A/N: I came out to watch episode 3x14 of The Flash and honestly I feel so attacked right now. Harrison Wells is my all-time fave and if he dies I swear I will riot. That said, being the horrible little shit I am, I couldn't help writing this. Enjoy!
Enough
Jesse is livid.
She's more than livid, she's disgusted. The emotion is well hidden behind aloof anger, but you know your daughter too well. She gets that front from you after all, that scathing wall that's thrown up at the first sign of trouble to mask the real emotions lingering underneath. The only thing that differs is that her eyes give her away; she's still learning while you have had years to master the mask you wear.
Her tongue is as sharp as yours though, and you would be lying if you said her accusations didn't sting. But you have work to do, a gorilla to stop, and you don't have time to fully deal with the emotional baggage that will come along with this particular conversation. So you brush Jesse off as if she were something trivial. No fight to be fought, no throwing or cursing. You dismiss Jesse as quickly as she interrupted your work and she storms away in a flash of teenage angst and incredulous scoffs.
No one says a word. A simple back to work and it's as if nothing even happened.
Except Cisco makes a quip and calls you Dead Man and suddenly you can feel all eyes shifting towards you and it makes your skin crawl. Your normal mask of steel boils against your face and you are seconds away from flushing a deep, bright red whether from embarrassment or anger or even fear you can't discern. All you can do to distract yourself from the current of unwanted emotion is focus on adjusting the magnets on Detective West's head.
You think you can hear them whisper:
It's nothing new, just Harrison Wells doing what he does best: manipulating and lying to get his way. It doesn't matter that it's his daughter he's targeting this time. That's old news, that's not surprising.
Whatever fiction they've concocted to rectify your seemingly pathological behavior is insignificant. You've stopped caring what anyone thinks, even your friends. They can judge you and assume all they want. It doesn't change the fact that you are dying.
Just because they don't believe it doesn't mean it isn't true.
You could tell her, you think as you say your goodbyes. You could tell her the truth.
It's so tempting, three little words on the tip of your tongue.
Jesse, I'm dying.
But then she'd want to go back to Earth II with you. And while your heart sings with joy at the thought of your little girl choosing to go home instead of staying in this backwards world with no connections or finances, you know it wouldn't be right. You would be manipulating her, using your illness to keep your daughter by your side just like they think you tried to do earlier. You see the way she looks at Wally, how excited she is when she's out with Barry, how strong she feels when she saves the world. She stands amongst the STAR Labs team and it looks like she's home.
She looks happy, and that's all you've ever wanted for her.
You can live with the distance. You can live with her absence. Because if the last thing you ever see of her is her smiling face, and if the last thing you hear from her is her laughter, and if the last thing you ever feel or touch or smell is her hair against your cheek as you pull her in for one last hug, then you can die a happy man. That thought gives you the courage to step through the blue to the other side back home without her.
It isn't until the portal closes behind that you realize you're going to die alone.
It's easy to move on at first.
Work keeps you busy, keeps you focused, keeps you distracted. You run STAR Labs with such startling efficiency that you've begun to scare people. You staff wonders what has gotten into you, what has suddenly motivated you into doing enough work for ten people. It doesn't even cross their minds that you're throwing yourself into your work to avoid the revelation that you're deep into the process of grieving. Not your own life, but one without Jesse.
You're pretending she doesn't exist. You're in denial.
But you can't deny when your hands start shaking.
When your head pounds so bad that it feels like it is going to split open.
When your eyes see spots like glowing halos and your world is so fuzzy you might as well be blind.
When your nose starts bleeding and just won't stop and you have to be rushed to the hospital for emergency fluids.
Your assistant - the one who found you hunched over a sink with blood-soaked tissues scattered around your feet - gnaws on the end of her pen as you watch them hook the IV up to your pale, waxy skin. You've always had a pale complexion but now you just look sickly, your veins practically mapped out in phosphorescent blue underneath the thin tender flesh. Have you always been this bad? You wouldn't know; the last time you looked in a mirror was...you can't even recall. But you are transfixed on yourself now, on the clear fluid being pumped into your body in the hopes of bringing life back to something that you know in your soul was already dead. If not dead, then doomed.
You wonder how they would react if you told them you were a dead man walking.
By the way the nurses are looking at your charts, they already know.
