A/N: I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes.

Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days.

The story this will all be leading to, Once More Unto the Breach, is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!

Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!

THE LIFE HE MADE
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(10 of 24)

Location:
BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER
(ARGUS designation)

His tale upon Earth had started with his crossing paths with another who had found himself on a world other than his own. For him, it was leaving his own planet, seeking another for him to call home, for himself, for his little girl, which had led him to find Earth… the first one. He knew nothing of ARGUS, of designations. What he did know was that his daughter had fallen ill, and he couldn't do anything for her, not on his own, but he knew others had come to call this world home, so maybe one of them would be able to make her better.

The one that did make her better in the end was in fact a human. His name had been Harrison Wells. And he had been on Earth, the one where they landed, even though he came from a different one, though he had not told them about this, not right away. But he had been the one to first come upon their pod. He still remembered looking up from where he sat, holding his feverish child, and seeing the man up there on a small hill, looking back down at them with curiosity, intrigue… and knowledge. How one could look upon a stranger's face and understand at once that their brain was going a mile a minute, examining, hypothesizing… and seeking answers to a question only half asked… He didn't know the man, but he knew at once he was the one who would help his daughter.

And he did. He had approached the two of them, with the caution of one who didn't want to startle this alien being sat before him, and he had crouched and observed the sickly child, touched her face, sought some form of vital signs. They didn't speak the same language, but somehow they had understood each other enough that they had gone about relocating to the man's home, after cloaking the pod out of sight. There, and for days to follow, the man Wells had tended to the child, with the utmost care, and to their relief and astonishment she had slowly gotten better. After two days she had regained consciousness, as a wild thunderstorm filled the sky with loudness and light. And after two more days she was up on her feet, taking in her new surroundings with the fascination and bright-eyed wonder of a child, making her father feel as though she had been granted back to him from the brink of death and, in turn, forever indebted to this Harrison Wells.

Over the year that had followed, the alien and his daughter had remained as guests and companions to the one who'd come to their aid, over time learning to speak his tongue and communicating with him their story, as he shared his own with them, too. That was when the existence of the other Earth, the Breach Earth, had become known to him. Wells had come from there, by accident, and to this day failed – with much frustration, for all he could do – to find a way back there. So he had settled down here, not making too many waves even as he tried to learn as much as he could about this world, and, more importantly, how he might find his way home. He could only imagine what the work he had left behind there had become in his prolonged absence. They likely thought him dead.

Whether they thought it or not, not long after that first year of the alien and his daughter living on Earth, Harrison Wells had died… just as they had found his way home, working in tandem.

Before he'd died, he had begged his friend and ally only one thing… to bring him home. So they had boarded the pod, the alien, the girl, and the dying man, and they had sailed through the breach. It had by no means been an easy journey, to find the exact version of their world Wells had belonged to, but they had done it. He had closed his eyes for good, as he saw that they had in fact made it. Now it was only the two of them, on Earth again, but also somewhere new. Finding their footing here, without an ally, could have been very daunting, but then they weren't without solutions. They had a device, to mask their appearance to the people of Earth, make them appear as humans.

Living in Wells' old home – which had remained intact despite his absence – he had been able to see some of what his departed friend had been able to accomplish, all the things he had been striving to get back to. The thought that it could all be abandoned now in his death… that was when the thought had come to him. If he was to hide himself in the guise of a human, then why not the one who had saved his girl, who had protected them and helped them so much? Then he could carry on his legacy. He wasn't without skill of his own, as he had shown, helping to get them back across the breach. He could learn, he could grow, he had a chance… and so did his girl. And so he had assumed the man's shape and identity. He had become Harrison Wells.

Now, to his daughter's situation. Her own human mask had to be constructed. He had shaped her, that she might easily be seen as his child. And so, Jesse Wells had been born, and with her a reason for her father's prolonged absence. To any who would come to inquire on where he'd been for so long, he would say he had learned he had fathered a child, and so he had gone to find her, to get to know her, before finally bringing her back to his home, after her mother had passed. His wife had died, when their girl had been very small still, too small for her to really remember her at all. But she had always found comfort in imagining what life might have been like with her there with them, and so to create a world where little Jesse had been raised with her mother had not been too difficult for her at all.

