I just want Eddie and Ronnie back, so this came to me last night and I had to write it. More like a long headcanon than a real story, but I had to get it out of me. Hope you all enjoy!
Iris would be safe. Barry and the others would all be safe now. That was all that mattered.
Eddie gasped, choking on the feeding tube down his throat. His vision blurred but he could make out his arms, his upper body bare, an IV and monitors hooked up to him, and his wrists secure to a hospital bed with restraints like some dangerous criminal or mental patient. He tried to call out around the tube—failed, choked again.
"Get that out of him, Hart. Now. He'll do more damage to himself with it in," a vaguely familiar but strange sounding female voice said from somewhere nearby.
"What do you think I'm trying to do, Lisa?" a snippy male voice replied as firm but small hands pressed down on Eddie's shoulders from behind his head. "Calm down. Stop thrashing and I can help you."
Eddie's instincts were to protest, fight, keep struggling, but he knew that was foolish. With his hands bound to the bed, he couldn't remove the tube himself. He stilled, relaxing as best he could, but still coughing, choking around the tube.
"Please, you don't need to restrain us like this," another male voice called—Ronnie, Eddie recognized immediately, somewhere to his left. "He knows me. I can help."
"We'll remove the restraints only after we've confirmed your identities and can rest assured you mean no harm to anyone here." That voice Eddie also knew—the firm, cold tone, the clipped, elegant twist to the words.
It was Snart. Leonard Snart. His sister Lisa. And Hartley Rathaway.
The voices, the names, all clicked into place as the feeding tube was finally pulled from Eddie's throat, sending him into a coughing fit once it was free that made his chest ache right over his…
Heart. His heart, where he'd shot himself point blank to erase Eobard from existence. Eddie had died. He should be dead.
"I've told you," Ronnie continued, "whatever you believe about the Ronnie Raymond and Eddie Thawne from your world, we're not them. You know that. You saw how we arrived here. Please…"
Your world? Were they no longer in their own world, Eddie wondered? He didn't remember anything after blacking out other than Iris' face in anguish, knowing even as he hated to see her suffering that things would be better now, because she'd be safe, they'd all be safe.
"What…" Eddie tried between coughs, "what…"
"Don't try to talk," Lisa said, sounding…caring, concerned. "You're recovering from a traumatic gunshot wound, Mr. Thawne. You were dead when you arrived here, and we only barely brought you back. You need to rest and stay calm."
Right. At least Eddie wasn't wrong about the dying part, but where was he now that Lisa Snart could sound so tender and sincere, and he and Ronnie were tied to hospital beds?
Finally, Eddie settled, resting his head back and glancing to the side where he'd heard Ronnie's voice. His eyes focused enough to see the other man lying on a hospital bed as he was, but fully clothed, not looking at all injured, and yet still restrained by his wrists.
Leonard Snart stood between the beds, collected, discerning. He wore a simple blue button down and long black trench coat over slacks. But it was the detective badge hanging from his neck that caught Eddie's attention.
"It's okay, Eddie, you're okay," Ronnie said. "There's no easy way to say this, but…after you died, negating Wells—Eobard—caused a paradox. It opened a singularity above the city that would have destroyed everything."
Shit. What? Maybe Eddie hadn't thought his plan through well enough. He certainly hadn't considered possible scientific ramifications of killing himself to prevent a descendant from ever being born.
"Barry tried to stop it, but he wasn't enough," Ronnie went on. "Martin and I had to go to the mouth of the thing and separate right at the pinnacle, it was the only way to give off enough energy to close it. It worked, but…I got sucked in. When it first opened, your body was sucked in too. Somehow we ended up here, right here in the labs just…not our labs."
"You're in an alternate reality, Mr. Thawne," Hartley said excitedly as he and Lisa appeared at Eddie's right.
They both looked so similar and yet so different from how Eddie knew them. Lisa's makeup was softer, a lab coat on over a flattering but modest dress. Hartley was dressed sharply in a nice button down like Snart, but wore a kind smile Eddie was certain the Hartley from—he had to think it now—his world rarely if ever displayed.
Snart released a heavy sigh that drew Eddie's attention to him. "While that seems to be the truth, that in no way guarantees you aren't as dangerous as your counterparts here. Our Ronald Raymond died in a shootout three months ago, as one of the main enforcers for the head crime boss in Central City, Joe West. And Eddie Thawne just pissed that same West off after working for him for the past year only to run off with his daughter and elope. They've been playing a Bonnie and Clyde act ever since they escaped to Coast City. You aren't the type of people we just let go, even if we did save your life," he shot at Eddie.
