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Eobard came to awareness with severe chest and abdominal pain, which wasn’t ideal. However, he shouldn’t be in pain at all. Mainly because he’d just been erased, last he checked. He’d had a vague idea of probably being damned, then nothing, and now this.
He found himself at a loss. Nothing he or the Flash had changed should involve Eobard respawning like their world was a video game. And yet, here he was. He was breathing. He had a pulse. The Speed Force was humming in his bones.
He didn’t respawn with full health, though. No, his pulse was a hummingbird’s, and his breathing was harsh. Why? Because someone had shot him. The blood loss was enough to have him dazed, too.
Eobard was staring up at the entranceway ceiling of his home. He was flat on his back on wet stone tile. He groaned in frustration and pain, then forced himself to move. He dragged himself to a wall and sat up, leaning against it.
Looking down, his black sweater hid the wounds too well. He tried to take it off, but raising his left arm caused enough pain to white out his vision.
When that passed, he felt around. It was two shots and well-aimed ones. One bullet was close to the heart, and one was close to the liver. Neither was spurting blood, but his healing had already been hard at work. The pool of blood on the stone was worrying, though. For anyone else, without quick medical care, these wounds would be fatal.
He had no idea how he’d gotten shot in the first place. Eddie was the one who had shot himself in the chest. More than that, Eobard had been shot head-on. He knew to try to make himself a smaller target. Even if his speed had failed him, he should have tried to dodge.
The door to his house was wide open. He considered the odds. He’d made plenty of noise, and he didn’t see anyone lurking. The likeliest option was that they must have shot and left, fleeing before any cops drove by. Honestly, it was strange they hadn’t shot him in the head. The wounds he had would kill fairly quickly; they didn’t leave much time for suffering. Why not make sure he was truly dead?
They must not know I’m a speedster.
It was certainly a weird way to return to consciousness. As it was, he couldn’t sit here. He needed the well-stocked first-aid kit at least. Pressure bandages would help. But first, he needed to close that door. Best not to tempt fate.
He also badly needed to know what day it was—when he was.
***
He still had a first-aid kit in his master bathroom. What was odd was that it was smaller and contained children’s Band-Aids. But it still had pressure bandages, so he chose to ignore the abnormality.
For an instant, he considered asking Caitlin to help remove the bullets. But unlike anything she’d done for Barry, this would require more careful surgery. Eobard also couldn’t do it himself. He’d bleed too much. So, he’d leave the bullets where they were and be grateful he should never need an MRI.
Once he was no longer bleeding everywhere? He decided to give up caring and just yelled for anyone to come out. When nobody tried to kill him? He went to the kitchen. Helpfully, there were leftovers, and he ate all of them.
As he ate, he made use of his phone. The date was perplexing. It seemed he had gone back in time. It was early morning on November 14, 2014. That also wasn’t ideal, but it could be much worse.
He pulled up his security system’s camera footage. It was archaic security, frustratingly and strangely. Still, it didn’t take long for him to see an unknown man pretending to be a delivery driver. He kept his head low for the most part, but he wasn’t perfectly professional. During the shooting, his face was caught on camera. Eobard didn’t recognize him at all.
He was more uneasy about everything except the shooter. Eobard considered either running or driving to STAR Labs. But it was risky when he didn’t have enough information. So, he pulled up CCPN’s website—and then thought of a quicker gauge. He looked at Iris’s blog.
There was nothing on The Streak.
“No.” He didn’t even mean to say it aloud.
He searched “Barry Allen”, fearing an obituary. Instead, he got a Wikipedia page for a band. Eobard’s eyebrows rose.
Barry Allen, 26. That was correct. The rest was nonsense. He was the lead singer of a band called Disaster Area. It wasn’t exactly popular music, but it shouldn’t exist at all. They were even having a performance tonight at a local venue, opening for another band.
He searched for “Nora Allen”. She was alive and well. At least according to her real estate agent page.
It didn’t make any sense. He’d seen himself in the bathroom mirror. He still had Harrison Wells’ face.
There’s an idea. He looked himself up. He became more confused.
He hadn’t married Tess Morgan. He’d married Libby Chambers (Wells), who had died of a brain tumor. They had a daughter, Jesse, who was 19. Apparently, she’d graduated at 15 and was now at Central City College.
Eobard suddenly had an entire teenage girl to worry about. He wasn’t legally responsible for her. But Harrison Wells probably wouldn’t just kick her out of the nest.
God, does she live here?