You remember the day everything changed.
Even when you cannot remember your own name or recognize the photo of your late wife that you keep on your desk, you remember that day. You remember the sterile feeling of the room, the overwhelming scent of bleach and sickness mingled together. You remember the worsening worried looks of the nurses as you described the symptoms that had been plaguing you ever since you returned from defeating Zoom.
You remember how the doctor's face crumpled as the results from your tests came back and your MRI lit up like a Christmas tree.
Glioblastoma multiforme.
It's the most aggressive form of brain cancer, the worst of the worst, and your chances of survival are nearly zero. You've always liked impossible odds; they gave you something to work towards, something to compete against, something to beat. You can't beat this though. This is your own brain fighting against you, your own DNA revolting and forming some new aberration that it has deemed more worthy of its time and attention.
They caught it early, the doctor says from the safety of his desk. Due to the rapid and sudden degeneration of neural tissue, usually there is severe memory loss before most clinicians make the link. It's a silent killer, one you never could have seen coming and one you had no power to prevent. You wonder if that is supposed to make you feel better. You wonder if you are supposed to feel anything at all, but you are completely and utterly numb.
You deny surgery. You deny radiation. You deny chemotherapy.
Without treatment, you are given three months to live.
The doctors think you are crazy, but you are steadfast in your ways. You will not have your brain, your most valuable, prized possession, be sliced and diced by surgeons or poisoned by drugs or irradiated by x-rays. It's your brain and it's your life and you'll be damned if you spend your last few moments on Earth being tied to a hospital bed as a shell of the man you used to be. You don't expect them to understand; they see ten others just like you every day, sometimes more. You're a number to them, another statistic to add to the already astronomical odds.
Harrison Wells means nothing. Harrison Wells might as well already be dead. All you're doing is complicating their routine.
They still push some drugs onto you, a cocktail of steroids and cytotoxins that you have every intention of shoving into the back of your medicine cabinet and promptly forgetting about.
Forgetting comes easier than expected. The next day you get an invitation from Gorilla City and you are thrust back into the world of superheroes and supervillains and there is no time to think about anything else other than survive.
You'll be 54 this year.
That's older than your Earth I doppelgänger ever reached. That's older than a lot of people ever reach.
You pray Jesse gets twice as many.
Two week after Jesse leaves, you fall.
It's a bad fall, not a slipped-on-the-wet-floor type fall.
You've been lost in your work, caught up in making sure all your ideas are recorded, that you fail to notice the tell-tale spots in your vision. They worsen as you stand up from your desk and all the blood rushes from your head and your vision starts spinning. Your entire world gets knocked off kilter and suddenly you can't stand straight. You stumble over your chair and hit your head on the corner of your desk which only worsens the blinding pain coming from your temples. You're so focused on the pain in your head that you don't register the pain of the rest of your body hitting the ground hard, limbs bent at horribly uncomfortable angles.
Your first instinct is to call out to Jesse, but she's not there.
She's on Earth I with Wally and her new friends in her new life. She was safe and ignorant of your condition while you lay dying.
If she could see you now...what would she say?
You don't want to know that answer. You never want to subject her to this humiliation, to subject her to the deterioration of her father so soon after she lost her mother. But you can't help but think if she were there she would speed to your side. She would run you to the hospital or use some form of the Speed Force to bring you back to pristine health. She would be your knight in shining armor. Your hero. Your Jesse Quick.
But she isn't there.
Jesse Quick never comes, and you spend two hours sprawled out miserably on the floor before your assistant finds you and calls paramedics.
You remember Wally's promise:
We'll visit, a lot.
You pray that they don't. You pray they're too busy with each other to even remember you exist. You don't want anyone, especially not Jesse, to see you like this - so weak, so incompetent. It's hard enough to deal with the limited communication you already have. At least through letters and communicators and vibes you can feign normality. There's a certain impersonality, a certain distance already factored in that compensates for the humanity you lack. In that distance, their minds were free to fill in the blanks with memories of you - a stronger, healthier, not-dying you.