That was how their lives had begun, on Breach Earth, on their corner of it. After a time, the other Earth they had lived on for a year, even their own world – for Jesse in particular – had all become something in the past, something they never talked about too much. This was their life now, and they needed to embrace it, to become… the Wells family. It was all easier said than done, truth be told. They could never completely forget that they were not those people they pretended to be every day, though it was always easier for Jesse to do it. She had been small enough when they'd come that, as the years started to add on, Earth was just… home… It was what she really knew. The two of them, father and daughter, were like opposing points of view on what their living here was about. She was growing, expending, into a life that was all her own, and he… he could only hold on to where they had come from, why they had ended up here, and what his purpose here continued to be.

He had grown skilled enough in impersonating his dead friend that even people who had known him before had been fooled, time and again. As it turned out, Harrison Wells hadn't been the most 'out there' person, which worked in his favor as far as melding into his life. The more time he had to learn, develop his base of knowledge and skill, it only strengthened the assumption that he was and had always been Harrison Wells.

But Jesse… Oh, Jesse…

His girl was smart, rivaling him on many levels. She attended school, but it was clear to anyone who would see her there, see her work, that she had stopped being challenged there almost immediately. So she had gone higher, and higher, her education completed by the time she had turned fifteen. She could have carried on… She chose not to. There was something else pulling her focus now.

Leaving their old world, he knew there was the possibility of side effects, for both of them, depending on where they landed. The sicker she would get as they sailed, there was always this concern in him that he would be brought down to some planet which would only finish her off. Earth had not been one of those. She had recovered here, under the care of the original Wells, and she had thrived. As the years had passed and the only extraordinary traits his Jesse showed were ones of intelligence, he had been left to believe she would continue on in this way.

There had been an incident, sometime three years past now, and what came of it… He had believed at first it was a consequence, but eventually he'd realized it wasn't… It was a trigger. The chance had been in her already, just dormant, waiting for something to flip the switch. And now that something had arrived.

Like the night she had first awakened after their landing on Earth, there had been a thunderstorm, hardly a common thing around this part of Breach Earth, now that he thought about it. What he was told later was that Jesse had attempted to save some kids who'd gotten caught up in a playground game when the storm had hit, and she had been struck by lightning. This had been told to him by a doctor at the hospital, and all Wells could think was that any one test they ran on her could let them see she was not human, and then… if she lived… who knew what would become of them. He had been working through any number of potential ways out of this as he waited to be allowed to see her. None of them sounded particularly safe, but so long as he got her safe he wasn't all that concerned with what would happen to him.

When he had been approached by a woman, flanked by a pair that looked like soldiers, he felt like it was all over, unless he ran, found Jesse, took her away from here. They'd get back on their pod and fly away if they had to, leaving the way they'd come, with his desperation for her safety. But the woman who'd come to him, who introduced herself as an Agent Sharpe from ARGUS, was not here to lock him or his daughter up in some lab to be dissected, no. She, and her team, was coming to help. They knew he wasn't the real Harrison Wells, knew he and Jesse were not human. But they wanted to help her, before their secret could be discovered by anyone who would do all those things he had been afraid they'd do.

It was the second time he had been forced to make a quick judgment call, to trust a stranger with his daughter. But again he made it, and he agreed the help of the agent and her people.

When he finally saw Jesse, it was as they were taking her out of the hospital to take her to the ARGUS building, which he learned in time to be like an outpost, out here on this part of Breach Earth. She wouldn't have looked too different to anyone who saw the face she'd been projecting all these years, set to progress along with her as she grew. But he saw her true face, and what he saw filled him with a terror. She had grown so pale, almost ghostly white, her skin, her hair… As time progressed, it would somehow get to seep out into her human shape, too.