He did find a bedroom that appeared to belong to a nerdy teenage girl. It had posters on the walls and a reddish-pink comforter on the bed. There was even a sweatshirt on the floor by a hamper. He quickly closed that door, wishing he could pretend it was still a bland guestroom.
He thought about the pool of blood in the entranceway and the trail of it leading to his bathroom. He should probably clean that up. He imagined there would be screaming if Jesse came home now.
At least he already knew how to get rid of blood stains. That was one tiny positive in this situation. You know, besides being alive.
Belatedly, he realized there was no wheelchair at the Wells’ residence. He wished he could blame his mental fog on the complete-death or near-death experiences. Instead, he was in shock. Honestly, Eobard should give himself an IV or a blood transfusion. The calories didn’t seem to be enough.
***
There were people at STAR Labs. He really should have expected that. As it was, sneaking into the med bay for everything he’d needed for an IV was easy enough. Then he just had to hide away from them.
In looking for that hiding place, he quickly learned there was no secret room at STAR Labs. There was no Gideon, at least not anywhere he knew to look for her. This was a major problem for many reasons.
One minor reason? He couldn’t have her run facial recognition on the man who shot him. He also clearly couldn’t contact Barry Allen to get secret CCPD help through Joe West. So, it would seem that Eobard would have to put a pin in that.
Instead, he took a laptop and hid in the server room. He returned to endless internet searches. This time, he also looked into what had been happening at STAR Labs. None of it was reassuring.
Barry Allen had been struck by lightning on the night of the particle accelerator explosion. There was no nine-month-long coma, however. He was also lucky to be alive, but unlucky to be struck by lightning, considering the fact that no one had died that night.
Why had no one died? Apparently, Harrison Wells piped the explosion underground. It mostly worked at keeping the deaths at zero. It was, however, a bizarre choice if you were trying to create the Flash. And yet, this hadn’t kept metahumans from existing, however, so there was still a chance that Barry was a speedster. As for the metas, there weren’t many known to society, not yet.
More importantly, the Flash didn’t exist yet, either. There was no data about him at STAR Labs. It was bizarre to be in a universe where Barry Allen didn’t immediately turn to heroics and vigilantism. Instead, he was working as an average CSI and doing gigs with his band on any weekends he could.
It didn’t make any sense. Somehow, he’d walked the lightning strike off and gone back to his normal life like nothing had changed. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe he wasn’t a speedster at all. (Eobard would ignore how many mixed emotions that idea caused.)
Then, besides there being no Flash, there was no evidence of the Reverse-Flash. There was no evidence of any speedsters at all. Which didn’t make sense, because Eobard clearly had a connection to the Speed Force.
That was another problem. He hadn’t been cocooned in the Speed Force when the erasure began. He shouldn’t still be alive, much less have his memories of a different timeline intact.
He knew about the Butterfly Effect. That was obvious and should go without saying. He was once a chronodynamics professor. He made himself into a time paradox. He was always somehow better at understanding time-travel than any of the Speed Force avatars he’d met.
He knew that a speedster time-traveling was likely to cause a time boom. That could explain the drastic changes to the past and present. The problem was, Eobard hadn’t caused the change. He shouldn’t remember.
So, he went through the process of elimination.
First: Eddie hadn’t died at all, and Eobard hadn’t been erased. All of that was some kind of nightmarish vision, and/or his memory wasn’t reliable.
That was possible, but it didn’t explain much, because he still hadn’t been able to time-travel on his own. He’d needed Barry for that. So, if Eobard hadn’t time-traveled, he still shouldn’t have memories of another timeline. Unless he’d forgotten the time-traveling, but the sheer amount of altered or lost memory that required made him shy away from this answer.
Second: He had been erased, but his soul continued to exist anyway. There was never any proof that erased souls had an afterlife, but it was possible. This was some kind of afterlife.
The issue with that? It just didn’t seem hellish enough to be Hell. It didn’t seem serene enough to be Heaven. There were a lot of other afterlives, yes, but he didn’t exactly believe it was any of them, either.
Third: His soul had continued to exist and had somehow ended up in another person’s body.
It wasn’t technically a reincarnation. He hadn’t been reborn. He was just in the body of Harrison Wells again. This seemed somewhat plausible. Problematically, he now had the question of who he’d replaced if that were true.
Had the mind been Harrison Wells’ or had it been another version of Eobard Thawne’s?
Also, honestly, he needed to come up with differentiating names before this got maddeningly confusing. He’d call this other Eobard “ET”. This universe’s Wells apparently went by Harry, so that was easy enough.