You wonder briefly how they see you, what they think of when they read your letters. You wonder if Jesse reads hers in the voice you used to use when you told her bedtime stories as a child, or if she hears the patronizing worried tone you more recently adopted when you agreed to train her to be a speedster. You wonder if Wally reads in your sarcastic vitriol or if he fires the words off the page at a million miles a second spouting them as quickly as you do ideas. Either way, it is a far cry from the way you are now, shaking and stumbling over words because you have to remind yourself how to write every time you go to put a pen to paper.
If only they could see you now...
They'd see a ghost.
Soon enough, you get called back into the fray by Team Flash - neck deep in fighting Savitar and in need of your expertise.
You scoff at the request.
They must be truly desperate to come to you for help. They wouldn't if they knew that your genius moments are few and far between and you spend the majority of your time these days confined to your bed or a chair sleeping the day away because even coming up with new ideas hurts. Everything is too much, an onslaught of overwhelming sensory input that exhausts you to the very core. They don't know your secret, but they will soon enough. You would run, but speedsters are faster. You can't run from this, just like you can't run from the tumors growing in your brain. Barry has never been one to take no for an answer, and you know it is only a matter of time before the The Flash ends up knocking down the barrier between your Earths and pulling you through.
You spend the better part of your weekend making sure that you are strong enough to stand. At least when The Flash comes to get you, you can portray the image of Harrison Wells.
You can't remember his name.
You were doing so well...you had them believing you were normal...and then he showed up.
That face, you've seen that face...haven't you? Everyone in the room is staring at you as if you should know the young dark skinned man walking hand in hand with your daughter. Everyone in the room is staring at you like you are crazy for demanding who he is and what the hell he wants from your daughter. But they are starting to look like strangers as well, which is just crazy because you swore you recognized them a minute ago and why would you willingly walk into an abandoned building full of strangers? You had to know them...you had to. But this boy with your daughter...you would remember his name if you were acquainted. Just as you would remember the tall young man with the converse and the woman with the blue crystal hanging around her neck.
You always remember names.
You're about to go off, about to tell Jesse to get the hell out of this place and meet you outside, but your mouth won't work. It's like your jaw muscle is spasming and it's painful. So so painful. You would shout if you had the ability but your voice is paralyzed. Instead you go to grasp at your throat only to find that your hands are trembling violently.
No. Not here. Not now.
You stumble backward, affronted by the familiar blurred halos that signal another fall. You're going to collapse. It's simply a matter of seconds.
Your knees buckle first, then your feet give out from under you and you're weightless. For a split second you're flying, completely free.
You wait for the impact of cold hard ground but it never comes.
Instead, you're in the arms of your daughter just as you've always dreamed. She is supporting your head while Wally - that's his name! - holds your legs and Barry restrains your arms. Their images are blurry, constantly moving and shifting. You feel a burn through your muscles, the searing fire of overuse, and it take a moment to register that you're seizing.
Then there is black and you can't register anything at all.
Jesse is livid.
She is more than livid, she is devastated.
Her glassy eyes pour over your charts and scans and suddenly there is no more mask for her to hide behind, no more wall to protect her. There is only the raw and eviscerating pain that comes with loss, and there is no disguising that. You should know, you went through the same thing when your wife died. There is no right way to deal with that kind of pain, no right way to go about expressing such violent emotion. So you suppose in the grand spectrum of reactions that Jesse's running away was mild on the scale of mental break downs. You can't help but think it has to do with the fact that she is jaded to death. After her mother, her time spent fighting Zoom, and now this...you wonder if you've broken her.
She looks so unhappy when she runs out of the lab. She looks so miserable.
That's the last thing you ever wanted for her, and it breaks your heart.
Harry...I'm sorry, Wally apologizes though you can tell he is nervous. You suppose he harbors some sort of guilt, some sort of responsibility for what happened even if it is ridiculous. You were the one who told him first. He was the one you went to confide in, and now look at you: lying weak and feeble on a gurney in the STAR Labs med bay, propped up by pillows with an IV in one arm and monitors stuck up and down your chest from here to kingdom come. You're glad you don't have access to a mirror. You doubt you would even recognize yourself under so much tubing.
You were telling the truth and we didn't believe you, Wally continues when you don't reply, and you wonder why he is still here, why he is still going on about something he cannot fix. What's done is done. He can't go back and change what happened, not even if he wanted. This is something broken deep within your own genetic code, something no amount of manipulating time lines could ever make right.
I suppose I deserved it, you reply tiredly, barely shrugging your shoulders.
