Summary: Ralph's life may have recently jumped tracks from a noir novel to a super hero comic book, but he's still a PI at heart. Not that he needs to investigate his coworkers to know that something is seriously weird with regards to Harry Wells.

It was, honestly, only a matter of time before he asked someone.

Notes: Funny though it is that no one apparently thought to explain the multiverse to Ralph until season 5 and I do love that learning about time travel gives Ralph a chance to show that he is, in fact, quite intelligent by using that info to infer the multiverse is real... but, seriously, Ralph had to know something was up with Harry being neither dead nor paralyzed. Like... he had to have asked about that at some point.

Welcome to the Madhouse

"Uh, actually, Barry, if you've got a minute?" It was still weird, not calling him Rookie anymore, but Ralph figured he should stop antagonizing Barry quite so much. Especially since the guy was proving to be a surprisingly excellent mentor.

And also Ralph kind of, sort of, maybe wanted Barry to be proud of him. Whatever.

"Sure, what's up?" Barry smiled at Ralph and not in the 'I'm tolerating your presence' way he used to either.

"Okay, so... I haven't really known how to ask this and it's not really an easy thing to ask about, but... Harry. So, how is he not paralyzed? And also not dead? Because reports were that Harrison Wells died in the singularity in 2015 but clearly Harry isn't dead, so..."

"We... we never did actually explain where Harry comes from, did we?" Barry grinned. "So, you know what the multiverse theory is, right? I mean, I remember you mentioned watching Through the Wormhole and I know it's one of the topics Morgan Freeman covers, so..."

"Oh, yeah, there's like... multiple realities all occupying the same space, but different dimensions. Possibly caused by splits in the timeline or... something like that." Ralph nodded slowly. "Wait, so when you guy's are saying he's from Earth too... you actually mean two as in the number and not 'too' as in 'also'? I thought that was just some weird in joke you guys had."

"Nope, not an in joke. The singularity in 2015 actually created over fifty breaches in reality, connecting our Earth to Harry's. That's where Zoom came from too. We ended up teaming up with Harry to stop Zoom and rescue Harry's daughter Jesse - who is now actually a speedster too, and the Flash of their Earth. But Harry's kind of overprotective of Jesse which is why he's here instead of there." Barry shrugged. "She needed him to stop micromanaging everything and he needed to admit he couldn't handle watching her endanger herself after all the trauma with Zoom."

"So he's from a parallel reality and not our Earth's Harrison Wells. Okay. That... actually makes a lot of sense. I guess?" Ralph paused and pondered the new information for a few seconds and then nodded. "Yeah, no, totally makes sense." In a comic book science sort of way, but Ralph supposed that was his life now. "But... if the multiverse is real, then what about time travel?"

"Yeah, that's how Eobard Thawne, a man from around two centuries from now, traveled to the present, declared himself my rival, traveled to the past to kill me and failed at that, killed my mother instead, got stuck in the past, murdered Harrison Wells, committed the most literal version of identity theft I've ever heard of, spent fifteen years masquerading as Harrison Wells, and then caused the singularity trying to time travel back to his life in the future."

Ralph blinked. Tried to process everything Barry'd just said. Blinked again. "What?"

"Also I've actually time traveled some too." Barry hesitated and clearly chose not to add something else to this whole onslaught of information that Ralph was absolutely not expecting. Whatever that extra nugget of information was, Ralph decided to be grateful it wasn't shared.

"What?" Ralph repeated.

"This is your life now," Barry informed Ralph cheerfully, clapping him on the shoulder. "Welcome to the madhouse. It only gets weirder from here." Then he walked out of the cortex.

"What?" Ralph repeated blankly.

Barry peeked back in. "Want to get a drink?"

"Oh, god, yes. After that info dump I need alcohol. And lots of it. You're paying for traumatizing me," Ralph added, hopeful that'd work.

Barry laughed in amusement. "You did ask, Ralph. But, yeah, sure, that's fair. Come on, we'll grab Cisco on the way out; he can tell you all about how Cynthia's from Earth 19."

"What?"


Notes: Barry totally opted not to tell Ralph he was dead in a previous timeline. Ralph doesn't need to know he was once a casualty of the accelerator in December 2013. And also he's been info dumped enough, time travel as Barry's origin story is a lot to take in after all.