First and foremost: How would ET get stuck in the past if he didn’t kill Nora Allen? He hadn’t even killed Tess Morgan--and actually, she didn’t exist here. Harry worked with Randulf Morgan, who might be a male variant of her. It would make it seem like ET wasn’t involved.
Yet the particle accelerator explosion had happened years before it should have if Harry hadn’t been bodyjacked. But that was one of the only signs that maybe ET took over the life of Harry. But why would ET do that, if he had no reason to be stuck in the past? Maybe the difference in year of explosion was down to the time boom, too.
Eobard also knew of no universe where Harrison Wells was a speedster. It was possible, Eobard supposed, that with his soul, he’d brought along the Speed Force as well. That was strange, but not the weirdest thing he’d ever heard.
Then there was another major question. Why was his connection to the Negative Speed Force (NSF) so weak, even when his Speed Force connection was stronger than it had been at the point of erasure? There was seemingly no one else currently using the NSF. It wasn’t like the emotions that connected him so strongly to it had faded.
Her also had to confront the possibility that it wasn’t a timeline difference. It could be a universe difference. There were other Earths, and being a speedster allowed for the travel to parallel Earths. He just had no way to prove either option.
It certainly didn’t feel anything like the timelines he’d known. The more he read, the more everything here reminded him far too much of a cartoon made for children. Even the violent crime rates were reduced for various reasons. Even in Gotham! It was like some strange god had whitewashed everything to be more appealing to his morals.
It should be a positive that the present was less barbaric, but Eobard felt wrongfooted. Everything here was too many degrees different. Possibly the worst part of it all was that he didn’t have Gideon to help him understand what the past, present, or future of this universe was like. Since she wasn’t here, time-travel was also much more risky. He might know a lot about it, but he still had a human brain. Futuristic computing was the best method he’d found to reduce catastrophic errors. He could do it if he had to or if he had nothing to lose.
But he also didn’t have a reason to time-travel. For all intents and purposes, the future also wasn’t his future. He might not have stolen the life of ET. It was entirely possible that he bodyjacked Harry. There could be an ET still living in the future or one time-traveling around. At least there were no records of a current Reverse-Flash. At least, no records Eobard had found. That meant there was a lesser chance he’d need to kill ET, assuming Eobard hadn’t already.
All he knew with any certainty was that he maintained a connection to the Speed Force and the Negative Speed Force. He could feel that it was true. It was just everything else that was endlessly chaotic.
And yet, this world had no need of a Reverse-Flash because the Flash didn’t exist yet at all. It was all too familiar to the fifteen years Eobard had already spent waiting. He didn’t intend to wait another fifteen to get back to his own universe--or make this timeline or world his.
It would be so easy to become the Flash of this world. Eobard could have what he originally wanted. It was all too much like a childish fantasy. Barry could be a friend. Maybe they could even be heroic speedsters together.
It was too good to be true. Someone was trying to play him. He needed to figure out who. Maybe even what.
There were too many options when it came to fake dream lives. He couldn’t even be sure this was really happening. If his memories weren’t reliable, this could be a bizarre simulation. It seemed unlikely, yes, but only because he was fairly certain Eddie had killed himself. Eobard shouldn’t have had a body to attach Black Mercy to, and being erased from existence wasn’t his dream world. He wanted to assume his memories up until his erasure were accurate, but how would he know? There was no evidence left in the world.
He decided to treat it as if his soul had been shunted to a parallel universe, for now.
Regardless, he needed to write down everything that was most important to remember. It was entirely possible his memory of his life would fade. His whole identity might be subsumed by Harry Wells (if he were especially unlucky) or ET’s (if he were somewhat unlucky). But to begin with, he listed all the people who would be most likely to kill him, either as Wells or as the Flash.
It was also bizarre to think that Barry Allen didn’t know Eobard or the Reverse-Flash at all. That had to change. Fifteen years as a bogeyman was better than this. To be completely unknown? Eobard couldn’t stand it. Even if it might be the better option, he couldn’t stand it.
***
He wrote, and paced, and wrote. He tried to recall any contingencies for the implausible but possible potential of multiversal travel. Admittedly, in the past, he hadn’t been all that interested in it. Why would he be? He knew himself well enough that he’d probably fight with another version of him. He didn’t want to die by technical suicide. And that was just one of the more obvious risks.