Holy shit. Eddie had to take a moment to process all of that.
"But we're not those people," Ronnie spoke up again. "Eddie's a detective in our world, like you. I worked here at S.T.A.R. Labs. Your counterparts are the criminals. Please," he dropped his head back to the bed, looking exhausted, like he'd been arguing these points for hours—maybe he had been, "we just want to find a way home."
"That isn't going to be easy," Hartley said. "You're talking about an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, Mr. Raymond. A wormhole. Which is entirely theoretical. If yours was created by a paradox event, as you say, you're lucky you ended up anywhere. Wormholes need a point of exit to ensure someone actually gets from point A to point B safely. It dropped you here, sure, but even if we could recreate something like that, you'd need another wormhole in your world to ensure you arrive where you want to go."
"But that's exactly what we had!" Ronnie cried. "Couldn't you send us back to the very moment we left, back to the wormhole that brought us here?"
"That's only if we could create one ourselves."
"Well…" Lisa spoke up, crossing her arms and gaining a smirk that was much more akin to what Eddie was used to from her. "When you consider the amount of genius scientific minds we know, and all of the data we collected here in the labs from their arrival…it's not completely out of the realm of possibility."
Hartley turned to her with a skeptical eyebrow raise. "That would take months of research, Lisa, planning, experiments…"
"So? If we succeed, it's a scientific breakthrough, and they'd still arrive at the point they left, so their side wouldn't even know the difference."
Eddie's head was swimming.
"Please…" Ronnie said again.
"We'll look into it," Snart said, crossing his arms like his sister, but looking stoic compared to the others, distrusting. "In the meantime, you have your work cut out for you proving to us it's safe to release you, and that it wouldn't be a disservice to your world to send you back to it. So you better be telling us the truth that you aren't the same level of scum we've dealt with here."
"I swear to you. We're the good guys."
Eddie still couldn't believe there was a world where The Rogues were the good guys.
"Lisa, Hart," Snart turned to the others, "I need to return to the precinct. Don't remove the restraints on either of them until I make the call."
"Whatever you say, Citizen Cold," Hartley said with a teasing salute, to which Snart scowled darkly. "Oh come on, it's not like it matters if they know your secret identity. You exist in their world too."
"Actually, in our world, it's Captain Cold," Ronnie said.
Snart scrunched his face in distaste. "Captain of what? Why Captain? I thought you said I was a criminal, not still part of the CCPD."
"Right, well…Cisco comes up with most of the names," Ronnie shrugged.
"Ramon?" Lisa said with a touch of interest, and that was familiar to Eddie too. "What?" she said when Hartley snorted and Snart glared at her. "Just because he's evil doesn't mean he isn't cute."
Cisco evil? Now Eddie had heard it all.
The next several days went by in a haze for Eddie while he recovered. Thankfully, since he wasn't going anywhere, they removed his restraints early on, but it took some convincing before Snart let Ronnie out of his bed. When he finally did, Snart watched Ronnie like a hawk and had someone else around to watch him when he was gone.
That was how Eddie eventually met this universe's Mick Rory, who was fire chief of Central City and a longtime friend of Snart's who'd been quick to take up the call and help after metas started appearing. He was still Heat Wave by night, when not on call, but also for good rather than evil. Their costumes must have kept more of their faces hidden to maintain their secret identities, but it seemed that, like in Eddie's world, The Flash and Citizen Cold both knew who each other was. Snart knew the identities of most of the villains, but the villains seemed to know him and his crew too even if the public was unaware.
In the grand scheme of things, Joe West as a crime boss was small potatoes compared to the growing meta population, but then Joe had The Flash on his side since he had still raised Barry alongside Iris in this universe.
Eddie didn't get the full story, only bits and pieces. The Accelerator creating metas was a real accident here, not crafted by Wells. Lewis Snart had owned and ran S.T.A.R. Labs before dying in the explosion, leaving the labs to Lisa, who it seemed was more like Eddie's world's Caitlin in her profession. Hartley and several other metas helped the side of good, but most others wreaked havoc on the city, led by The Flash, including Vibe which Eddie learned was Cisco's alias. He had no idea Cisco was a meta, though of course that wasn't necessarily true in their world.
"I still can't imagine The Flash playing hero," Eddie overheard Hartley say during one of his less fuzzy days.
"I told you, he's not as bad as you think," Snart replied, surprising Eddie. Ronnie was gone, which had to mean he was with Rory somewhere. "That's why we have our deal. He's a reckless kid, playing at a game bigger than he is, but he doesn't let innocent people get involved. West taught him that."
