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elrhiarhodanTitle: A Knotted Cord Untying – Part Two of Two
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elrhiarhodan
Fandom: The Flash (2014) (fusion with "Ed")
Rating: PG-13 (for language, mild innuendo)
Characters/Pairings: Earth-1 Harrison Wells (Original Harrison Wells), Earth-1 Tess Morgan, Earth-2 Harrison Wells, Joe West, Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow, misuse of various characters from the television series, "Ed"; Harrison Wells/Tess Morgan
Spoilers: 1.17 (Tricksters), All of Season 2, especially 2.09 (Running to a Stand Still), 2.10 (Potential Energy)
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~11,000
Beta Credit:theatregirl7299
Summary: Time is not a looped ball of string. Time is not a straight line. Time might be a tangled knot, unless time is simply an illusion.
Or, what happens when Harrison Wells finds a copy his biography at the annual Stuckeyville Library Book Sale.
See end for additional (and spoilery) notes.
__________________
Harry muttered to himself as he wrote and erased yet another set of calculations. It was too quiet, but whatever music he played annoyed him. He found himself wishing for company – Snow or Ramon or Barry. He'd never admit it, but they impressed the hell out of him. It wasn't just their individual intelligence – which was stunning – it was how they worked together. They were a perfect team, balancing and supporting and helping each other in complete harmony.
He envied them. In his professional career, the only person who'd come close to that was Tess. Even though her brilliance outshone him by orders of magnitude, she anchored him; she made him better, wiser, gentler. They'd built S.T.A.R. Labs together and while he could never, ever, ever regret Jesse, he regretted Tess' decision to focus on motherhood. Maybe if she'd continued working at the lab, she'd still be alive.
No, no – that line of thinking was flawed, a fatal loop.
He tried to focus on the equations on the board, but it was impossible. He'd been at it for hours, days, and he needed a break. Maybe he'd head into the Cortex and taunt Cisco. That was always fun. The kid had finally stopped flinching every time they were in close physical proximity and was learning to give as good as he got.
Pity that he couldn't say the same for Barry. Despite the fact that Barry Allen didn't kill him on sight, had unthinkingly saved him from his foster-father's bullets, and generally seemed to accept his guidance, the young man could rarely meet his eyes. Barry reminded him of a badly beaten dog – one that wanted to trust, but was too broken to get past the fear.
Harry told himself that it wasn't his problem, what had happened here wasn't his fault or his job to fix, but he couldn't help but see the other man's pain, understand how the losses mounted. When Tess died, he had wanted to retreat from everything, shut the door on the world. But he had Jesse, his child, and she needed him. That made all the difference. He could be a bastard to the rest of the world, but he was a father who loved his daughter more than life itself.
Thinking about Jesse brought all the rage he'd been barely keeping under control back to a rolling boil. And rage was dangerous. Better to be cold and calculating and in control.
Which brought him back to the original problem. He needed a distraction. If he couldn't torment the gang in the Cortex, maybe he could find that coward, Jay, and pound his face into a bloody pulp.
Harry capped his marker and tossed it on the desk, ignoring the slight clatter as it rolled onto the floor. He was already out the door.
From the outer corridor, he could hear Joe West's voice. They'd come to something of a detente after Zoom nearly broke Barry and Cisco broke the news about Jesse. West understood his terror and his need, and while he clearly still hated him because of that damned imposter, he was a lot less overtly hostile these days. The covert hostility was still there, but Harry didn't have the feeling that Detective West was still two heartbeats from pumping a couple of bullets in him.
In addition to Joe, he could hear Cisco and Barry, but there was another voice. Harry listened and tried to identify it. Definitely male, curious and a bit agitated – middle aged, from middle America. Pity he couldn't hear the actual words.
Harry debated by-passing the Cortex and having to greet the stranger, but he was curious. Indulging his curiosity might be just he needed – a chance to get out of his head for a little while. Besides, no one said he had to be nice to the man.
A small, quiet voice – an echo of the man he'd once been, before fame and money and tragedy hardened all his edges – reminded him that there was nothing wrong with being nice. Harry just ignored it.
He approached the entrance to the Cortex – close enough to hear the actual conversation now, but was careful to stay out of the line of sight.
"So, time is slowly unknotting." That was from one the strangers. "What else is going to change?"
Barry replied, "That's impossible to predict. Thawne – the … time-traveler … was adamant that it was impossible to undo a catastrophe. Problems would manifest in other ways."
"Except he was a liar and a murderer and a master manipulator. Who's to say that he wasn't telling you what he wanted you to hear. To get him to do what he wanted." Joe added.
Why was Barry telling the stranger about Thawne? Cautious as well as curious, Harry continued to listen.
"That's possible. But I think he was telling the truth – or at least a version of it. Einstein believed that time is an illusion..." Barry's voice trailed off.
The stranger finished that thought, "The separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one. Or maybe it's all just entropy."
Harry was getting bored listening. Time, illusion or not, was not his friend. He banged on the wall to announce his entrance before entering the Cortex.
Four faces looked up and to his shock, all of them were familiar. Ramon, Joe West, Barry and a face he saw in the mirror every morning. "What the hell is going on here?"
"I thought you said that the man who killed me was wiped out of existence."
Harry and this … doppelganger … spoke simultaneously. Then the man got out of his chair and lunged for him, fists clenched. Harry felt a surge of pure joy – it looked like he was going to get the fight he wanted after all.
Except that this time, Barry didn't wait for anyone to start a fistfight. He zipped between him and this other him, and Harry found himself pinned against the wall. "Harry, no."
"I wasn't the one about to throw the first punch."
"But you would have enjoyed hitting back way too much."
He had to laugh. "True." Barry stepped back and Harry held up his hands. The joy of incipient violence was replace by another sort of joy – that of a scientist seeing a theory proven true. His face almost ached as muscles stretched into a broad smile.
Harry quickly noted the differences in this other him – he was a lot softer around the edges. A runner's body, but slightly gone to seed. Hair a touch more gray at the temples – and quite a bit longer than his own. Eyes were the same blue, but the glasses were frameless. And he was wearing colors – an ancient gray sweater with patches on the elbows, a blue shirt and well-faded jeans. Clothes he'd never consider putting on his body. He let his smile grow broader and said, "Hello, me."
"He's not you, Harry." Cisco said with a note of snide triumph. "This is the real Harrison Wells. The one that should have built S.T.A.R. Labs."
"Ah – that's why you were talking about time unknotting itself." At everyone's startled glance, he added, "I was listening for a bit."
His un-murdered counterpart said, "So, you understand what's going on?"