One of the big annoyances was that he had no recollection of how he got here. He didn’t know how it was possible. Souls apparently existed, he knew that. Gods existed. If one wanted to take his at the last possible second and put it into another body? He could grasp that. He just hated that, once again, it only seemed like he had free-will. If some higher power stole him from one universe and shoved him into another, it was clearly done with purpose. Somebody wanted something from him. Rudely, they hadn’t even bothered to say what it was. He was left with no instructions and no clues or hints. It was if he was determined to be so predictable that, of course, he’d just do whatever it was.
Did they want the Reverse-Flash for what he was known for? Did they want Barry Allen or the Flash tormented or dead? Or was it completely unrelated, something as simple as them wanting Eobard’s futuristic knowledge to be used in the present?
He didn’t know. Frustratingly, this came with the knowledge that if he made the wrong choice, he might wind up smited and back to being dead. It was more of a stay of execution than anything, and he hated any kind of Sword of Damocles.
He kept going back to research as well. He put together parallel timelines, reverting to using pen and paper without Gideon’s cybersecurity. He learned a lot about Harry’s life, but not enough to believably act as him unless ET had already been playing the role for a long time. You know, long enough that Jesse Wells would be fooled.
He’d killed a lot of people. In one timeline, he’d apparently killed Cisco, who was as close as he’d gotten to having a son. But he didn’t remember ever killing blood relatives, even if they were blood-related to Wells. He’d killed Wells’ girlfriend, sure, but a daughter was a step further. Wasn’t it?
Jesse lived on campus, at least. She visited, but rarely. That was for the best when it came to her life expectancy.
He wasn’t sure why he kept thinking of her. Maybe because he’d purposefully never had children. Not as himself and not as Wells. The risk of creating another speedster was high. That was ignoring the fact that he was self-aware. Anyone as motivated by hate as he was shouldn’t have children.
Of course, he let children die every day. He’d tried to kill Barry as a child. But it was different to consider a Thawne child. So, maybe that was it. She might be ET’s if he arrived here early enough. Worse, she could have the potential to be a speedster.
At least there were no stories of a female-sized Streak in Iris’s blog. He had no idea what kind of hate would spawn from having his daughter as the Flash, but he didn’t want to know. For unknown reasons, the idea was deeply disturbing.
***
For reasons he also couldn’t completely explain, he bought tickets to Barry’s band’s latest performance. Eobard might prefer to use cameras for his stalking, but going in-person also gave far more information. He also didn’t seem to have any futuristic bugs lying around, so what other choice did he have? He needed information.
He went early enough he got a seat with a great view. He even had good sightlines to the exits and his back to a wall, too. As he waited, he watched the usual drunks and then a slow trickle of the target demographic. He also read more about the band, mostly because he kept waiting for some flaw in this world to tell him if it was real or fake.
The band’s genre tended to lean towards rock. The band had four members: they included two men and one woman. None of their names were familiar, so Eobard looked into them.
There was Mack Nathan, who’d grown up down the street from Barry, a skinny young Black man. He had a moustache; it wasn’t terrible. He appeared to be an accountant.
There was Warren Garfield, another Black man. He went for a short-trimmed beard, and he was both broader and shorter than his male bandmates. He actually worked for CCPD but not as a cop: it seemed he’d had a severe leg injury in high school.
Then there was Maria Flura, a brown-skinned Latina. She was an environmental scientist whose social media was loudly activist. Poison Ivy might like her.
Then, finally, the band filtered in. Eobard watched them set up, but his gaze was always drawn to Barry Allen. He seemed happy, easily joking around with his friends. It was strange to see a version of Barry who didn’t have the weight of tragedy on his shoulders. Eobard wondered if it would make this Barry as infuriating as the one Eobard had spent the longest fighting.
Not long after, he had to admit they weren’t bad. They were technically good with their instruments, and Barry’s voice had always been nice. It didn’t sound like the classic rock people always assumed Harrison Wells would enjoy due to his age. It was more modern, but all that did was cause Eobard faint nostalgia for the 21st-century music he’d listened to in his youth while reading about the Flash.
It was strange to realize that Barry was electric on a stage, easily mesmerizing the crowd. Eobard had noticed the sheer number of young women who were here. He’d realized he’d stood out, which meant he wasn’t too surprised when Barry made eye contact. He clearly did a double-take, but it didn’t impact his singing at all.
When the performance ended, Eobard considered quickly leaving. It was a ridiculous urge. So what if he’d been recognized. He knew Barry had been a fan of Harrison Wells, and that might still be true. If Barry came over and said hello, Eobard could gain more information if he asked the right questions.
