Summary: The last thing Eobard expected on the night the accelerator activated was for Hartley to be electrocuted, go into a coma, and display nascent signs of a potential speedster. But that's exactly what happened when the accelerator failure went off without a hitch.
It's a complication Eobard doesn't want to deal with - Barry Allen is supposed to be the first speedster and the Flash and now Eobard has concerns Hartley might endanger his plans - but in some ways having someone he does care about sharing the same circumstances as Joe West's foster son does make Eobard's life a lot easier...
Notes: Part of the Speedsters and Vibes series, acts as a prequel to the story "Rip Van Winkle"
Eobard is being so sketchy here, but it was so much fun to write... (though to be fair, unless I'm writing the alt timeline hero!Eobard, when isn't Eo being sketchy?)
Speaking of Family
Eobard knows the damage to his spine is temporary. At worst it'll take a few months to heal once the Speed Force wakes up and he can reconnect to it again, since the Negative Speed Force isn't exactly known for healing wounds. It's still frustrating to be wheelchair bound, but it's worth the cover story it'll give him down the line. A man with documented paralysis couldn't possibly be the Reverse Flash, after all.
So ultimately it's not the wheelchair that's put Eobard into a foul mood.
He'd planned the accelerator failure down to the second and it had, technically, gone off without a hitch. While Eobard had intended for Hartley and Ronnie to work together to redirect the explosion and both survive, it's not really that big of a deal that Hartley was knocked unconscious and Ronnie perished in the explosion. Sure, Eobard feels badly for Caitlin's loss - he remembers what it felt like to take on Harrison Well's near-crippling grief over Tess Morgan's death - but she'll grieve and move on with her life in time. And while Eobard had personally liked Ronnie... this timeline wasn't intended to last, anyway.
It was a throwaway timeline and in the real timeline - the one that mattered and that Eobard's mistake had shattered - Ronnie Raymond and Caitlin Snow never knew each other anyway. He was one half of Firestorm and she was the future Killer Frost. While there was poetry to their love... they were diametric opposites and Ronnie's heroism would only serve to hold back Snow's true nature as Frost. So, ultimately, even Eobard's sadness over Ronnie's demise wasn't what had upset him so much.
No, what upset him was that Hartley...
Hartley was an unexpected bright spot in what was otherwise fourteen years of drudgery at a point in time where science was on the verge of breakthroughs that were taught as building blocks during Eobard's high school days. He was brilliant, catching on to concepts in moments that nearly all his peers, save for Cisco Ramon, could spend months struggling with and still not understand. He'd become Eobard's chess partner and, more importantly, Eobard's friend. He'd never really had one of those before, but Hartley... Hartley made him watch bad television when Eobard overworked himself and foreign films on weekends off. Hartley learned to add Latin to the already impressive repertoire of languages he could speak solely to torment Eobard with ridiculously translated memes. And Eobard had responded in kind, firing back with the Latin equivalents to modern cliches. They drove each other nuts and it was fun.
In the real timeline, Hartley was a nobody. The Pied Piper, a vigilante who zigzagged across the invisible line of heroism and villainy in the name of social justice. Eobard had never really paid attention to him, something he'd come to realize with this Hartley had been a mistake. Because Hartley's brilliance was innate, not a product solely of the changes to the timeline; that genius had truly been wasted on techno flutes and acting as the Rogues' IT guy.
But now Hartley couldn't tease Eobard in Latin or threaten to inflict teenaged vampire angst on him for brooding in his office late at night. Because Hartley Rathaway was in a coma. One with symptoms that looked very familiar to Eobard indeed.
For some speedsters, the change from normal human to something more was instantaneous. But that was rare indeed. More often than not, a metamorphosis of some kind was necessary. Eobard himself had suffered from uncomfortable seizure-like symptoms for several months before his speed finally began to assert itself. He'd been fortunate enough not to suffer from a coma as well, but comas, inexplicable healing rates, and 'seizures' where the subjects heart rate jumped up to inhuman speeds was pretty much the norm. Eventually a speedster's resting heart rate would settle on a speed that in normal humans would be cause for alarm, but made the jump from interacting with the world the way regular humans did to interacting with the world processing seconds like hours so much easier.
And Hartley had just exhibited one of those seizures experienced by... proto-speedsters. And, according to the concerned doctors that Eobard had to shoo away from Hartley's room to prevent unnecessary electroshocks to his heart, it wasn't the first either.