"But you still played it up like our Raymond and Thawne were scum."
"They were scum. Criminals only killing criminals doesn't absolve them of their crimes, Hart, but I didn't want this Raymond and Thawne thinking they could swindle me. They seem to be on the level. We'll see. In the meantime, if we're actually going to send them home someday, you know what you have to do."
"I still can't believe you're making me work with Ramon. You know what an arrogant—"
"His meta powers can help us with this."
"But—"
"Lisa will make sure he behaves. Just play nice. Flash will be here too. If he wants to keep me from hauling his ass to the new meta wing of Iron Heights, he'll play along. He helped our Thawne and West's daughter get out of Central right under West's own nose. He cares about the guy. He'll help this version. And Killer Frost still mourns her husband."
"Yeah, about that. I don't know if it's a good idea for Mick—"
"Don't pry, Hart."
"Right. You would say that."
Eddie didn't hear how Snart responded, as he slipped back into unconsciousness, but the conversation made him wonder: if things were somewhat cordial here between their versions of Team Flash and The Rogues, did that mean The Rogues of his world weren't such terrible people either? Eddie doubted it, they'd been burned by Snart already, but if he believed in time travel and ending up in an alternate reality, he supposed he could believe some villains might not be as bad as they seemed.
It was weeks before Eddie was out of the hospital bed, but once that happened, it was a treat just to be able to cross the labs to the bathroom on his own, and sit at a table to enjoy a real, full meal, even if he still needed to rest most hours of the day. Ronnie no longer had an escort everywhere he went, though he wasn't allowed out of the labs, seeing as how he had a dead man's face. And they didn't worry about Eddie, since he was still in recovery.
For the most part, Eddie rested while Ronnie helped Team Cold work on their wormhole—they didn't call themselves The Rogues here—which indeed seemed months out before completion if possible at all.
Cisco was confident they could get it to work, as was Barry, which was the surrealist part of the whole ordeal so far—seeing his friends both bearing cocky swaggers and making jabs at the heroes in the labs the way Eddie was used to from Snart the other way around. Neither of them seemed really mean spirited—well, maybe Cisco around Hartley a little, but that wasn't too far off from their world either—but they were still criminals, still the bad guys.
Barry's suit looked the same except with added accents in black. Cisco had a suit of his own, the same color scheme as Barry's but in different patterns. Barry himself looked the same, his smile the same, but Cisco sported a goatee and shorter hair. He flirted mercilessly with Lisa, which she brushed off but occasionally gave into, a reversal again of what Eddie saw at home.
But Len and Barry seemed downright comfortable with each other, even as nemeses. Eddie stopped thinking of Len as just Snart after the first week with Barry and Cisco around. These people had taken them in, saved his life, and were working to get him and Ronnie home, calling in favors from their enemies to do so. Using Len's first name seemed a fair response.
Eventually, weeks turned into months, and during that time Eddie and Ronnie met the rest of Team Cold—like Mardon, Baez, some guy with a mirror trick Eddie wasn't sure he understood—and they also met the rest of this universe's Team Flash.
Caitlin was jarring as Killer Frost, fierce and frightening, especially when she met Ronnie, wanting to keep her distance from the man who was and was not her husband, which Ronnie understood.
Part of Eddie wished Iris was there, but then his own self would be there as well, and that just got complicated. At least in some universe he and Iris got to live happily ever after, even if she was the daughter of a mob boss and he a runaway criminal sweeping his boss's daughter off her feet.
"You and Joe are partners? Both detectives? Crazy!" Barry laughed one day, eating lunch with Eddie in the kitchen. Eddie finally didn't need naps during the day anymore, his bullet wound just a healed over scar.
"He didn't exactly approve of me and Iris in my world either."
"Oh, Joe will get over it here. He likes our Eddie fine, just overprotective. He'd have chased them to Coast City right away if he really wanted to put a bullet in Eddie's back."
Eddie choked on his sandwich at the casual way Barry said that, like the thought of Joe actually killing someone didn't faze him. It was as if, in this world, the heart of everyone was the same, their base nature, but circumstances were different, nurturing them in different directions. It was unsettling, but also filled Eddie with a strange sort of hope in regards to The Rogues back home, especially when a kinder, gentler Mick Rory walked in.
"No dawdling now, Flash," he said, moving to make his own sandwich for lunch. "You eat your family sized share and get back to work. We've got history to make and people missing their home over here."
Eddie had discovered that Mick took family very seriously, even though he didn't have any living blood relatives. Team Cold was his family. It seemed like part of Team Flash was becoming family for him too, though Eddie hadn't wanted to vocalize that too loudly around Ronnie.
