I'm far more obsessed with the idea of doppelgangers than I should be. And it's a little disappointing that the two coolest doppelganger characters, yup, Harrison Wells and Eobard Thawne, never got to meet. And I think a lot of people misread Thawne. Harry would get that. So maybe they should have a conversation.

I make no apologies.

The circumstances were, admittedly, unlikely.

There are far too many pieces that had to come together in order for the conversation to occur that it only happened once, maybe twice, in the endless multitude of universes.

Start with an assumption that the Flash exists, a Harrison Wells exists, and an Eobard Thawne exists. Roughly a million worlds in the multiverse conform to these assumptions. And then there are the conditions.

First, Eobard Thawne had to learn the Flash's real name. This occurred in roughly eighty-eight percent of all potential universes.

Second, things had to go wrong, stranding him in the past with no recourse but to take on the role of Harrison Wells and become the creator of the man whom he despised so completely. Ninety percent flat, compounded with the above.

Third, things had to go right for quite a long time and then go peculiarly, awfully wrong, stranding Mr. Thawne in a bizarre state of stasis where he was semi-aware of the events around him. This lowered the chances to a mere point zero six two percent of those universes already filling the previous conditions.

Fourth, a second Harrison Wells from another, very specifically tailored Earth had to find his way onto one of the few universes in the above situation. Four percent.

Fifth, he had to avoid being killed by the inhabitants of the original Earth. Sixty-two.

Sixth, Eobard Thawne had to stumble upon a way of regaining corporeal form. Seven point one nine.

Seventh, the two men sharing Harrison Wells' face had to meet. Curiously, when the above conditions were fulfilled, they always met.

All told, the chances of having a universe where this precise scenario occurred sums to 0.0001412 percent. One in seven hundred thousand.

There are roughly a million worlds in the multiverse that fulfill the initial assumption.

So, yes, in one of them, this conversation happened.

A conversation between two Harrison Wells.

S.T.A.R. Labs was always quiet at night, even when someone was working late.

Someone was usually working late.

But, regardless, the vast chambers and hallways usually felt ominous enough in the dark that silence fell heavy over the laboratories, aside from the low sounds of the work itself—metal clinking or dry erase markers squeaking.

So Dr. Harrison Wells, sobriquet Harry, heard the soft sound of footsteps in the hallway leading to the Cortex.

He picked up his gun from a couple of tables away and investigated.

Suddenly, the S.T.A.R. Labs night became far less quiet.

"You're him. How are you here?" Harry maintained eye contact, a far more difficult task than it would seem.

After all, one is not usually required to look one's own self in the eye.

"I've been asking myself the same question." For having a very large gun pointed directly at him, Eobard Thawne, sobriquet Dr. Harrison Wells, was remarkably calm.

The two men regarded each other. Both knew who the other was. Though both would warrant a fair amount of fear, neither was afraid.

"You might as well put the gun down," Thawne said finally. "I'm already dead."

"How are you here?" Harry repeated. The gun lowered a fraction of an inch anyway.

"I could ask you the same question." Thawne gave a small smile that faded after a moment. "To be completely honest, I'm not sure. Something of me has been around for the past year. I just now gained…" He trailed off and gestured to himself. "Corporeal form."

"Right. So you're Eobard Thawne."

Thawne inclined his head slightly. "And you're Earth-2's Harrison Wells."

"I would say it's a pleasure to meet you, but you're the bastard from the future who set off a particle accelerator explosion, betrayed everyone in S.T.A.R. Labs, and completely destroyed my reputation before I even arrived." Harry smirked and raised the gun again. "Yeah, so, it's not."

Thawne returned the smirk. "I see I can add you to the list of people who hate me."

"What do I even call you? Thawne? Wells?" He rolled his eyes. "Reverse Flash?"

"Whatever you'd like." He paused. "Harry." Thawne looked away, scoffed. "And unless my very hazy understanding is mistaken, you also set off a particle accelerator explosion. Isn't that why Zoom is terrorizing all of you?"

"At least mine was an accident. At least I didn't betray my only friends."

Thawne's wince was momentary and subtle.

Harry still caught it.

"Ah, but you did betray your friends," Thawne said, turning it around, trying to regain control. That was what he did best, after all—control.

"To save my daughter."

"I just wanted to get home. We're not so different, you and I."

Harry flinched. "You're wrong." His voice rasped as the words came out.

"Really? We both came here trying to do one thing. You wanted to save your daughter. I wanted to return to my own time. But, both of us, we started to care." Thawne took a step forward. "You care about Mr. Allen, Mr. Ramon, Dr. Snow. You never intended to, but you did."

"And you expect me to believe that the man who lied to them for years cared about them? The man who claimed Ramon was like a son to him and then shoved a hand through his chest?" Harry scoffed.

"No, you of all people understand. You know what it's like. They get into your head. They're so pure, so kind, so good." Thawne looked away, let out a brisk laugh. "Never meant to get attached, did we?"

"I am nothing like you!" Harry couldn't resist. He pulled the trigger.