Cisco had looked frightened, witnessing Hartley's unconscious body shaking on the bed. To someone with no idea what was going on, it must be quite terrifying to view. Fortunately Eobard had arrived in time to successfully ward of Hartley's parents. For now anyway. He'd need to visit Hartley's apartment, though, and collect the medical power of attorney documents Hartley kept in the safe in his hall closet in case Hartley's parents attempted to push the issue from a legal standpoint. The notarized documentation, however, gave Eobard the right to make all of Hartley's medical decisions while Hartley himself was unable to do so and gave him the power to remove Hartley from the hospital. To bring him back to STAR Labs where he'd be safe from prying eyes as his enhanced healing factor began to assert itself.
The last thing Eobard wanted was for complete strangers to start eying Hartley as a potential lab rat or worse. Besides...
Hartley wasn't meant to be a speedster and this was a complication Eobard needed to keep a close eye on.
"I promise, Hartley," Eobard told the unconscious young man, putting a hand on his shoulder, "I will take good care of you."
Once Eobard had Cisco sitting with Hartley in his stead - in case Hartley had another seizure, Cisco would hopefully be able to enforce Eobard's orders that the doctors not use the defibrillator on him, though it wouldn't really hurt Hartley in the long run if Cisco wasn't assertive enough for the task - it was time to seek out the other nascent speedster in the building. For, as luck would have it, Eobard and Hartley had been brought to the same hospital as Barry Allen had been.
Of course, it wasn't really luck, but years of planning starting with the location of STAR Labs and the CCPD in regards to hospitals in the city, but hospital overflow could have led to them being taken to different places anyway. Fortunately, Eobard's plans had panned out here too.
Eobard had been released several days ago after his own condition stabilized, though even before that release he'd spent most of his time in Hartley's rooms, keeping watch over the young man who'd become his friend. Cisco going back and forth between the hospital and STAR Labs to coordinate the cleanup on Eobard's behalf... but also clearing a place in the cortex that could be used to monitor Hartley and Barry Allen during their convalescence at STAR Labs. That space was now ready. Arrangements were already in place to move Hartley there by the end of the week.
All that was left to do was expand the expected number of coma patients in the cortex from one to two. And to do that, Eobard had to convince Barry Allen's medical proxy to go along with what Eobard was planning. That medical proxy was Joe West.
There wasn't much Eobard knew about the man from the real timeline. He'd been Iris West's detective father. A total nonentity to Eobard. Perhaps if he'd been more involved in raising his son, Wally, Eobard might've paid more attention but by the time the future Kid Flash and then the Flash, carrying the mantel alongside Barry Allen, had shown up on the scene, Wally West was already a grown man. He'd been more interested in getting to know his sister and brother-in-law than his father.
Joe West is not a nonentity in this timeline, though. He's become the man who raised Barry Allen and is, in many ways, a far more dangerous influence on the Flash than Henry Allen ever was. He's going to be far more skeptical about a white man promising a miracle cure than Henry Allen would have been, even with Dr. Allen's medical training. Joe West has spent the last fourteen years fighting for his place in Barry Allen's life. He's consistently beaten racists who tried to abuse their power to remove a white boy from a black foster father even with the whole system seemingly stacked against him at times during those first few years. Eobard has come to, reluctantly, admire the man from afar. Joe West is nothing if not relentless when it comes to protecting his children.
And there is, perhaps, a small part of Eobard that wishes his own parents had cared for him even half as much as Joe West loves Iris and Barry.
Eobard is, at the moment, in a hospital style wheelchair that's on loan for a few more days until it's motorized replacement arrives. After all, it would have been odd for him to already have one on hand before his paralysis. So he rolls up to Barry Allen's room with some difficulty and the good fortune to appear right was West is getting kicked out for the doctors to start chest compressions and eventually defibrillation. All of it entirely unnecessary, though medical science was so pitiful it was no wonder they had no idea.
"They can't help him," Eobard said, catching West's attention. "But I can."
"I know who you are," Joe West replied, turning to face Eobard with a frown. "You're that scientist that Barry's obsessed with, the one who blew a hole in the city."
"Harrison Wells, yes," Eobard agreed. "I take it your son's name is Barry? He's been having seizures while in a coma, yes? Going into what those doctors think is cardiac arrest, but never quite fits the symptoms quite right."