"Don't be such a hothead," Flash grinned at him, downing a few more quick bites. "I know my schedule. Gotta come up with something really special for my next heist to make up for all this manual labor you got me doing."
"Yeah, well the sooner you move your ass and finish building that—what did Ramon call it?"
Eddie supplied, "Stargate?" vaguely recalling the movie reference.
Barry laughed. "It totally looks like that in the plans. I'll get it done today. Can't speed through something until you understand how it works, or I might put something vital in the wrong spot. We got this." He patted Eddie on the back as he got up to leave the kitchen.
Len hadn't been wrong about Barry taking this personally. Even though Eddie and Ronnie weren't strictly HIS Eddie and Ronnie, they were still part of his team, as far as Barry was concerned.
Now that Eddie was healed, he felt restless not being able to help, but unable to leave the labs any more than Ronnie could. He wandered into the room where they were building this 'Stargate' for them, something stable to create their wormhole in so that this time it didn't destroy several blocks of Central City when it opened.
Ronnie had worked here before, he could help with the calculations, the science. Eddie stood by and watched, awed by the mismatched crew working side by side for his and Ronnie's sakes. Not all of Team Flash or Cold had the knack for engineering or physics or whatever theoretical work was involved, but some could help with manual labor. Mark, for example, could feed more electricity into the Stargate than any manmade energy source.
Shawna materialized beside Eddie, making him jump. "Yeah, they make me feel pretty useless sometimes too. Must suck being cooped up."
Eddie shrugged, smiling at her. All of them were so welcoming, he'd started to consider them real friends weeks ago. "I don't expect to be entertained while you're already doing so much for me."
"Pfft," she waved a hand, "just because we're heroes doesn't mean we need Team Flash to teach us how to cut loose."
"Going to subject the poor guy to board games and movie night, Peek-A-Boo?" Cisco called from his station beside Hartley.
"What of it, Vibe? You above a good game of Risk?"
Barry paused through his speeding assembly of new parts for the Stargate, laughing. He seemed to enjoy puns more than Len did back in their world.
When the day's work was done, they actually did end up playing a board game, Clue, and then watching the movie, which Barry thought was only too funny, given several known criminals were in the ranks of Team Cold for the festivities. And yet they all seemed to get along so well, Eddie often forgot that these people weren't usually on the same side.
Lisa seemed to bring out a sweeter smile from Cisco, one that Eddie found more familiar.
Caitlin softened out of her icy demeanor being close to Mick, of all people, though she had warmed to Ronnie enough that she could at least smile at him, chat with him, and not turn a cold shoulder. Mick and Ronnie seemed to have grown rather close as well.
But it was usually Len and Barry that pulled Eddie's attention, as the respective leaders of their teams. In the beginning, however comfortable around each other they might have seemed, Len had still put up a wall around Barry, while remaining affable enough to enlist his help, and Barry would always push, tease a little too far, try to get under Len's skin. Now they'd have these quiet moments, where neither was guarded or putting up any fronts, where both just seemed honest and raw. In those moments Barry was most like the Barry Allen from Eddie's world, and Len…was a good friend that Eddie enjoyed seeing happy and relaxed.
"We could never do something like this back in our world," Ronnie said when the movie ended, everyone doing their part to clean up and go their separate ways, leaving Eddie and Ronnie and whoever would be on watch with them for the night.
"Before these last few months with you two here," Lisa said, nudging Ronnie as she breezed past him, "we wouldn't have been able to either. The last time we tried working with Team Flash for a common good, they up and betrayed us."
"You mean turned things to our advantage," Barry corrected her with a teasing smirk.
"Right," Lisa rolled her eyes. But there was no real animosity there, between any of them.
It was Len that night who stayed with Eddie and Ronnie. It wasn't an issue of not trusting them now, but wanting to protect them, watch over them. "I'm sorry for what happened to you," he said when they were alone. "I really am. But I think it was a catalyst we needed. We're lucky to know you."
It was only a few weeks later, six months from when they first appeared in this world, that the joined teams announced that the Stargate was as ready as it would ever be, and they were ready to try opening a wormhole.
When it actually worked, a stable wormhole framed within the circular portal, Eddie and Ronnie looked at each other, unsure how to express their gratitude, or that, as much as they longed to return home, they would miss the friends they'd made here.
"All of our calculations say this should work, sending you right back to the moment when the wormhole in your world closed, six months ago," Hartley explained.
"But if we appear at the mouth of the wormhole, we'll be several stories up," Ronnie said. "With Martin and I separated, all three of us will fall."