Thawne flinched back, but the shot went straight through him, slowing only a little bit as it passed through his body. He looked down at himself, startled. "Not as corporeal as I thought…"

He shook off the surprise. "You hate me, don't you?"

Harry looked away. Scoffed. Immediately despised himself for acting so much like the other Wells. No—like Thawne.

"Yes." He gritted his teeth. Thought a moment before continuing. "Yes—you claim you cared about them. And yet I come here and I get shot at, I get shot, I get looks—do you think I don't see the way they look at me? The way they stare—they're looking at you, so much to say and they can't get the words out. They can't trust me, and not only me, they can't trust anybody. Because of what you did to them."

Thawne looked down and opened his mouth slightly, considering. Harry knew his own face well enough to tell.

Thawne felt guilty.

"I know," Thawne said finally. "It wasn't what I intended—it wasn't what I wanted. All I wanted was to use them. Get back to my time. End of the story."

"But when you betrayed them…" Harry needed to know. He could hear the tension grating in every word of Thawne's voice, the division between what he'd wanted and what he'd wanted more. "You felt…"

"I played a part for fifteen years. Fifteen years!" He clenched his hands into fists, lifted them slightly. "Pretending to be someone I wasn't. Harrison Wells." He said the name deliberately, slowly, letting it roll off his tongue as though disgusted. Then repeated it, casually, a little resigned. "Harrison Wells." He let out a short laugh and shook his head. "You pretend to be something for fifteen years, it becomes a part of you. It felt like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Did you have that on your Earth?"

Harry offered a nod and a sarcastic, "'If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also'?"

"Mmm. Not quite. 'I was slowly losing hold of my original self… between these two, I now felt I had to choose.' There was a moment when I considered killing off Hyde for good. Forget about Eobard Thawne. This was when they were starting to realize—I'd made too many mistakes. Got impatient. Maybe some part of me wanted them to figure it out."

"Because your life as Harrison Wells was…" Better? Simpler? Realer? Harry didn't finish. He didn't need to.

"Yes. However that sentence would have ended, yes. When they started realizing, I…" He rubbed his face. "Couldn't decide what to feel. Fear? Anger? Pride? Relief? I should have told them, maybe. Maybe. The problem being that I had lied to them for so long. The betrayal happened fifteen years prior. Too late to change my mind."

"That's your real mistake, then." Harry shook his head, thinking about when he took some of Allen's speed. "It's not just that they didn't trust you anymore. You didn't trust them."

Thawne's gaze lifted from the floor to meet Harry's, the blue eyes sharp and accusing. "What does that mean?"

"All that about them being so pure and good, and you never even considered that they would have forgiven you. They forgave me, after all."

"You had a cause, you had your daughter. What did I have?"

Harry laughed. "I've heard a lot about you—that you were a traitor, that you were fast. Mostly, though, that you were smart. Must have been a lie. You're an idiot, Thawne. They would have helped you get home. All it would have required was one conversation."

"I killed his mother."

"Yeah, well, we all make mistakes. I killed a meta who could have helped stop Zoom. It might've taken them some time to forgive you. But for all your famed intelligence, you couldn't see what was right in front of you."

Thawne rolled his eyes. "Getting advice from a man wearing my face when I'm already dead."

"I'm not wearing your face, you're wearing mine," Harry snapped. "Besides, you're not even dead. You never existed. Which makes your presence here more than a little questionable."

"Then all your advice is completely insignificant." Thawne scoffed. "I never existed. In all fairness, you shouldn't exist here either. If I had revealed my secret to them, asked for help, you would never have come to this Earth."

"And yet here we stand." Harry shifted position. "Do you have a plan, Thawne? You've gained semitangible form. What next?"

"It would start with killing you." Thawne didn't bother to sugarcoat it.

"Ah, of course." Harry snickered humorlessly. "Switch places with another Harrison Wells. Good luck with that one. They'd notice."

"I've been watching you for a while. I don't think they would." Thawne smiled. It was not a cheerful smile.

"It might work if you could physically interact with anything." Harry was goading him now. Anticipating.

Thawne reached out. "Maybe I can." He brushed against Harry's left arm, his skin unnaturally cold but certainly tangible. "Look at that." His grin was one of sheer triumph. He immediately gripped Harry's wrist.

"Good." Harry returned the smile.

Then, with his other hand, punched Thawne in the face.

Thawne stumbled against the opposite wall, releasing Harry's wrist, smile gone.

"I've been wishing I could do that for a long time. And this." He lifted his gun.

Thawne, against the wall, laughed darkly. "You forgot something, Harry. I'm the Reverse Flash."

Red lightning crackled in his eyes. "I'm sorry. But to me, you've been—"

Harry, sick of it, shot him. Thawne had expected to finish the line. He hadn't expected to need to move.

A corporeal body comes with corporeal mortality.

The lightning in his eyes faded, and he collapsed into the wall, coughing.

Harry crouched beside him. "Nice try, Thawne. But to me, you never existed."

He stood up and walked away, leaving a dying Eobard Thawne with one last remark over his shoulder: "And it would have been better if you didn't."

The circumstances were unlikely.

But both Harrison Wells should have known, once the circumstances came to pass, this outcome was inevitable.