"How did you... who told you?" Who broke doctor-patient privilege was what West was really getting at.
"No one told me. Not really. I just... when the accelerator began to build up power and fail-safes failed to kick in, three of my employees went down to the pipeline while I coordinated from the cortex. Shutting down the accelerator still should have been a simple and safe process, but there were unexpected electrical spikes. Dr. Hartley Rathaway was struck by an electrical spike that could have easily killed him, but has instead caused him to slip into a coma. A coma where he's been having seizures that cause what the doctors attending him believe to be cardiac arrest. When I heard rumor that another young man was experiencing the same symptoms as well... I needed to see for myself."
Eobard hesitated. "I don't know if what is afflicting your son is the same thing Hartley is suffering from, but they are both exhibiting the same symptoms and, quite frankly, the doctors in this hospital lack the tools necessary to determine what's really happening to them. As it stands, I've been able to determine using tech that I had brought from STAR Labs that Hartley hasn't been going into cardiac arrest. His heart has been beating so fast that the hospital's EKG machines are unable to detect the rhythm. I suspect that if I were to test your son, Barry, we would see the same thing happening. It's possible that the default response to cardiac arrest is both unnecessary and causing potential harm.
"I'll be moving Hartley to STAR Labs in hopes that I can find a cure for him. And, with your permission, I'd like to do the same for your son."
Joe West looked into Barry Allen's room and the flurry of activity going on in there. "All those doctors fighting to save my son's life and you think they may be doing more harm than good? That you know better than them."
"I have Hartley's medical proxy. His family... well... at this point I pretty much am his family." Meeting Rachel and Osgood Rathaway for the first time had been extremely upsetting. That they thought they had any right to their son after discarding such a brilliant and wonderful young man so many years ago... "I've already insisted that his attending physicians while he's in the hospital stop treating him for cardiac arrest during his seizures and those seizures have reduced significantly in number since then. They're nerve-wracking and terrifying to watch, but scans indicate his heart hasn't been damaged by the stress of beating so quickly."
"Bring up your equipment," Joe finally said. "If Barry's really isn't going into cardiac arrest... I'll let you take him to STAR Labs with your friend."
Hartley and Barry are moved to lay next to each other in the STAR Labs cortex. And while there's something deeply satisfying about having Barry Allen helpless and at his mercy... there's something equally disturbing about having Hartley in such familiar quarters and yet so silent and still.
Eobard's distress at the sight is quite real. That how much he truly cares for Hartley has helped sell Detective West on trusting the disgraced Dr. Wells persona is an unexpected bonus, though Eobard isn't sure the outcome is worth the price. He would have gotten access to Barry one way or another. He'd have preferred to have done so with Hartley standing at his side.
"How long have you known Dr. Rathaway?" Joe asked quietly from where he sat at Barry Allen's side.
"Since he was an intern working on his undergraduate degree. He was so talented even then, I had him working on a project I wouldn't normally dream of letting an intern within ten feet of. He was only seventeen and I didn't interact with him much but... enough I knew there were problems with his home life. When he came out after graduation, I can't say I was surprised to learn his parents immediately disowned him. At the time I still mostly saw him as an asset I didn't want to risk losing to some other lab. Genius like his is quite rare and... I took a personal interest in ensuring that he continued to work here while still attaining his Masters and Doctorate degrees. Somewhere along the way, he became... first a friend and then something like a son, I suppose. A sentiment I regret never telling him directly."
"So when he wakes up, you know what to tell him." West's tone was sympathetic.
"Yes... yes I do."
Iris West visits the most. But Joe West is a close second. Interestingly enough, Felicity Smoak also visits and even enlists Caitlin and Cisco in determining the answer to the recently renamed Star City's little super soldier problem.
Eobard does have to wonder just what Barry got up to during his brief visit to Starling before the accelerator's activation. Eobard was fairly certain that the Flash and the Green Arrow hadn't gotten along at all in the real timeline, so the idea that Barry might have actually befriended Oliver Queen in this timeline is... a bit bizarre, actually.