"Very much so. Because Thawne was unmade, you were never killed. Therefore, you're alive. Makes sense to me."
"But if you're not this time-traveling body snatcher, who are you?"
Harry turned to the rest of the room. "I guess you didn't bother to explain about the singularity and the portals and the multi-verse, did you."
Barry shrugged. "There are only so many impossible things you can expect someone to accept in a single day."
"Huh?"
"They don't have Alice in Wonderland on Earth-2?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Earth-2? What do you mean? Is there another Earth?" This other Wells didn't sound distressed at all. Eager, excited, and Harry knew that feeling all too well. If he wasn't so jaded and bitter and worried, he might share this man's joy.
Cisco continued playing his role as the inconvenient exposition monkey. "We have a wormhole in the basement that leads to another Earth. This dick decided to come for a visit."
"Yes, Cisco – I just decided I wanted a change of scenery. I thought that leaving my perfectly operating and fully staffed laboratory and coming to this shit hole was the ideal choice for a vacation."
"You have a wormhole in the basement? Is that an ordinary thing here? Does everyone in this place have one?" The other version of him now had a touch of hysteria in his voice.
"No, not really." Harry was starting to get bored with this conversation. "Look, I'm sorry your life got interrupted, but we have things to do here, important things. Maybe you can come back for the full tour on another day."
"Harry, you know you're not in charge here."
"Ramon, shut the fuck … " The clatter of footsteps interrupted him. And the woman walking into the Cortex stole his breath. And then his sanity.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Tess was feeling a little off balance. No, a lot off balance. Over the past few months, since Harrison found that terrible book, she'd watch him slowly start to disintegrate. It wasn't like the time when he'd faced academic disgrace, when accusations of incompetence and plagiarism and falsifying research had tanked his career. She knew that those accusations weren't true, that her husband was the victim of a vendetta by small-minded people too scared of what Harrison was trying to create.
She had supported his decision not to fight the review board, to retreat from academics and build another life. Maybe if they hadn't settled back in her hometown, she might never have been so content, so happy with a life she'd never planned on.
But then Harrison found that damn biography and he became consumed by thoughts of finding the imposter. She tried to help, but there seemed to be nothing about this other Harrison Wells on the Internet, nothing that seemed credible. The name wasn't common, but it wasn't unique either. She'd found reports of a confession to a lurid murder by a Harrison Wells but other than that, there were no photos, no news articles, none of the scientific papers that had been mentioned in the book.
What was even stranger was that the book itself really didn't seem to exist. It had a Library of Congress catalogue number and an International Standard Book Number, but when they looked those up, the reports said "number not assigned."
She had tried to convince Harrison that it was just some incredible hoax, but he wouldn't believe her. He was adamant that this imposter was real – he knew too much about him, about S.T.A.R. Labs, about theories and ideas he'd never published. It couldn't be a hoax.
Tess had read the book and she had to agree. There was just too many of her husband's secret dreams contained in those pages.
When it got too much to bear, she told Harrison, "I think the only way to solve this mystery is to go to Central City – where this imposter is supposed to be. Maybe we can confront him?"
Harrison liked the idea, but he had ideas of his own. "If he's me – doesn't he have my social security number? Is he really an identity thief? Or is this something more?"
She wasn't happy with the idea of confronting a total stranger and exposing him as a fraud, and suggested an alternative. "Maybe we should go to the police first? Doesn't it seem strange that someone with such an extensive biography – six hundred pages worth – doesn't have a single news article written about him?"
"Yes, it does. You're right, let's go to the police. Maybe they already know he's an imposter."
The trip had to wait for a few months. Harrison couldn't just take off for a few days, but with the decision to go hunt down the imposter, her husband seemed to calm down a bit. He was still agitated, but nothing that a glass of good red wine with dinner couldn't settle. Thanksgiving and Christmas passed in a blur. Although her parents were long gone, she still had cousins scattered around the Stuckeyville area and they'd find it very strange if she and Harrison decamped to points unspecified during the holidays.
But mid-winter break came at last, a time when the two of them would usually go out of town for a few days. She'd mentioned heading to Chicago to a few of her friends, a destination that didn't set the small town grapevine abuzz.
The drive to Central City took a day and a half. They'd stopped overnight in St. Louis and reached the small metropolis a little before five in the afternoon. The plan was to go to the police and make some polite inquiries. They hadn't expected to be greeted with guns drawn and whispers of "dead man walking."
At least the nice detective seemed inclined to believe them. But then things got weird. Weirder than a book written about a version of her husband than never existed. They were taken to a place that looked far too much like the building Harrison had sketched out all those years ago, except it was almost ruined. But not abandoned.
The people inside were strange. Smart, but strange. The story of a murderous time traveler seemed the height of insanity, but the pieces began to make sense.
Time was untangling.
It hurt her head to realize that maybe she and Harrison had died coming home from that trip to the beach, that the last fifteen years hadn't really ever happened. That Einstein and Feynman were right, that time was an illusion. She certainly understood the theory behind it, but it was so personal that it couldn't be just a theory.
After they had looked at the empty corpse bag, Tess turned to the young doctor who'd provided such helpful information. "Do you think you could show me to a ladies room, or someplace quiet for a few minutes."
Harrison looked at her with concern. "Tess, are you all right?"
"Just need a few moments, love. I'll be fine." She kissed Harrison and he wrapped his arms around her. Suddenly, for the first time in months, it felt like she had her husband back.
"Come with me." The woman led her into a small, private medical bay. "Would you like something cold to drink? A cup of tea? Coffee? A snack?"
Tess recognized what the offer was – a delaying mechanism. "Some water will be fine, Dr. Snow."
"Call me Caitlin, please."
"Thank you, Caitlin."
The woman – little more than a girl, to her middle-aged eyes – came back with the promised bottle of water. She seemed very sad, very wary and Tess had to ask, "What did he do to you?"
"Who?"
She gave the girl a look.
Caitlin smiled sadly. "The particle accelerator accident that Thawne engineered transformed the man who became my husband. A year later, he died saving this city from another disaster that Thawne created. But it's more than that …" Caitlin shook her head. "He broke the trust of everyone here. Me, Cisco, Barry. He was brilliant and charismatic, but there was a kindness, too. He encouraged us to be better people and we loved him, but it was all a lie. He was evil, a murderer, like something out of a storybook, something that shouldn't have been real. But he was."
Tess felt her heart break. "You poor child. All of you. But why stay here? What are you doing? Are you still cleaning up this man's messes?"
