Oh, I am very weary, Though tears no longer flow;
My eyes are tired of weeping, My heart is sick of woe.
Anne Bronte
Bette Sans Souci has always wanted to protect. She wanted to be strong enough to shield the innocents, she wanted to be a safeguard against evil and fear. That is why she stood up against bullies picking on the weak when no one would. That is why she entered the military. That is why she became an EOD specialist, to dissect the dangers that were explosives.
So when she becomes the very dangerous thing that almost killed her, when she learns that there is no change, no magical way of reversing the process, it takes all of her inner soldier to not collapse and weep in a broken mess in front of everyone else who looks grim on her behalf. She cannot remember the last time she felt so helpless. She cannot remember the goals she had, the wishes she held in her heart.
Instead her current goal, her mini-mission is to not break apart. She holds herself stiff, willing herself to not explode like the bombs she now creates. She wills herself to not break down and ignore the fact that she cannot remember her long-term goals, her happy wishes.
Dr. Wells reminds her. He approaches her when they are alone together, when she stands alone, seemingly confused.
He knows better, seeing right through her façade of stoic strength. He snarls and then purrs, points out what she already knows quickly in business like, curt tones before delivering his impact in a low-voiced whisper as tempting as the forbidden fruit. And what a sweet forbidden fruit it would be, to destroy the man she knows to be dangerous for the sake of people like Barry Allen, for those who – as the crippled man reminds her – have been forced to lose their entire lives in events completely out of their control.
She takes his words, the paint he offers her and paints a picture, where she becomes a glorious hero, a saviour. A sheepdog protects her flock by destroying any threat to them.
Bette was a sheepdog. Her new flock was threatened – the flock that had tried to help her, hadn't given up on her despite her nearly killing him, despite there being no hope for her – and she would take down that threat with the rage of a mother bear.
Then she would come home. Then she would return to being a happy, carefree sheepdog, watching over her flock family in the green pastures.
The sense of euphoria and happiness at the idea of protecting is strong. It pumps through her bomb-infused blood and veins, thrumming like an explosive themselves. She feels ready to detonate, and perhaps she will.
Bette just hopes to take out Eiling with the blast.
She reaches out her hand to take up the fruit, to pick it up in the destructive hands of hers and sink her teeth into it. To touch, to show Eiling what he wanted to use, what he wanted to unleash upon the world without a care for human life or innocence. To let him feel the fear others would have felt when he used her as a weapon.
Then there is a wind crackling with lightning, and the man that told her the truth is there in his apparel. She envies him, he who has been changed to protect, to use his powers for the better. Unlike her.
Barry Allen stands looking at her, relieved at having reached her in time, but also determined. To stop her.
She snatches her hands away so they will not even have a chance of touching him. He is a part of her flock. She will not hurt him.
Like he did when they first met, and when he first saved her, he reaches out for her. Not with his hands – they both know the danger she is – but with his words, with his eyes, with his sincerity.
"Being a soldier doesn't mean you're a murderer," he says to her, and in his eyes there is the determination to stop her from destroying herself. He is a hero, an angel sent by god to protect those who need to be saved, the kind she wished to be. "Don't become one now."
I did it to protect you, she wants to say, but there is the blasting sound of a gun firing and then she feels the pain in her chest like something rushing her, punching her straight in the center of her torso. The impact is enough to knock her to the ground, and she feels the warm blood in her leaving, spreading on the skin of her chest.
It reminds her of the day the shrapnel from the bomb she thought she had defused ripped through her body. The pain is focused in one area and there is no bomb – except her – but she finds the situation all-too similar as she lies on the ground, bleeding and understanding at last. Eiling tried to manipulate her, shouting about duty and protecting her country. Using her powers to face the enemies of her country and protecting the innocent soldiers.
Eiling was a rough man – too rough, too coarse at manipulation masterful enough to make her overlook his brutish ways and inhumane methods. But now she sees the manipulation of another man, one who was subtle and hidden in shadows, who she had thought she could trust because he was with the people that had tried to help her. Someone she had believed would help her himself.
I would do anything to get back what I lost, Dr. Wells had said to her.
And she would have, as well, which he knew. But what he suggested to her had never been the way. Never the solution to her wish, to get back her normal life. Killing Eiling wouldn't have done a thing to change the fact that she was a liability, a danger. Someone that could never be helpful – and she would have never changed for the better.
He's deceived her masterfully. He's told her a story to make her sympathize, called up on the ways she was taught, invoked the protective instincts within her and pressed on her sense of duty. He played her like a master pianist performing on a grand piano, pressing keys to make her react in just the right way with skill.
She sees that only as she lies dying.
The innocent man is next to her, and she realizes what will happen after her death. The doctor will continue to hold Barry in his hands, continue to whisper into his ear as he whispered into hers. Perhaps he will not send him to destroy, or to take lives, or to immediate danger, but the doctor is manipulative – Barry will be used like a bullet.
She did not succeed in killing Eiling, and for that she will die, and the flock will be pursued. Of that the doctor bound to the wheelchair did not lie - she knows Eiling's character just like he does, and he is a man who seeks talent to take and use as he would before discarding the person like trash after draining them of everything that made them useful to him.
She regrets failing, but she lies to Barry for the sake of letting his soul rest. For the truthful part of her last words, she gasps and tries to warn him of the devil he is near. She is cold, she is dying and she is scared, for both herself and for him, who tried to save her and never gave up. She wants to hold his hand so she can feels his warmth and know that he is real in this world, but she clenches her shirt instead and settles for the desperation in his eyes, proof that someone cared.
She tries to warn him. She fails.