Regardless of whatever is going on there, Eobard pretends not to notice what Cisco and Caitlin are up to. He's busy trying to prevent all STAR Labs remaining corporate assets from being eaten up by lawsuits and he knows that they're hiding the anti-serum research to protect him from additional stress, not out of any sense of mistrust. It's weirdly sweet of them, to be honest. And, certainly, Eobard is quite stressed. His own speed healing hasn't activated yet, though there've been a few tremors here and there to indicate that as time goes on he will reconnect to the Speed Force as expected. His physical therapy has, as a result, plateaued at a point of partial paralysis of his legs, weighted heavily on the paralysis side of things. He has sporadic control of one leg - barely - though the other one has basically nothing at all. If he weren't a speedster in waiting, Eobard would never walk again in truth.
He has to go through all of the accessibility retrofitting of his house and car and then learn how to drive all over again. All of which is quite stressful on its own. But Eobard also has to attend hearings to determine any criminal liability regarding the incident. He's, eventually, cleared of any potential charges. No criminal liability means he can't be held responsible for the deaths or injuries incurred that night. Civil liability is another story entirely, however. There's a class action lawsuit brought against STAR Labs and his accelerator's designs are picked over by experts of both the real and arm-chair variety alike. Eobard spends a number of days at the courthouse.
To his surprise, on several of those occasions, Detective West offers to meet with Eobard for lunch. Those are offers that Eobard turns down only once, and that's because he won't be able to get out of the courtroom in time. Building a rapport with Joe West is simply too good an opportunity to risk losing out on.
Then there's the Rathaways to deal with. Jerrie Rathaway is everything her parents aren't and Eobard is more than happy to agree to her visiting her brother as often as she likes. Rachel and Osgood are another story entirely.
They ambush him after a difficult day in court. There were several flaws embedded in the accelerator's design on purpose, he'd been unable to hide everything wrong he'd built into the thing. And while he'd ensured that the fail-safe failures could be lain at the feet of third party contracts, he's still likely going to have to come to a settlement over this, but far smaller than what's being asked for. He just... hasn't been able to present the information on the fail-safes in court yet.
That'll come tomorrow. Hopefully, depending on the pace of the trial.
Rachel started crying almost immediately and it just... it infuriates him. "Please," she asked, "let me see my son."
They're drawing a small crowd and at least Osgood looks embarrassed by the scene they're causing.
"Your son. Funny you should call him that after years of telling people you had none," Eobard snapped. "Hartley is a brilliant and wonderful young man. You treated him like trash and you threw him away. When he wakes up, and he will wake up, he'll still be everything you disowned him for being. Stubborn, willful, someone that neither you nor your husband can control. Hard of hearing. And unapologetically gay. Why should I let you or your husband anywhere near him, Mrs. Rathaway, when as soon as he wakes up you'll remember that your love for him is highly conditional at best?"
"I don't deserve a second chance," Rachel admitted. And that might be the first honest thing Eobard's heard the woman say. "Hartley is everything you say he is. I was given a gift the day he was born and I never appreciated him as he deserves. I want to do better by him."
"You've been awfully quiet, Mr. Rathaway," Eobard observed. "Is your wife the only one of the two of you who regrets your homophobic mistakes?"
"No," Osgood replied quietly. "She isn't. I just don't believe appealing to you for permission to visit our son will do us any good."
How did people this... predictable and dull create bright children such as Hartley and Jerrie? Truly it boggled the mind.
"Well staging this ambush in public and attempting to manipulate me with overly emotional displays certainly are not points in your favor. Forcing Hartley's story into view where anyone might overhear without any chance for him to set boundaries or control..." or for Eobard to do so in Hartley's stead. "I will consider your request to visit Hartley during his coma, but if you want there to be any chance of my agreement, this will not happen again. Is that clear?"
Eobard finds himself asking for West's advice on how to deal with the Rathaways.
"When Barry was a child, his father murdered his mother," Joe said. "He never... he's never accepted that and as a child he insisted on visiting his father in jail - against both my wishes and Henry's. But Barry would run away to Iron Heights to try and force the issue anyway. So we gave in and set up a schedule so that Barry could visit at least once every month. He stopped running away and his grades at school improved. His mental health was better too. And those visits are something that he kept up with even through college. This coma is the first time Barry's ever missed visiting with his father in jail.
"Henry Allen doesn't deserve to be a part of Barry's life after what he did to his wife, but Barry's love for his father and his desire to have his dad in his life meant so much to Barry that much as I wanted to protect him from his father... keeping them apart caused Barry more harm than good." Joe heaved a sigh and Eobard wondered, idly, how the detective would react to learning Henry Allen wasn't a murderer.