You don't want anyone's pity. This isn't their fault; it's yours. This is your punishment. You've told one too many lies, cried wolf repeatedly and stabbed more backs than you can count. Your life of deceit has finally come to collect, and you've embraced the fate you knew was a long time coming.
No one deserves this Harry, he says solemnly, and for a second his eyes outweigh his years. No one.
And by the way he is looking at you, if you weren't so aware of your own misgivings, you might be inclined to believe him.
You're hunched over your latest contribution to Team Flash's crusade when Jesse returns.
You're tired and weary and damn near collapse, but for her you sit up a little straighter. For her, you are alert and ready for whatever she has to throw your way. You expect screaming and fighting and demands to know why but her eyes are already red and puffy, all her tears extinguished from hours of crying in Wally's arms no doubt. She seems composed, so you begin to suspect a lecture is headed your way.
You expect anything other than a hug.
She crashes into you like a meteor cratering the Earth and it hurts. It feels like your lungs are being compacted and your fragile bones are shattering under her Speed Force-enhanced strength. But this is the good kind of pain, because if pain came from Jesse holding you like she is never going to let you go then it can't be bad. You would deal with this pain for eons if it meant she would stay.
But then she realizes she is hurting you and pulls back quickly, depriving you of the only thing you've wanted since you stepped through the portal without her.
I'm sorry, she whispers in a voice thick from sobbing.
You silence her before she can say anymore. This isn't her fault. She isn't to blame, and yet she still feels like she has to shoulder responsibility. It isn't meant to be this way. The father is supposed to care for the daughter, not the other way around.
The second hug is gentler, like you're made of glass. Like you're barely there at all.
You stopped counting a while ago, but it's not long now.
Days, a week if you're lucky. It's not anything you know for sure, but something you can feel in your bones. You've already made the arrangements, spared Jesse those gruesome details. When all is said and done, Harrison Wells will become nothing more than a name immortalized onto a science building in the heart of Central City. Of course, Jesse will be there to run said building and the company that goes along with it. She told you that when this is all over she is moving back to Earth II with Wally to take over STAR Labs, and though Detective West put up a fight at first, who was he to deny the wishes of the daughter of a dying man?
All that's left is the party.
Not a party per say, but a cluster of your favorite people all in one place. The fact that they all made the trip to Earth II just for you is flattering, though completely unnecessary, and you would be willing to argue against the idea if your heart was really in it. But you want to see your friends, and if Earth I is left unprotected for a few days then you can't bring yourself to be bothered. There were other heroes than just The Flash who could pick up the slack.
You sit outside, tip your head back, and enjoy the cool spring weather while everyone else chats under the pavilion. For a while, you can even forget that you're sick. For a while, everyone's worries fade away and you find room to celebrate the small victories, rallying around Iris' engagement as a beacon of hope for a better tomorrow. You look at her and see someone not unlike yourself, fighting to live while the world said otherwise. The only difference between you is that she will survive; if anyone can make it through this ordeal, it is Iris West. Barry would make sure of it, of that you have no doubt.
I see you took my advice, you say to Barry as he takes a seat on the bench next to you. His face flushes a dark red and he runs his fingers through his hair, a nervous habit he's never quite managed to kick.
Yeah, he says as he follows your gaze, both of you watching the festivities unfold. Iris and I, we are going to change the future, and I intend to enjoy every second. Because it's like you said: you never know how much time we have.
Time is elusive. Time is a thief. You will never get to see Jesse finish growing up or get married or take on the world. You will never see your grandchildren or great grandchildren and get to tell them stories about their mother from so long ago. But's time is also a gift - a gift that has granted you a wonderful, heroic daughter who embodies everything you wished you could be. A gift that has brought you fame and fortune and success beyond your wildest dreams. A gift that has shown you love and redemption through all of your failures. A gift that gives you days like today. Days under a bright sunny sky with no cares in the world. Days where Detective West is telling a story and Wally and Iris are laughing so hard that they're crying and Doctor Snow is cozied up next to the Indiana Jones kid and Ramon is busy explaining the upgrades on Jesse's new suit and all you can think about is how fortunate you are to have stumbled upon this odd little family. It's more than you thought you'd ever have, more than you think you are worthy of, and you smile.
We have enough.