"In a way. When Thawne died, he was trying to return to the future. It opened a singularity – a rift that would swallow the universe. That's how Ronnie died, helping close it. But there were residual … problems."
"Wormholes? Small ones scattered around the city?"
Caitlin looked startled.
"I am – or I was – a physicist, too, my dear. It all makes sense. Apparently you had a major quantum event here, and even though you were able to close it, the material fabric of the universe was damaged. But there's something else that you're not telling me, isn't there?"
Caitlin wouldn't look at her, but Tess wasn't going to be put off. "My dear? What other impossible thing am I going to have to believe in today?"
"One of those wormholes is a portal to another Earth. There's another version of your husband here."
"Ah. And is there another version of me here, too?"
Caitlin shook her head. "I don't even know if this Dr. Wells is married – although he does have a daughter."
The girl clamped her mouth shut but this time, Tess didn't continue to pry. "I think I need to rejoin my husband." She wondered if she should ask for an introduction to this alternate version of Harrison and decided against it. Things were getting far too confusing.
But it seemed that she was going to meet the man anyway. She followed Caitlin back to the lab's control center and found both her husband and this other doppelganger. And from the look on Harrison's double's face, it seemed like he knew her, too.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
"Tess." Struck through the heart, Harry uttered that single, perfect syllable and fell to his knees, utterly broken.
When he crossed over from his world, he'd been prepared to find his counterpart, although he'd been surprised to discover just how closely the lives had mirrored each other. But the Earth-1's version of Harrison Wells was dead and he hadn't cared that the man was really a time traveling body snatcher, except to the extent that the son of a bitch's legacy of murder and mistrust was interfering with his own needs.
Still, he should have expected this when he'd first laid eyes on his not-so-dead and badly dressed Earth-1 counterpart. If Thawne's unmaking resulted in Harrison Wells' un-dying, then of course his wife would not have died, either. Maybe if he'd paid more attention to what the team tried to tell him, instead of brushing them off in his urgency to recruit them for the fight against Zoom, he might have been better prepared for this moment.
She – Tess – looked at him with sad eyes, but there was no love there, nothing but curiosity and maybe a touch of pity. She didn't approach him; instead, she went to her husband and let him wrap his arms around her.
The urge to do violence to his counterpart was sickening and he closed his eyes against the rage that was turning his world to red. Not even the drive to get Jesse back was this bad.
Then peace came - a hand on his head, his shoulder, his cheek. Harry opened his eyes and found Tess kneeling before him.
"We were the same?"
He nodded, his mouth too dry for words.
"I'm so sorry. So very sorry."
He couldn't bear the sympathy in her eyes, but he couldn't look away and his brain catalogued the changes that time had wrought. This Tess had settled comfortably into healthy middle age – her once blonde hair now streaked with gray; her laugh lines had deepened, and there was a touch of fullness around her chin. But she was still beautiful, still the woman who had taken his heart and nurtured his soul. The only person who had the power to make him a better man.
No. She was not. She was not his Tess. His Tess had died of a disease beyond the reach and skill of any doctor. His Tess was broken and gone and no interference in time could bring her back. Breath by breath, Harry rebuilt the stone walls that guarded his heart
"Harrison?" Tess smiled gently. "Are you all right?"
He got to his feet and some long-forgotten lessons in gallant behavior compelled his to offer this woman a hand. She took it and squeezed it briefly before letting go. Harry ached as Tess stood before him, a memory of an impossible dream. All he could say was, "Call me Harry."
Her smile broadened. "That a difference. My husband hates when people call him that."
In truth, he did too – but here, on this Earth, it seemed to work better for everyone. "You need to go home – wherever that is. Both of you." He couldn't be bothered to smooth out the urgency in his tone.
The other him asked – his tone half-serious, half-joking, "Why? Will some cataclysmic event happen because we're both in the same room?"
He snapped, "No, don't be stupid. It doesn't work like that. We are not the same people."
Tess, though, smiled. "You might be from an alternate world, but you really are not so different from my husband. He, too, has trouble tolerating foolishness."
"Listen to me, you have to go home, forget about what you've learned, forget about us. Go live your lives like you were supposed to. This is a dangerous place and the longer you stay here, the greater the chance that you'll get hurt. Or worse." He flicked his gaze over to Tess' husband. "Both of you." He didn't have to close his eyes to see his alternate ripped apart by Zoom, to see Tess equally destroyed. He was too close to caring, and as soon as that happened, these innocents would die.
Tess and Harrison looked to the others in the room for verification. Harry was gratified to see that everyone nodded.
Harrison asked, "Can you at least tell us why?"
"No, I can't. And even though you have no reason to trust me, you have to." Desperate, he added a word he rarely used, "Please."
Barry came forward and added his own plea of urgency. "Harry's right – there are things happening here that could put you both in terrible danger. You need to go home as soon as possible. Go back to your lives and forget about this."
Harry ached to know the details of the lives that that Thawne had interrupted, but they'd only be a distraction - something he could ill-afford.
Joe gathered the Wells and led them out of the Cortex and Harry was grateful for the detective's warm and nurturing personality. He tried to look away as Tess walked out of his life forever, but he couldn't.
Harrison, though, paused and turned around, pulling something from his satchel. "I never want to see this again." He dropped a book on the floor and Harry didn't have to see the title to know what it was.
That damn biography.
Harrison met his eyes and Harry nodded. They were in perfect understanding.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Barry glanced over at his comrades; Caitlin had her hand over her mouth, to stifle a sob, and Cisco's eyes were suspiciously damp. Harry was stone-faced and silent as he stalked out of the Cortex, kicking the book into a corner.
Whatever conflicted feelings he had about that man suddenly seemed so unfair. He couldn't keep hating, couldn't keep blaming Harry for what Thawne did. Maybe it was the part of him that still believed in the good in people, but for the first time, he found himself seeing Harry Wells as a real person, not a cruel trick of fate wearing the face of a man he'd loved and then hated.
In the wake of the Wells' departure, of Harry's, too, no one moved, no one said a thing, until Caitlin spoke. "Barry – go to him. He shouldn't be alone."
If his unbreakable belief in the good in people had a counterpart, it was Caitlin's endless well of compassion. He nodded and headed down towards Cisco's workroom. Harry was sitting at the desk, staring at a monitor displaying a swirling pattern of red and yellow streamers chasing each other and dissolving into a shower of sparks. One of Cisco's poorer jokes.
Harry must have heard him come in, but he didn't acknowledge his presence.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" An hour ago, those two words would have been pulsing with belligerence, dripping with contempt. Now, there were soft, defeated.
"For everything. For Jesse, for your Tess. For letting you suffer alone."
