerator had put others at risk - no. He’d pushed Hartley as far as he could. The truth of the Reverse Flash was too much to expect them to accept.  

But if he was going to get to be the hero… that would be different. That they had already accepted, and if there were discrepancies with his story - well, the timeline had changed when he’d come back, hadn’t it? He could work around that. But to get to be the hero - if he was right, if he was right - he would have to preserve this new timeline. And to preserve this timeline? 

There would be no reset. His Cisco, Hartley, Caitlin, Ronnie - they would be needed in this timeline, to keep a new future. Even though he had made them who they were now; even though they were creations of his future, his plan now, they are his, his creations, he made them, he should get to keep them... 

If he could take them he couldn’t keep them, and if he could keep them he couldn’t take them.

Fate was always, always, always tricky. 

He would have to be trickier. 

But to be the Flash, to keep his new family? To take back more than what had been taken from him?

For that, he could be trickier than fate.