He had been there, part of the process as she was examined, as tests were run, and the changes he had seen as physical alone turned out to run much deeper now. His daughter had awakened again, crackling with electricity. She had been struck by lightning, and now she was the lightning… electric… a live wire.

The more they had grown to understand this condition of hers, understand the things it allowed her to do, and why, he couldn't help but show concern. Jesse didn't share his opinion, far from it. She found it all fascinating. She wanted to investigate just what she could do, how much power she had. In great parts, she seemed to have some instinctual understanding of it. The more she learned, her outer face didn't show the signs of her transformation, but, if sufficiently triggered, then the change to her appearance would be near instantaneous.

Over the past three years, as they dealt with the results of that fateful day, he discovered that the fears he'd had over their being captured were only one end of the spectrum of how bad this could get. Yes, they were free, but she had changed, and ever since then, bit by bit, it felt like they were growing further and further apart. She was still his Jesse, for the most part, but she was distant. She kept secrets from him now, he was sure of it. What was she doing with these abilities of hers? Before they'd gone their separate ways, three years past, Agent Sharpe had told him they would keep in touch, which he had taken to mean that, should Jesse's situation become a danger to others, then they would be forced to step in, to stop her.

"Hey, Dad," her voice caught his attention and he looked around, until he saw her face on the screen hung from his wall. A moment later, with a burst of electricity, she emerged from that screen and appeared fully formed before him. Her outer face had turned its ghostly shade.

"Jesse…" he spoke, his voice flat. What had she been doing that she looked like this? Her fingers were wrapped in tendrils of blue sparks. If he touched her, he would be zapped. "Where have you been?

"Out… About… Across…" she counted along on her fingers. Across… Across the breach? "It's not that hard, you know," she shrugged, "When you're like me. But then you're not, are you?"

"I don't know what's come over you, but it needs to stop," he tried to keep his voice steady.

"Does it?" she asked, looking back at him. "What's come over me, as you say, is simple… I've finally accepted this was always what I was meant to become, ever since we came to this world."

"Earth enabled you to become this, but you don't…"

"Earth did nothing, it was him," she said, pointing her finger so sharply at his face that he flinched, thinking she was about to shoot electricity at him. It took another moment for him to process the accusation she had made.

"What are you saying? Wells… he saved you."

"Oh, he did, and don't misunderstand, I am glad he did what he did, gave me this power, but you know what they say, credit where credit's due." She looked at him for a moment, smiling. "You really thought this just happened? Dad, come on," she chuckled, and sounded like rolling thunder. "I didn't remember any of it," she went on, "Not for a long time. I guess I was still a bit feverish, when I first woke up. But it's been coming back to me, little by little, this nagging memory working its way to the surface," she spun her finger in a circle at the side of her head. "And when I went back to that other Earth, to the place where we lived with him… It's still there, by the way, a bit worse for wear, no one's been there since we left all those years ago. I went there, and then finally it came back to me, lying there, weak, awake. I remember him, examining me. I didn't understand English at the time, but I guess looking back on it now, it all came into focus. He was apologizing. It was the only way, that was what he said. It was the only way. He wanted me to live so bad, he changed me. I don't think he even knew what it would do to me, probably figured it did nothing except what it was supposed to do after a while. Saved my life. Oh, I wish he could see me now," she shook her head with a smile.

It was all so much for him to take in. He didn't understand the other Wells' words in the beginning either, and maybe by the time he did, the other man had decided he was better off not knowing what the price had been for his daughter's well-being.

"Jesse…"

"Just wanted to say I think I'll be checking out a bit more of this Main Earth out there. Did you know that's what they call it, back at ARGUS? Main Earth, like it's so special. Anyway, take care of yourself, Dad."

"Wait…" he tried to go for her, but in a flash she was already gone, and he was alone… all so very alone, with the face he now saw reflected in a windowpane. The face of the man he had seen as their savior, the man he had become, to honor that feeling, the man… who had turned his little girl into this creature she was turning into. She was alive, she was… but what would be the cost, when all this was said and done?

THE END

Check out the next prelude, coming April 25th!