Harry spun around. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Barry remembered the words he'd spoken a few weeks ago, words that Harry didn't hear. "We've all had a hard time getting past … the past. Me, more than the others."
"And what just happened changed that? Why?"
Some of the old belligerence was back, but Barry wasn't put off. "As Cisco likes to say, you're a dick. But you’re also a smart man, and you have to know that it's easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar."
"I understand that my counterpart here – excuse me, the imposter – was a really smooth talker. Didn't think that approach would go over too well."
"Which you didn't know until we told you. For some reason, you chose to deliberately antagonize everyone here, but now I know why. You even gave me a clue a few days ago, but I was not particularly inclined to listen to you then."
"I did?"
"You said that if Zoom finds out who I care for, who I love, who I live for, he'll take them from me. That I have to keep the people I love as far away from me as possible. You weren't just offering advice, you were speaking from personal experience. You told Tess and Harrison to go home because you don't want Zoom to find them. You keep us at arm's length because you don't want Zoom to know you care. You don't want us to get hurt." Barry smiled, then added, "Any more than we have to."
"Do you have a degree in psychology as well as physics and chemistry, Mr. Allen?"
"No, and I'm occasionally a little slow on the uptake. But we are a team. The four of us."
"Snow's already given me that speech. That's why I stayed here."
"But you're still not part of the team, Harry. You still hold yourself apart, now more than ever."
"What I said about Zoom and your girlfriend holds true for everyone in your life, Barry. Your family, your friends. He will take them from you."
"Only if I let him."
Harry gave him an irritated glare. "You're going to hang around my neck like an albatross until I agree, aren’t you?"
"Maybe more like a stray cat at your feet than a dead bird, but yeah." Barry leaned against the desk, hands in his pockets, waiting.
"Zoom wants your speed."
"We know that."
"He'll return my daughter to me if I make you faster, help you realize your potential. He let me see Jesse on Christmas Eve, he forced my hand." Harry covered his eyes with a hand. "I'm sorry."
Barry didn't say anything.
"Still want me on your 'team', Mr. Allen?"
"Of course. Someone's got to fatten me up like a Christmas goose." Before Harry could say anything, Barry added, "Cisco vibed the whole thing. Saw you and Zoom and Jesse in the rail yard. He felt your terror and your anguish. He knows you don't want to do it - we know you don't want to do it. We'll get her back, Harry. Believe in that like you believe in nothing else."
Barry actually enjoyed watching the myriad of expressions fly across Harry's face – fear and shock and shame and finally, hope.
He stood up and offered Harry his hand. "Come on, let's go grab some dinner."
Harry's palm was just a little damp, as was his smile. "Big Belly Burger?"
"Nah, not tonight. In the mood for some mu-shu and sweet and sour pork. You like Chinese?"
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Harrison smiled at his reflection. Actually, he smiled at Tess' reflection. She had hugged him from behind and rested her chin on his shoulder.
"Have I mentioned how much I love how you look in a tux, Dr. Wells?"
"A few times, Mrs. Wells, a few." When he brought the suit home and reluctantly modeled it for her, she barely gave him a chance to get it off before she jumped his bones.
"I'm going to have a very hard time making it through the ceremony tonight." Tess bit her lip and fluttered her eyelashes at him. "Watching you up on that stage, giving your speech. Knowing that when you come home …" His wife had such a wicked look in her eye.
Harrison completed the sentence, full of innuendo. "I'm going to come … home."
Tess laughed; the sound was like a ringing bell. She pulled away and swatted his ass. "Get out of here before I put some wrinkles in your suit."
Harrison left their bedroom and went into his office. The stack of index cards with his speech was right where he left it.
He sat down and turned to face the window. It was a little after seven and the sun was still shining – it was a perfect June evening. Graduation was tomorrow, but tonight was awards ceremony for the departing seniors and for the teaching staff. Two weeks ago, to his great shock, Stuckeyville High's principal, Hal Godfrey, told him he was getting the coveted Teacher of the Year award. And in all his time as principal, Hal had said that no teacher had ever gotten more votes than he had this year.
Once, he might have scoff at such honors, once he might have told Godfrey to take his name off the list and never include it again. But once, he was an ass and an oaf who couldn't see beyond his lost dreams.
"You ready?"
Harrison looked up. Tess was wearing something spectacular – a gown in shimmering golds and blues that made her eyes glow. That made his heart pound and his mouth go dry. "Maybe I should have Phil give my speech and we should just stay home."
Tess chuckled. "That's a marvelous idea, but somehow I don't think our friends will be too happy with us."
"You're right. Obligations, obligations, obligations." He huffed out a pretend put-upon sigh.
To Harrison's surprise, he enjoyed the evening, seeing everyone dressed in their finery, listening to friends and co-workers gossip. He was particularly proud when Hal Godfrey announced that one of his students was a first prize medalist in the Global Good category of the Intel Science Talent Search. He'd advised many finalists over the years, but this was the first time that one of his students received a coveted medal.
Hal got back on stage, "And now for the final award of the evening." The microphone squealed and everyone winced. "Teacher of the Year. This teacher …" Hal started to blather and Harrison tuned him out.
But then Tess squeezed his hand and told him he had to get up, and Harrison felt the start of a flop sweat. He'd rehearsed his speech a dozen times, but frankly, he was still terrified. He ran through the words, he patted his jacket pocket, making sure he really did have his notecards, and all of a sudden, the sound of enthusiastic clapping erupted. Some of his students were even chanting his name…
Dr. Wells, Dr. Wells, Dr. Wells!
Harrison stood, gave Tess a panicked look and headed for the stage. Hal handed him the trophy and he glanced at the nameplate and nearly fell over. It read
Teacher of the Year - 2016
Dr. Harry "Harrison" Wells
FIN
End Notes: We really don't know much about Earth-2 Harrison's home life, other than his daughter, Jesse "Quick". Fanon has him married to Tess, same as Earth-1's Harrison, and there are many excellent fics which have her killed in a car accident. So, until we learn otherwise, I'm free to take liberties and kill off Earth-2 Tess by other means to serve the story.
Also, the Intel Science Talent Search is a real thing - I could have used the science competition that Felicity had won (mentioned by Eobard in Going Rogue, the National Informative Technology Competition), but Felicity was 19 when she won and clearly not a high school student.
The Eleanor Roosevelt biographies are real too, so is the controversy about them.
