After a long day at CCPN, Iris just wants to sit down and eat, but first she needs to help Barry set the table. He asks about her day and sympathizes with her frustrations with Mason Bridge; when she asks the same he fidgets, and then asks her for a favor, as a reporter.

"Intern," Iris corrects him. "Like you I am but a lowly intern."

"Yeah, but you still have, like, access to databases and things, right?" he persists.

She holds up a hand to stop him from going any further. "I need to know exactly what you're asking for before I agree to anything."

Barry chews his lip and fusses with the silverware he's just set down. "I just want to know more about Harrison Wells."

"Who?"

"He was a scientist back in the fifties, but he died before he made any really notable breakthroughs, otherwise there'd probably be a biography about him or something that I could read instead."

Iris thinks that over for a moment while Barry makes hopeful puppy-eyes at her. On the one hand, satisfying Barry's nerd-curiosity can at times be like trying to fill a bottomless pit - there is no end to his desire to learn more - and if he's come to her because he's exhausted his internet resources, it means she'll probably have to root through hardcopy to find the information he wants, which will be a total pain.

On the other hand, Iris has perhaps more than her fair share of reporter-curiosity, which on the face of it is very similar to nerd-curiosity, though usually pointed at different things. If she's going to do this, Barry's going to have to make it worth her while, and that means the story she chases needs to be intriguing.

"Why do you want to learn more about this guy, anyway?" she asks, bemused.

There's a pause that's a little longer than usual, and Barry shrugs, aiming for nonchalant and missing by a mile. He affects a disinterested tone of voice, which doesn't mesh at all with his obvious interest (Iris mentally rolls her eyes at the doofus). "There's a rumor that he's haunting one of the labs."

Iris hums thoughtfully, narrows her eyes shrewdly. "And instead of investigating the lab to find out what's causing the rumor, or questioning ghosts as even being a possibility, you want me to look up Harrison Wells?" The pieces do not add up. "Since when do you believe in ghosts?"

Barry hesitates for several long moments, wavering with indecision, before he finally caves. "I've seen him," he admits. "Well, spoken to him. Cisco says he's seen his reflection on occasion, but he's been working down there a lot longer than I have."

"Working down where?"

And that's how the whole story comes out, about Sub-Basement 3 and Harrison Wells, and their hopes to build a prototype tachyon generator.

Iris listens without interrupting, holding her questions until the end, except to ask for clarification on a couple of points. Her dad's working late, so it's just the two of them, sharing a ghost story.

Dinner happens, but Barry keeps going, though with frequent pauses to chew his food (thankfully with his mouth closed). Finally both the meal and Barry's meandering explanations wind down, and Iris goes back over the notes and questions she's jotted down on her napkin.

Who, what, where, when, why, how. Something has changed Barry's opinion on ghosts, and her first order of business is determining whether she believes as well. She already established early on that Barry isn't trying to lie to her - he frankly doesn't have the skill necessary to keep a straight face when trying to prank someone. Besides which, the punchline for this particular prank – if it is a prank – would undoubtedly be something as uninspired as 'boo!,' and Iris likes to think Barry is a little more original than that.

But this doesn't rule out the possibility that Barry himself is mistaken or has been hoodwinked.

Iris tries to be methodical in her questions. She doesn't have a lot of practice conducting interviews, but she does have years of experience drawing answers out of Barry, which she works to her advantage. Barry doesn't really know much about what's going on with Wells - so many of her questions are answered with shrugs - but by the end of the evening Iris is convinced that he really did encounter a ghost in STAR Labs.

She can hardly believe her own conclusion, but she knows Barry, and she knows what her gut is telling her. Moreover, she knows that as a reporter she needs to fit the story to the facts, not the other way around, and to be objective in all things. Which, in this case, means keeping an open mind about the paranormal, and not imposing her own disbelief on the story presented before she's even had a chance to fact-check it.

A lot of it does, admittedly, hinge on Cisco's honesty about not setting up some sort of relay or hologram. It is damn impressive what master illusionists can do these days. Magically-appearing words on a chalkboard would be well within their capabilities. And the fact that the words only appear when the 'audience' is looking the other way? Easy justification for the perfect set-up for some legerdemain. Being open-minded does not mean being gullible.

And yet.

Barry knows all this as well as Iris does; they watch the same reality shows about stage magic, and the last time the West-Allen family had gone to see a live magician, she'd been the one to put her foot down and stop Barry from explaining how the tricks were done.