"You said your combination with the professor is more or less instantaneous now," Caitlin said. "The pulse from your separation will have still closed the wormhole just as you come through it, so you need to reach him fast enough to combine again."
"You'll just have to catch me," Eddie smiled, feigning nonchalance when in actuality he had a bit of a problem with heights. And dying a second time. "Or maybe Barry can. You just focus on becoming Firestorm so you can fly yourself somewhere safe."
"If Barry doesn't catch you, I will," Ronnie assured him, closing a strong hand around Eddie's shoulder. They'd grown close over the months too, when before this adventure they hadn't really known each other well.
"You ready?" Barry grinned at them, all teeth and dimples like the Barry they were hopefully about to go home to.
Before heading into the portal, Eddie turned to Len. "After six months getting to know all of you, I don't know what we're supposed to do when we get home as if none of this happened."
Len inclined his head with a warm smile. Eddie decided it was a much better expression than any smirk he'd seen from Captain Cold. Citizen Cold was something better, something greater, but not impossible for their Leonard Snart to achieve someday. "Just make us a promise, Eddie. You do for your teams what you did for ours. Hopefully…they'll surprise you."
Eddie looked around at all of them, all the Rogues that weren't Rogues, all of Team Flash that wasn't the same as the Team Flash back home, and tried to remember the things about all of them that were the same here, and the things that weren't that maybe…could be.
He turned back to Ronnie. With a nod, together they ventured into the unknown.
Eddie hated heights. And the thought of dying—again. Falling definitely made that worse.
Air rushed past him as he fell from the singularity. His velocity made it difficult to see much, but he caught sight of Ronnie diving seemingly without fear after Stein. And there was Barry's lightning, racing down the side of a building to catch Stein as well.
Distantly, Eddie heard, "Get Eddie!" as Ronnie reached Stein before Barry could, and the pair erupted into flames.
The next thing Eddie knew, red gloved hands were around him, trying to slow their descent. They landed hard, tumbling against the wall of another building, but only enough to wind Eddie, not really hurt, and not cause his untimely death for the second time that…well, technically that day.
"Eddie!" Barry cried in amazement, even though he had listened to Ronnie and turned to catch him. "How? You…you were dead! You're not even bleeding!"
Eddie laughed. He really couldn't help it. He reached for Barry just as his friend reached for him, pulling each other into a tight embrace. "It's a long story, Barr, but I'm okay. I'm okay…"
Firestorm landed with ease in front of them moments later as the remains of the singularity dissipated down to nothing. Ronnie and Stein separated, Ronnie laughing as Eddie had and hugging the older man before racing without pause or thought to reach his wife when all the rest of Team Flash came running over to them from around the corner.
Over Barry's shoulder, Eddie saw Iris—the one face he hadn't been able to see these many months. The most important person he'd wanted to save, to be a hero for just once. Somehow, by miracles and science and the diligence of good (and some still learning) people he had not only succeeded in his task but come out of it alive.
The look of shock, of fearful disbelief that she might be imagining things when she saw him there, and the tears that overflowed in her eyes, hands flying up to her mouth, was the sight Eddie had envisioned, motivating him to not lose hope when he was worlds away.
He squeezed Barry once more for good measure before letting go. They helped each other stand, and when Eddie turned to face the others, all catching up now to look on in shock that he was there amongst them, alive, it was all he could do to keep from running over to Iris as Ronnie had run to Caitlin. In the end he didn't need to—she ran to him first.
"Oh my god, Eddie," Iris cried, squeezing even tighter than Barry had, "you're alive! You're here!"
"And never leaving your side again if I can help it." Finally, he allowed himself a moment to close his eyes, to just breathe Iris in and revel in how this had worked, they'd made it home, they'd survived, and those they loved didn't even have to feel their absence.
Eddie didn't want to imagine how difficult it would have been all those many months without them, thinking they were both dead.
He was bombarded with questions each time a new person hugged him. They didn't realize they had nearly lost Ronnie too until the pair of them explained just where they had been and who had saved them.
"Cold, seriously?" Cisco balked.
"And a villain version of you, among others," Ronnie laughed at Cisco's dumbfounded look, hugging his wife to his side. "But they weren't so bad in the end, right, Eddie?"
"Nope, none of them." Eddie thought of Len, Lisa, Hart, and the others. He felt a comradery for The Rogues that he knew wouldn't, couldn't be the same here in their world, but maybe. Maybe. "Let's go home. We have a lot more to tell you."
They headed off, but for now Iris was safe. Barry and the others were all safe too. And finally, Eddie and Ronnie could be safe with them.
THE END