Author:
elrhiarhodanFandom: The Flash (2014) (fusion with "Ed")
Rating: PG-13 (for language, mild innuendo)
Characters/Pairings: Earth-1 Harrison Wells (Original Harrison Wells), Earth-1 Tess Morgan, Earth-2 Harrison Wells, Joe West, Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow, misuse of various characters from the television series, "Ed"; Harrison Wells/Tess Morgan
Spoilers: 1.17 (Tricksters), All of Season 2, especially 2.09 (Running to a Stand Still), 2.10 (Potential Energy)
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~11,000
Beta Credit:
theatregirl7299 Summary: Time is not a looped ball of string. Time is not a straight line. Time might be a tangled knot, unless time is simply an illusion.
Or, what happens when Harrison Wells finds a copy his biography at the annual Stuckeyville Library Book Sale.
See end for additional (and spoilery) notes.
Harry muttered to himself as he wrote and erased yet another set of calculations. It was too quiet, but whatever music he played annoyed him. He found himself wishing for company – Snow or Ramon or Barry. He'd never admit it, but they impressed the hell out of him. It wasn't just their individual intelligence – which was stunning – it was how they worked together. They were a perfect team, balancing and supporting and helping each other in complete harmony.
He envied them. In his professional career, the only person who'd come close to that was Tess. Even though her brilliance outshone him by orders of magnitude, she anchored him; she made him better, wiser, gentler. They'd built S.T.A.R. Labs together and while he could never, ever, ever regret Jesse, he regretted Tess' decision to focus on motherhood. Maybe if she'd continued working at the lab, she'd still be alive.
No, no – that line of thinking was flawed, a fatal loop.
He tried to focus on the equations on the board, but it was impossible. He'd been at it for hours, days, and he needed a break. Maybe he'd head into the Cortex and taunt Cisco. That was always fun. The kid had finally stopped flinching every time they were in close physical proximity and was learning to give as good as he got.
Pity that he couldn't say the same for Barry. Despite the fact that Barry Allen didn't kill him on sight, had unthinkingly saved him from his foster-father's bullets, and generally seemed to accept his guidance, the young man could rarely meet his eyes. Barry reminded him of a badly beaten dog – one that wanted to trust, but was too broken to get past the fear.
Harry told himself that it wasn't his problem, what had happened here wasn't his fault or his job to fix, but he couldn't help but see the other man's pain, understand how the losses mounted. When Tess died, he had wanted to retreat from everything, shut the door on the world. But he had Jesse, his child, and she needed him. That made all the difference. He could be a bastard to the rest of the world, but he was a father who loved his daughter more than life itself.
Thinking about Jesse brought all the rage he'd been barely keeping under control back to a rolling boil. And rage was dangerous. Better to be cold and calculating and in control.
Which brought him back to the original problem. He needed a distraction. If he couldn't torment the gang in the Cortex, maybe he could find that coward, Jay, and pound his face into a bloody pulp.
Harry capped his marker and tossed it on the desk, ignoring the slight clatter as it rolled onto the floor. He was already out the door.
From the outer corridor, he could hear Joe West's voice. They'd come to something of a detente after Zoom nearly broke Barry and Cisco broke the news about Jesse. West understood his terror and his need, and while he clearly still hated him because of that damned imposter, he was a lot less overtly hostile these days. The covert hostility was still there, but Harry didn't have the feeling that Detective West was still two heartbeats from pumping a couple of bullets in him.
In addition to Joe, he could hear Cisco and Barry, but there was another voice. Harry listened and tried to identify it. Definitely male, curious and a bit agitated – middle aged, from middle America. Pity he couldn't hear the actual words.
Harry debated by-passing the Cortex and having to greet the stranger, but he was curious. Indulging his curiosity might be just he needed – a chance to get out of his head for a little while. Besides, no one said he had to be nice to the man.
A small, quiet voice – an echo of the man he'd once been, before fame and money and tragedy hardened all his edges – reminded him that there was nothing wrong with being nice. Harry just ignored it.
He approached the entrance to the Cortex – close enough to hear the actual conversation now, but was careful to stay out of the line of sight.
"So, time is slowly unknotting." That was from one the strangers. "What else is going to change?"
Barry replied, "That's impossible to predict. Thawne – the … time-traveler … was adamant that it was impossible to undo a catastrophe. Problems would manifest in other ways."
"Except he was a liar and a murderer and a master manipulator. Who's to say that he wasn't telling you what he wanted you to hear. To get him to do what he wanted." Joe added.
Why was Barry telling the stranger about Thawne? Cautious as well as curious, Harry continued to listen.
"That's possible. But I think he was telling the truth – or at least a version of it. Einstein believed that time is an illusion..." Barry's voice trailed off.
The stranger finished that thought, "The separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one. Or maybe it's all just entropy."
Harry was getting bored listening. Time, illusion or not, was not his friend. He banged on the wall to announce his entrance before entering the Cortex.
Four faces looked up and to his shock, all of them were familiar. Ramon, Joe West, Barry and a face he saw in the mirror every morning. "What the hell is going on here?"
"I thought you said that the man who killed me was wiped out of existence."
Harry and this … doppelganger … spoke simultaneously. Then the man got out of his chair and lunged for him, fists clenched. Harry felt a surge of pure joy – it looked like he was going to get the fight he wanted after all.
Except that this time, Barry didn't wait for anyone to start a fistfight. He zipped between him and this other him, and Harry found himself pinned against the wall. "Harry, no."
"I wasn't the one about to throw the first punch."
"But you would have enjoyed hitting back way too much."
He had to laugh. "True." Barry stepped back and Harry held up his hands. The joy of incipient violence was replace by another sort of joy – that of a scientist seeing a theory proven true. His face almost ached as muscles stretched into a broad smile.
Harry quickly noted the differences in this other him – he was a lot softer around the edges. A runner's body, but slightly gone to seed. Hair a touch more gray at the temples – and quite a bit longer than his own. Eyes were the same blue, but the glasses were frameless. And he was wearing colors – an ancient gray sweater with patches on the elbows, a blue shirt and well-faded jeans. Clothes he'd never consider putting on his body. He let his smile grow broader and said, "Hello, me."
"He's not you, Harry." Cisco said with a note of snide triumph. "This is the real Harrison Wells. The one that should have built S.T.A.R. Labs."
"Ah – that's why you were talking about time unknotting itself." At everyone's startled glance, he added, "I was listening for a bit."
His un-murdered counterpart said, "So, you understand what's going on?"
"Very much so. Because Thawne was unmade, you were never killed. Therefore, you're alive. Makes sense to me."
"But if you're not this time-traveling body snatcher, who are you?"
Harry turned to the rest of the room. "I guess you didn't bother to explain about the singularity and the portals and the multi-verse, did you."