Barry was there, in Sub-Basement 3. Barry was the witness, and Iris knows that Barry knows better than to accept things at face value. He values science and the empirical method above all else, and Barry does not - did not - believe in ghosts.

Barry is also not gullible, though she knows it's what some people think of him. He isn't gullible, just trusting, and why does that have to be a bad thing?

Barry is smart, one of the smartest people she knows, and his story stays consistent. Even his frequent sheepish shrugs when he doesn't know the answer to a question only serve to further sell its authenticity - he's not going to make things up to appease her, or tell her what he thinks she'll believe. If it were anyone else, she'd probably be a lot more skeptical, a lot harder to win over, but this is Barry, and she knows him better than anyone.

She isn't sure what she feels about ghosts. For years, she's been quite content to not have any strong opinions on ghosts one way or the other, if it even occurred to her to think about them at all. Outside of October, imagery of ghosts rarely crossed her path, and whenever ghosts did appear in pop culture they weren't meant to be taken seriously. Maybe the movies might want people to be frightened of them, but Hollywood horror doesn't typically challenge one on an existential level. (Unless the Dead All Along trope is in effect; those can be real brain-breakers).

Now, though… Ghosts - real, bona fide, supernatural entities - are a thing. A real live house-haunting, bone-chilling, chain-rattling, card-carrying ghost was… friends? With her best friend.

So... Honestly, she still doesn't know what to think.

Instead of fretting over it, though, she does what she was born to do - she investigates. Some of this Barry could certainly have done for himself, it's not actually difficult to ask for records at the courthouse, nor does it require any special skills. But this is Iris's investigation now, and she likes being thorough; there is definitely appeal in seeing the job through from start to finish. She's already got a crisp, clean new notebook page ready to go, under the bold heading of 'Who Is Harrison Wells?'

She starts with Picture News' biographical database (on her lunch break, no less! Barry had better appreciate this), but like Barry's futile Google searches, there isn't much on an obscure scientist from the fifties that has made it into electronic databases; this is a search that will have to be done hardcopy. Fortunately, Harrison Wells was a Central City local, born and raised; otherwise this would be a lot more difficult. Birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, and property deeds are all a matter of public record, so she spends a long afternoon at the courthouse (and two dollars and twenty-five cents) making copies of documents.

Born Harrison Thomas Wells on June 26th, 1917 to Charles Melton Wells and Ruth Georgia Wells (née Franklin), he lived in his family's house on Appledale Road in Central City until 1934, when they sold their house for pennies on the dollar and disappeared from the city's records. And they weren't the only ones, Iris realizes upon further reflection; a lot of families packed up and left the Midwest during the Dust Bowl. Unfortunately, Iris doesn't have a way to search all the deeds and mortgage records across the country to find out where they moved to; fortunately, Harrison reappears in Central City's records when he signs a marriage license with Tessie Morgan in 1946, the same year he signed the deed to a house in Englewood, near the park. Jessica Wells was born in 1948; something in Iris's chest clenches when she realizes that Jessica was only eight years old when her mother died in a car accident.

In 1958, Dr. Harrison Wells himself died of a heart attack at the age of 41. On his death certificate, his occupation is listed as 'physicist,' with a note that he served with the 256th squadron of the Army Air Force in WWII.

Next, Iris hits up the library for information. It takes a number of weeks, but, piece by piece, she is able to gradually pull the picture together - though the endless scrolling through microfiche leaves her squinting, with a throbbing headache. While poking through archived newspapers, she even manages to uncover a series of photographs from WWII that feature a skinny white beanpole of a man whose regulation crew cut nevertheless managed to be exceptionally floofy.

Wells is surrounded by other young men in matching uniforms with similar (though less floofy) haircuts: his flight crew. (Are any of them still alive? Are any of them also ghosts?) Reading through the available information, she learns he was an accomplished flight engineer and flexible gunner on a B-25 bomber, who survived 30 missions in Europe and returned to the U.S. for some R-and-R; the war ended before he could be re-deployed.

Iris is amused to learn that Tessie Morgan was a WASP. Women Army Service Pilots ferried planes across the country, test-flew aircraft, towed targets for live-ammunition gunnery practice, and did whatever else Uncle Sam asked of them in order to free up male pilots to fight overseas. She wonders what the odds are that Tessie and Harrison met on an airfield. (She also makes a note to read more about WASPs later – they sound pretty badass.)