Of course, at first, it seemed like Barry was focused on his bandmates. They all had to get away from the stage, making room for the next act. They’d probably stay for fans and to try to sell merch. Eobard didn’t tend to go to concerts, but he doubted they changed much over time.
Then everything became much weirder. Considering the day he’d had, he reconsidered the escape option. In setting up for the next band, there was accidental loud feedback. That wasn’t usually a major issue. Today? Today, one of the few men in the crowd screeched along with it--and turned into some kind of tentacle creature.
Well, a human-shaped tentacle creature, be it meta or alien. The light was low, and it was hard to see what exactly was going on. The clothes were definitely mostly shredded, though, which was just annoying. Eobard didn’t want to see as much as he was seeing.
The creature continued screeching, and the feedback continued because everyone scattered in a panic. That made sense, considering the creature was now flailing around and knocking people over. People tried to flee and mostly just fell over each other. Eobard stayed seated, watching blankly. Then someone started screaming in pain, saying they were burning, and ugh. Ugh. He looked for Barry and found him trying--at normal speed--to help people get out of the room. The creature lunged closer to where he was. Eobard might need the Flash alive and unharmed.
Eobard really had to do everything himself. He stood up and began vibrating, blurring himself. Then he ran at the creature, grabbing it by one larger appendage and then speeding it out the back exit.
In the alleyway, he threw it against the opposite wall. It hit with a wet splat. Then Eobard hissed at the feel of his hands. He had to rub burning, slimy goo onto his sweater. Honestly, first he’d had one ruined with bullet holes and now this.
“Are you insane?” he asked. “You have a weakness to certain frequencies of sound, and you went to a concert? Were you dropped on your head repeatedly as a child by your octopus parents?”
The creature just made sounds that sounded suspiciously like sobbing. Eobard hoped it was. This meta or alien clearly deserved to feel bad. Who went and just leaked bodily fluids everywhere in public?
“Dr. Wells?!”
There was Barry, perhaps finally deciding to be more helpful. Did he run at average human speed to get out the back exit? Eobard closed his eyes and counted to ten. He would not beat up civilian Barry Allen.
Slowly, he turned around. It was just Barry with the door shut behind him. Eobard dropped the vibration and tilted his head. Barry didn’t say anything else: he just stared with wide eyes.
Behind him, Eobard heard the creature blubbering and the wet sounds of it crawling and then limping away. He decided it could be someone else’s problem now. There was no point in beating it into the ground, either.
Finally, Barry found his voice again. “You’re like me.”
Eobard vibrated one of his hands, holding it up. “Do you mean this?”
Barry nodded repeatedly. “Yeah. Um. Wow. Why did you do that?”
“You’re asking me why I got rid of the biohazard that was in the middle of a crowd?”
Barry blinked and shook his head. “No, no, I mean, you’re a meta. You might get arrested. Why would you risk it?”
Eobard had no idea what to do with the knowledge that Barry Allen was probably not doing heroics because he feared arrest. Really? Really? It had to be more complicated. The Flash couldn’t be that much of a coward.
It wasn’t completely illogical, however. With no Flash, CCPD had to change even further. There was a Metahuman Task Force. Dr. Wells and a small team at STAR Labs, including Caitlin and Cisco, worked with the MTF. Over the MTF, however, was ARGUS. They provided the prison for any metahumans that were successfully caught. The DEO was probably involved as well. There was no helpful meta-vigilante to provide plausible deniability for the federal government. Then, without a meta hero, the overall opinion on metas was highly negative.
“I imagine most people will focus on the tentacle monster, not on the well-timed blur who kept it from harming more people,” Eobard said. “You saw me, yes. But who would believe you?”
Barry looked almost offended, but smartly didn’t say anything. Because, really, who would believe him? It wasn’t like he’d gotten pictures or video. He had no evidence. All he could prove was that Harrison Wells had bought a ticket, but that just meant he’d probably been in the audience.
“Of course, I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself,” Eobard said, because honey was better than vinegar. “After all, I’m not a criminal meta. All I did was help people. Also, you admitted to being the same as me. You created a bit of mutually assured destruction, you know?”
Barry shifted his weight, looking awkward. “I wasn’t going to say anything. You should get out of here, though. Somebody will have called the cops.”
Eobard smiled, even if it was probably too sharp. “Thank you. And Mr. Allen? I’d love to discuss your powers with you sometime. Call me.”