Barry shrugged. "There are only so many impossible things you can expect someone to accept in a single day."
"Huh?"
"They don't have Alice in Wonderland on Earth-2?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Earth-2? What do you mean? Is there another Earth?" This other Wells didn't sound distressed at all. Eager, excited, and Harry knew that feeling all too well. If he wasn't so jaded and bitter and worried, he might share this man's joy.
Cisco continued playing his role as the inconvenient exposition monkey. "We have a wormhole in the basement that leads to another Earth. This dick decided to come for a visit."
"Yes, Cisco – I just decided I wanted a change of scenery. I thought that leaving my perfectly operating and fully staffed laboratory and coming to this shit hole was the ideal choice for a vacation."
"You have a wormhole in the basement? Is that an ordinary thing here? Does everyone in this place have one?" The other version of him now had a touch of hysteria in his voice.
"No, not really." Harry was starting to get bored with this conversation. "Look, I'm sorry your life got interrupted, but we have things to do here, important things. Maybe you can come back for the full tour on another day."
"Harry, you know you're not in charge here."
"Ramon, shut the fuck … " The clatter of footsteps interrupted him. And the woman walking into the Cortex stole his breath. And then his sanity.
Tess was feeling a little off balance. No, a lot off balance. Over the past few months, since Harrison found that terrible book, she'd watch him slowly start to disintegrate. It wasn't like the time when he'd faced academic disgrace, when accusations of incompetence and plagiarism and falsifying research had tanked his career. She knew that those accusations weren't true, that her husband was the victim of a vendetta by small-minded people too scared of what Harrison was trying to create.
She had supported his decision not to fight the review board, to retreat from academics and build another life. Maybe if they hadn't settled back in her hometown, she might never have been so content, so happy with a life she'd never planned on.
But then Harrison found that damn biography and he became consumed by thoughts of finding the imposter. She tried to help, but there seemed to be nothing about this other Harrison Wells on the Internet, nothing that seemed credible. The name wasn't common, but it wasn't unique either. She'd found reports of a confession to a lurid murder by a Harrison Wells but other than that, there were no photos, no news articles, none of the scientific papers that had been mentioned in the book.
What was even stranger was that the book itself really didn't seem to exist. It had a Library of Congress catalogue number and an International Standard Book Number, but when they looked those up, the reports said "number not assigned."
She had tried to convince Harrison that it was just some incredible hoax, but he wouldn't believe her. He was adamant that this imposter was real – he knew too much about him, about S.T.A.R. Labs, about theories and ideas he'd never published. It couldn't be a hoax.
Tess had read the book and she had to agree. There was just too many of her husband's secret dreams contained in those pages.
When it got too much to bear, she told Harrison, "I think the only way to solve this mystery is to go to Central City – where this imposter is supposed to be. Maybe we can confront him?"
Harrison liked the idea, but he had ideas of his own. "If he's me – doesn't he have my social security number? Is he really an identity thief? Or is this something more?"
She wasn't happy with the idea of confronting a total stranger and exposing him as a fraud, and suggested an alternative. "Maybe we should go to the police first? Doesn't it seem strange that someone with such an extensive biography – six hundred pages worth – doesn't have a single news article written about him?"
"Yes, it does. You're right, let's go to the police. Maybe they already know he's an imposter."
The trip had to wait for a few months. Harrison couldn't just take off for a few days, but with the decision to go hunt down the imposter, her husband seemed to calm down a bit. He was still agitated, but nothing that a glass of good red wine with dinner couldn't settle. Thanksgiving and Christmas passed in a blur. Although her parents were long gone, she still had cousins scattered around the Stuckeyville area and they'd find it very strange if she and Harrison decamped to points unspecified during the holidays.
But mid-winter break came at last, a time when the two of them would usually go out of town for a few days. She'd mentioned heading to Chicago to a few of her friends, a destination that didn't set the small town grapevine abuzz.
The drive to Central City took a day and a half. They'd stopped overnight in St. Louis and reached the small metropolis a little before five in the afternoon. The plan was to go to the police and make some polite inquiries. They hadn't expected to be greeted with guns drawn and whispers of "dead man walking."
At least the nice detective seemed inclined to believe them. But then things got weird. Weirder than a book written about a version of her husband than never existed. They were taken to a place that looked far too much like the building Harrison had sketched out all those years ago, except it was almost ruined. But not abandoned.
The people inside were strange. Smart, but strange. The story of a murderous time traveler seemed the height of insanity, but the pieces began to make sense.
Time was untangling.
It hurt her head to realize that maybe she and Harrison had died coming home from that trip to the beach, that the last fifteen years hadn't really ever happened. That Einstein and Feynman were right, that time was an illusion. She certainly understood the theory behind it, but it was so personal that it couldn't be just a theory.
After they had looked at the empty corpse bag, Tess turned to the young doctor who'd provided such helpful information. "Do you think you could show me to a ladies room, or someplace quiet for a few minutes."
Harrison looked at her with concern. "Tess, are you all right?"
"Just need a few moments, love. I'll be fine." She kissed Harrison and he wrapped his arms around her. Suddenly, for the first time in months, it felt like she had her husband back.
"Come with me." The woman led her into a small, private medical bay. "Would you like something cold to drink? A cup of tea? Coffee? A snack?"
Tess recognized what the offer was – a delaying mechanism. "Some water will be fine, Dr. Snow."
"Call me Caitlin, please."
"Thank you, Caitlin."
The woman – little more than a girl, to her middle-aged eyes – came back with the promised bottle of water. She seemed very sad, very wary and Tess had to ask, "What did he do to you?"
"Who?"
She gave the girl a look.
Caitlin smiled sadly. "The particle accelerator accident that Thawne engineered transformed the man who became my husband. A year later, he died saving this city from another disaster that Thawne created. But it's more than that …" Caitlin shook her head. "He broke the trust of everyone here. Me, Cisco, Barry. He was brilliant and charismatic, but there was a kindness, too. He encouraged us to be better people and we loved him, but it was all a lie. He was evil, a murderer, like something out of a storybook, something that shouldn't have been real. But he was."
Tess felt her heart break. "You poor child. All of you. But why stay here? What are you doing? Are you still cleaning up this man's messes?"
"In a way. When Thawne died, he was trying to return to the future. It opened a singularity – a rift that would swallow the universe. That's how Ronnie died, helping close it. But there were residual … problems."
"Wormholes? Small ones scattered around the city?"
Caitlin looked startled.