It'd be interesting to find out, down the line.
"I realize it's a very different situation. But you want to protect Hartley from the heartbreak his parents represent. However, is reuniting with his parents something he's wished for in the past? Coma patients supposedly still process outside stimuli. Would his parents presence give him hope or cause him more pain?"
Eobard sighed. "He does want them back in his life. It's not something he's spoken of much, but he... he has expressed a desire for them to recognize the hurt they caused and that they might voluntarily change. That they might ask for his forgiveness and reconcile with him." He hesitated a moment and then added, "I want to punch them both in the face."
West snorted in amusement. "I completely understand that instinct. But you have to weigh whether or not barring them from visiting Hartley will do him more harm than good. The decision can't be about you. Or even them, really. It has to be about Hartley."
And, unspoken, is the sentiment that Hartley had trusted Eobard to make those decisions.
"Detective, I hope you'll consider calling me Harrison."
West smiled. "Then you really ought to call me Joe."
"Miss Rathaway," Eobard said as he arrived in the cortex. "Might I have a few moments of your time?"
"Sure." She slid her notebook into her school textbook and shut the textbook around it before setting it aside. "Are we talking in front of the potatoes or..."
Eobard snorted in amusement. "Cisco's been calling them that again, hasn't he?"
"Yup. It's funny and it'll really annoy Hartley when he wakes up and finds out. Which is probably half of Cisco's reasoning for doing it. They argue a lot, don't they? Cisco and my brother?"
Eobard nodded. "Mostly they argue for fun these days, though initially they both made a rather awful first impression on each other. They're fond of each other, though neither would admit it."
"That's the impression I've been getting," she said with a satisfied smile.
"There's no reason not to discuss what I've come to talk to you about in front of Hartley and Mr. Allen. It... has to do with your parents."
Jerrie nodded. "They asked you for permission to visit with Hartley."
"They did. And whether your mother intended to be manipulative or not..." Eobard hesitated to say anything truly disparaging about her parents to the girl's face.
"I don't think she made the conscious choice to be manipulative. It makes the times she unconsciously chooses to be so more obnoxious, though." Jerrie shrugged. "I think mother wants to change. I just don't know if she's willing to actually make the effort. And I'm not sure she understands wanting to change and actually changing are two different things. Father has been working to make Rathaway Industries more inclusive and has been changing their charitable donations away from queerphobic organizations to queer friendly ones. Mother might be talking more than he talks, but he's doing more than she does."
"Do you think I should allow the visits?" Eobard wants to do what's right for Hartley and he suspects that allowing the visits will ultimately do Hartley more good than harm, to borrow Joe West's way of phrasing things. But Jerrie Rathaway has to live with her parents and her input is thus the most valuable in determining the best answer to the question at hand.
"I think..." Jerrie hesitated and then, slowly, nodded her head positively. "I think you should give them a chance. Enough rope to hang themselves if they screw it up, but enough room to make an effort to get things right too."
"Thank you, for your advice." Eobard bent down and retrieved a chess board from the space beneath his chair. "Now, for something else. Your brother and I quite often enjoyed playing chess together. I was wondering if, perhaps, you might like to play in his stead."
"I... I don't know how to play."
"It would be my honor to teach you, if you'd like." Eobard smiled and, to his delight, Jerrie's smile in return looked just like her brother's.
At about three months into Hartley and Barry's coma, Eobard's healing finally came back. The Speed Force was awake enough for his cells to connect to it once again. He started having more muscle spasms as his nerves began reconnecting and he was, for a time, a bit clumsier. It's all worth it for the first time he can stand up again.
He starts walking around his house at first. It's a lot of trial and error. He falls a lot, his legs tiring easily. But every day he's stronger. Every day he can walk more. He starts jogging at normal speeds and then... super speeds.
By the time month number six rolls around, Eobard's physically restored, though he continues to spend most of every day confined to his wheelchair, pretending to still suffer from paralysis from approximately the waist down.
And then... Hartley wakes up first.
Eobard can only hope this is a good sign, not a bad one. But just to be sure... perhaps a visit with Gideon to check on the newspaper from 2024 was in order. It had been some time since Eobard had last requested to see it. Everything would hopefully be wrapped up by this time next year; Eobard really ought to be keeping a closer watch on that article... just in case.