Harrison and Tessie got married immediately after the war, bought a house, and started a family - just as so many others did. Both of them went back to school for their doctorates, which was a little less usual. Then the Drs. Wells and Morgan started working at STAR Labs, according to the publication records Barry was able to find for her – there isn't anything on them in the local newspapers until Dr. Morgan's death in 1956.

The details are heartbreaking in their familiarity. Although not a tragedy that Iris has experienced personally, she's seen it play out, again and again on the news, and every time it's like a punch to the gut.

A drunk driver t-boned their car, as they were heading home from work together. Tessie Morgan was pronounced dead at the scene, the other driver also killed in the impact, while Harrison was taken to a hospital with a fractured arm and a minor concussion. No foul play, no unexplained elements, just senseless death.

Two years later, a small blurb appears in the Central City Tribune, noting that Dr. Wells was found dead in his lab, but that no foul play is suspected. The slightly sensational writing style seems to place a certain emphasis on the fact that Harrison was a widower, as though inviting the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Iris frowns. No cause of death is mentioned in the article – that information would come later, she supposes – and it seems pretty irresponsible for a newspaper to suggest it was a suicide without any evidence.

There's another article from the following week, with a little more fact and a little less speculation, though details are still pretty scarce. This one states that the cause of death was definitely a heart attack. Iris frowns, scanning the tiny newsprint for more details. A heart attack? She'd already known that fact before she started her investigation, but she hasn't really thought about it before. It just doesn't jive with what she knows (or thought she knew) about ghostly origins, which tend to feature violent, bloody deaths and a melancholy soundtrack. Barry told her that Dr. Wells might have stayed for unfinished business, which was certainly possible - his career had been cut short before it could take off - but what if there was more to it? Surely almost everyone, at the moment of their death, feels that they need more time? Who really, in all honesty, can say that they've finished all their business in life, when it comes right down to it?

The more Iris looks, the more she realizes that the details about Wells's death are most often vague, missing, or contradictory. People expressed surprise that he had died so young, in the peak of health, and reflected on what a shame it was for the scientific community to lose his brilliance (because no obituary is complete without some objectification of the deceased). It's frustrating, but Iris refuses to be stymied.

Legally, a copy of an autopsy report can only be requested by next-of-kin, but fortunately for Iris, Dr. Wells' death was sudden and strange enough to warrant an inquest, which is the next best thing. She requests a copy of the report from the State Archives… and finds that it has been heavily redacted. Which is puzzling, and seems counter-intuitive; the purpose of an inquest is to review the known facts of a violent or seemingly accidental death and interview witnesses, ultimately shining a light on the cause of death. The quasi-judicial proceedings summon a jury to give a verdict on cause of death, primarily to determine whether a crime has been committed, so what could it mean that the record of a coroner's inquest, intended to provide transparency, is instead thoroughly marked in bold black strokes?

All in all, Iris thinks it lends a certain weight to the fact that his funeral service was closed-casket.

A/N: I know that in the show and comics "Jesse" isn't short for "Jessica," but looking at census data, "Jesse" as a girl's name, while somewhat popular in the late 1800s, fell in popularity until it was basically unheard of except as a boy's name, until it made a resurgence in the 1980s. "Tess" has similarly been changed to "Tessie" to reflect the time period in which she was born. "Harrison" was fine so I left it alone - and for some reason it started shooting upwards in popularity around 2010? What celebrity can we hold responsible for this?

Also here, have some infodump:

For the sake of the narrative, a lot of extraneous factoids had to be omitted. I did a lot more research into WWII military history than I ever expected when I started this story, but figuring out which branch to put Harrison in took a great deal of deliberation.

I had two (at first conflicting) thoughts on where to put Wells. On the one hand, Earth-2 Harry's familiarity with a pulse rifle suggested a position as a sniper or infantryman, someone who knew his way around a firearm. On the other hand, his engineering ability would make him a huge asset to the Air Force (then known as the Army Air Corps). I finally settled on Air Force, because I liked being able to make a WASP connection with Tess, and figured maybe there was a gunner position he could have had on a plane… I spent hours researching, trying to learn the duties and responsibilities of different roles, trying to figure out the most likely place he would have gone…

Did you know you can watch original training videos from WWII, that they're public domain? I watched the ones for aerial gunner and B-29 flight engineer on youtube. In full. Because research. ;P

I was extremely torn, but then I learned that all aircrew had to attend gunnery school, so I could have my cake and eat it too! You have no idea how happy this made me.

Oh, and the 256th squadron is a nod to Joseph Heller's Catch-22.