"I am – or I was – a physicist, too, my dear. It all makes sense. Apparently you had a major quantum event here, and even though you were able to close it, the material fabric of the universe was damaged. But there's something else that you're not telling me, isn't there?"
Caitlin wouldn't look at her, but Tess wasn't going to be put off. "My dear? What other impossible thing am I going to have to believe in today?"
"One of those wormholes is a portal to another Earth. There's another version of your husband here."
"Ah. And is there another version of me here, too?"
Caitlin shook her head. "I don't even know if this Dr. Wells is married – although he does have a daughter."
The girl clamped her mouth shut but this time, Tess didn't continue to pry. "I think I need to rejoin my husband." She wondered if she should ask for an introduction to this alternate version of Harrison and decided against it. Things were getting far too confusing.
But it seemed that she was going to meet the man anyway. She followed Caitlin back to the lab's control center and found both her husband and this other doppelganger. And from the look on Harrison's double's face, it seemed like he knew her, too.
"Tess." Struck through the heart, Harry uttered that single, perfect syllable and fell to his knees, utterly broken.
When he crossed over from his world, he'd been prepared to find his counterpart, although he'd been surprised to discover just how closely the lives had mirrored each other. But the Earth-1's version of Harrison Wells was dead and he hadn't cared that the man was really a time traveling body snatcher, except to the extent that the son of a bitch's legacy of murder and mistrust was interfering with his own needs.
Still, he should have expected this when he'd first laid eyes on his not-so-dead and badly dressed Earth-1 counterpart. If Thawne's unmaking resulted in Harrison Wells' un-dying, then of course his wife would not have died, either. Maybe if he'd paid more attention to what the team tried to tell him, instead of brushing them off in his urgency to recruit them for the fight against Zoom, he might have been better prepared for this moment.
She – Tess – looked at him with sad eyes, but there was no love there, nothing but curiosity and maybe a touch of pity. She didn't approach him; instead, she went to her husband and let him wrap his arms around her.
The urge to do violence to his counterpart was sickening and he closed his eyes against the rage that was turning his world to red. Not even the drive to get Jesse back was this bad.
Then peace came - a hand on his head, his shoulder, his cheek. Harry opened his eyes and found Tess kneeling before him.
"We were the same?"
He nodded, his mouth too dry for words.
"I'm so sorry. So very sorry."
He couldn't bear the sympathy in her eyes, but he couldn't look away and his brain catalogued the changes that time had wrought. This Tess had settled comfortably into healthy middle age – her once blonde hair now streaked with gray; her laugh lines had deepened, and there was a touch of fullness around her chin. But she was still beautiful, still the woman who had taken his heart and nurtured his soul. The only person who had the power to make him a better man.
No. She was not. She was not his Tess. His Tess had died of a disease beyond the reach and skill of any doctor. His Tess was broken and gone and no interference in time could bring her back. Breath by breath, Harry rebuilt the stone walls that guarded his heart
"Harrison?" Tess smiled gently. "Are you all right?"
He got to his feet and some long-forgotten lessons in gallant behavior compelled his to offer this woman a hand. She took it and squeezed it briefly before letting go. Harry ached as Tess stood before him, a memory of an impossible dream. All he could say was, "Call me Harry."
Her smile broadened. "That a difference. My husband hates when people call him that."
In truth, he did too – but here, on this Earth, it seemed to work better for everyone. "You need to go home – wherever that is. Both of you." He couldn't be bothered to smooth out the urgency in his tone.
The other him asked – his tone half-serious, half-joking, "Why? Will some cataclysmic event happen because we're both in the same room?"
He snapped, "No, don't be stupid. It doesn't work like that. We are not the same people."
Tess, though, smiled. "You might be from an alternate world, but you really are not so different from my husband. He, too, has trouble tolerating foolishness."
"Listen to me, you have to go home, forget about what you've learned, forget about us. Go live your lives like you were supposed to. This is a dangerous place and the longer you stay here, the greater the chance that you'll get hurt. Or worse." He flicked his gaze over to Tess' husband. "Both of you." He didn't have to close his eyes to see his alternate ripped apart by Zoom, to see Tess equally destroyed. He was too close to caring, and as soon as that happened, these innocents would die.
Tess and Harrison looked to the others in the room for verification. Harry was gratified to see that everyone nodded.
Harrison asked, "Can you at least tell us why?"
"No, I can't. And even though you have no reason to trust me, you have to." Desperate, he added a word he rarely used, "Please."
Barry came forward and added his own plea of urgency. "Harry's right – there are things happening here that could put you both in terrible danger. You need to go home as soon as possible. Go back to your lives and forget about this."
Harry ached to know the details of the lives that that Thawne had interrupted, but they'd only be a distraction - something he could ill-afford.
Joe gathered the Wells and led them out of the Cortex and Harry was grateful for the detective's warm and nurturing personality. He tried to look away as Tess walked out of his life forever, but he couldn't.
Harrison, though, paused and turned around, pulling something from his satchel. "I never want to see this again." He dropped a book on the floor and Harry didn't have to see the title to know what it was.
That damn biography.
Harrison met his eyes and Harry nodded. They were in perfect understanding.
Barry glanced over at his comrades; Caitlin had her hand over her mouth, to stifle a sob, and Cisco's eyes were suspiciously damp. Harry was stone-faced and silent as he stalked out of the Cortex, kicking the book into a corner.
Whatever conflicted feelings he had about that man suddenly seemed so unfair. He couldn't keep hating, couldn't keep blaming Harry for what Thawne did. Maybe it was the part of him that still believed in the good in people, but for the first time, he found himself seeing Harry Wells as a real person, not a cruel trick of fate wearing the face of a man he'd loved and then hated.
In the wake of the Wells' departure, of Harry's, too, no one moved, no one said a thing, until Caitlin spoke. "Barry – go to him. He shouldn't be alone."
If his unbreakable belief in the good in people had a counterpart, it was Caitlin's endless well of compassion. He nodded and headed down towards Cisco's workroom. Harry was sitting at the desk, staring at a monitor displaying a swirling pattern of red and yellow streamers chasing each other and dissolving into a shower of sparks. One of Cisco's poorer jokes.
Harry must have heard him come in, but he didn't acknowledge his presence.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" An hour ago, those two words would have been pulsing with belligerence, dripping with contempt. Now, there were soft, defeated.
"For everything. For Jesse, for your Tess. For letting you suffer alone."
Harry spun around. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Barry remembered the words he'd spoken a few weeks ago, words that Harry didn't hear. "We've all had a hard time getting past … the past. Me, more than the others."
"And what just happened changed that? Why?"
Some of the old belligerence was back, but Barry wasn't put off. "As Cisco likes to say, you're a dick. But you’re also a smart man, and you have to know that it's easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar."
"I understand that my counterpart here – excuse me, the imposter – was a really smooth talker. Didn't think that approach would go over too well."
"Which you didn't know until we told you. For some reason, you chose to deliberately antagonize everyone here, but now I know why. You even gave me a clue a few days ago, but I was not particularly inclined to listen to you then."
"I did?"
"You said that if Zoom finds out who I care for, who I love, who I live for, he'll take them from me. That I have to keep the people I love as far away from me as possible. You weren't just offering advice, you were speaking from personal experience. You told Tess and Harrison to go home because you don't want Zoom to find them. You keep us at arm's length because you don't want Zoom to know you care. You don't want us to get hurt." Barry smiled, then added, "Any more than we have to."
"Do you have a degree in psychology as well as physics and chemistry, Mr. Allen?"
"No, and I'm occasionally a little slow on the uptake. But we are a team. The four of us."
"Snow's already given me that speech. That's why I stayed here."
"But you're still not part of the team, Harry. You still hold yourself apart, now more than ever."
"What I said about Zoom and your girlfriend holds true for everyone in your life, Barry. Your family, your friends. He will take them from you."
"Only if I let him."
Harry gave him an irritated glare. "You're going to hang around my neck like an albatross until I agree, aren’t you?"
"Maybe more like a stray cat at your feet than a dead bird, but yeah." Barry leaned against the desk, hands in his pockets, waiting.
"Zoom wants your speed."
"We know that."
"He'll return my daughter to me if I make you faster, help you realize your potential. He let me see Jesse on Christmas Eve, he forced my hand." Harry covered his eyes with a hand. "I'm sorry."
Barry didn't say anything.
"Still want me on your 'team', Mr. Allen?"
"Of course. Someone's got to fatten me up like a Christmas goose." Before Harry could say anything, Barry added, "Cisco vibed the whole thing. Saw you and Zoom and Jesse in the rail yard. He felt your terror and your anguish. He knows you don't want to do it - we know you don't want to do it. We'll get her back, Harry. Believe in that like you believe in nothing else."
Barry actually enjoyed watching the myriad of expressions fly across Harry's face – fear and shock and shame and finally, hope.
He stood up and offered Harry his hand. "Come on, let's go grab some dinner."
Harry's palm was just a little damp, as was his smile. "Big Belly Burger?"
"Nah, not tonight. In the mood for some mu-shu and sweet and sour pork. You like Chinese?"
Harrison smiled at his reflection. Actually, he smiled at Tess' reflection. She had hugged him from behind and rested her chin on his shoulder.
"Have I mentioned how much I love how you look in a tux, Dr. Wells?"
"A few times, Mrs. Wells, a few." When he brought the suit home and reluctantly modeled it for her, she barely gave him a chance to get it off before she jumped his bones.
"I'm going to have a very hard time making it through the ceremony tonight." Tess bit her lip and fluttered her eyelashes at him. "Watching you up on that stage, giving your speech. Knowing that when you come home …" His wife had such a wicked look in her eye.
Harrison completed the sentence, full of innuendo. "I'm going to come … home."
Tess laughed; the sound was like a ringing bell. She pulled away and swatted his ass. "Get out of here before I put some wrinkles in your suit."
Harrison left their bedroom and went into his office. The stack of index cards with his speech was right where he left it.
He sat down and turned to face the window. It was a little after seven and the sun was still shining – it was a perfect June evening. Graduation was tomorrow, but tonight was awards ceremony for the departing seniors and for the teaching staff. Two weeks ago, to his great shock, Stuckeyville High's principal, Hal Godfrey, told him he was getting the coveted Teacher of the Year award. And in all his time as principal, Hal had said that no teacher had ever gotten more votes than he had this year.
Once, he might have scoff at such honors, once he might have told Godfrey to take his name off the list and never include it again. But once, he was an ass and an oaf who couldn't see beyond his lost dreams.
"You ready?"
Harrison looked up. Tess was wearing something spectacular – a gown in shimmering golds and blues that made her eyes glow. That made his heart pound and his mouth go dry. "Maybe I should have Phil give my speech and we should just stay home."
Tess chuckled. "That's a marvelous idea, but somehow I don't think our friends will be too happy with us."
"You're right. Obligations, obligations, obligations." He huffed out a pretend put-upon sigh.
To Harrison's surprise, he enjoyed the evening, seeing everyone dressed in their finery, listening to friends and co-workers gossip. He was particularly proud when Hal Godfrey announced that one of his students was a first prize medalist in the Global Good category of the Intel Science Talent Search. He'd advised many finalists over the years, but this was the first time that one of his students received a coveted medal.
Hal got back on stage, "And now for the final award of the evening." The microphone squealed and everyone winced. "Teacher of the Year. This teacher …" Hal started to blather and Harrison tuned him out.
But then Tess squeezed his hand and told him he had to get up, and Harrison felt the start of a flop sweat. He'd rehearsed his speech a dozen times, but frankly, he was still terrified. He ran through the words, he patted his jacket pocket, making sure he really did have his notecards, and all of a sudden, the sound of enthusiastic clapping erupted. Some of his students were even chanting his name…
Dr. Wells, Dr. Wells, Dr. Wells!
Harrison stood, gave Tess a panicked look and headed for the stage. Hal handed him the trophy and he glanced at the nameplate and nearly fell over. It read
Dr. Harry "Harrison" Wells
End Notes: We really don't know much about Earth-2 Harrison's home life, other than his daughter, Jesse "Quick". Fanon has him married to Tess, same as Earth-1's Harrison, and there are many excellent fics which have her killed in a car accident. So, until we learn otherwise, I'm free to take liberties and kill off Earth-2 Tess by other means to serve the story.
Also, the Intel Science Talent Search is a real thing - I could have used the science competition that Felicity had won (mentioned by Eobard in Going Rogue, the National Informative Technology Competition), but Felicity was 19 when she won and clearly not a high school student.
The Eleanor Roosevelt biographies are real too, so is the controversy about them.
Tags:
- character: barry allen,
- character: caitlin snow,
- character: cisco ramon,
- character: harrison wells,
- character: joe west,
- character: tess morgan,
- crossover: ed/the flash,
- genre: alternative universe,
- genre: angst,
- genre: crossover,
- genre: emotional trauma,
- genre: family,
- genre: friendship,
- genre: hurt/comfort,
- genre: marital schmoop,
- pairing: tess/harrison,
- type: fan fiction,
- type: longfic,
- year: 2016
