Yesterday I died, tomorrow's bleeding
I fall into your sunlight
The future's open wide, beyond believing
To know why hope dies
I'm losing what was found, a world so hollow
Suspended in a compromise
The silence of this sound, is soon to follow
Somehow, sundown
And finding answers
Is forgetting all of the questions we called home
Passing the graves of the unknown
As reason clouds my eyes with splendour fading
Illusions of the sunlight
The reflection of a lie will keep me waiting
With love gone, for so long
And this day's ending
Is the proof of time killing all the faith I know
Knowing that faith is all I hold
And I've lost who I am, and I can't understand
Why my heart is so broken, rejecting your love
Without love gone wrong, lifeless words carry on
But I know, all I know, is that the end's beginning
Who I am from the start, take me home to my heart
Let me go and I will run, I will not be silent
All this time spent in vain, wasted years, wasted gain
All is lost, hope remains, and this war's not over
There's a light, there's the sun
Taking all the shattered ones
To the place we belong, and his love will conquer
Shattered, Trading Yesterday
"The test came back and she is most definitely your daughter. The DNA confirms it as well as the fact that metahuman gene is hereditary, so are the powers. That is why she has speed. After her father," Caitlin informed while entering the Speed Lab where they were currently testing Nora's speed, Barry and Rachel watching, still in shock. "Guys, I know it's a lot to take in, especially so shortly after you got engaged, but this… this is actually a good thing. You will have an amazing child together. This proves that you will be really happy," Cait tried cheering them up a bit.
"It's not… it's not that, even," Rachel eventually said. "I just… Yes, it's too much and too soon and… to be honest, I never expected to have kids. I mean… I never planned on it, so to suddenly have my daughter from the future appear…" She shook her head. "It's a lot. It means that at some point in the future I will get to that point, but I am not there yet and it just has… a double impact on me... Am I awful for saying this?" She suddenly turned to Barry.
"No, of course not," he put her mind to rest. "We already talked about it and I asked you to marry me without making a final decision on that matter. It simply means that whatever you want, I will always be there, because I love you. No matter what happens in the future, whether we ever make the decision to have kids or not, I will always want you. At least that was my state of mind and heart when I made the decision to propose."
"You, guys, are just too perfect for your own good," Caitlin commented when smiling at them fondly.
"Wait… Caitlin's right," Rachel then pointed put. "It means everything works out."
"What do you mean?" Barry didn't seem to understand. "Of course it does."
Nora came back in that moment, smiling brightly at them, saving Rachel from having to explain.
"So, what's next?" she asked eagerly.
"Well, I guess we need to get you back to the future," Barry told her and in that moment his phone beeped. "Something came up at work. It won't take long. Just stay with your mom," he informed before he sped away.
Rachel still needed a lot of getting used to to being called a mom and she was just opening her mouth when… Nora disappeared, following her dad.
"Great," she sighed. "Do you think she heard the part about me not wanting to have kids?" she turned to Caitlin.
"I have no idea. Speedsters don't exactly have a superhearing."
Nora was following her dad so eagerly and also so eagerly was she trying to help that she accidentally prevented Barry from defeating the newest meta. He got angry at her and told her categorically to stay put while he would deal with the situation alone.
For Rachel that was another shock. Her mind had been buzzing with thousands of questions and thoughts ever since she'd seen Nora walk into Joe's house and she was also panicking now that she was left alone with her.
"I'm sorry, I… It's a lot to take in at once. Especially for me," she eventually tried to explain. "I can only hope I was… will be… a great mom."
"Oh, no worries, you're just shway!"
"Shway?" Rachel's eyebrows elevated.
"Totally! And again, no worries! I know you never wanted kids, so now you're probably completely blown away and overwhelmed. It's totally ok."
Rachel's eyes grew big on hearing that.
"It's really ok, mom," Nora assured her again. "You told me all about it. You also said that eventually, with what you had with dad, the idea of having a little part of the both of you felt right. And that you never regretted this decision. I know you love me, so don't worry."
Rachel couldn't be more relieved to hear that. It felt like something very heavy was suddenly lifted off her chest and it brought tears to her eyes.
"Really?" She still needed to make sure. "I am… I will really be a good mom?"
"The best," her daughter from the future assured her.
"That… that brings me great relief. Thank you. Thank you for being so amazing."
"Well, you actually have yourself to thank for that."
Shortly after, Barry was back and they lined up at the track to speed up and help prompt Nora back home. It was truly one of the biggest shocks of Rachel's life, but also a good one, unlike some others she'd needed to live through in the past. Somehow it filled her heart with happiness and hope and she was truly looking forward to the future for the first time without fear.
Only then something happened that caused her to panic.
Nora said goodbye to her with a smile on her face, but when she faced her father, she basically threw herself into his arms, hugging him so tightly…
Something did not add up here, Rachel thought, her writer brain on fire, always looking for clues and holes in stories before she would put them to paper.
Their daughter from the future had traveled here to witness her parents' love story developing. She'd done so despite everything Barry would have taught her about time travel and its dire consequences. And then she said that Rachel had herself to thank for Nora being such an amazing…
"Stop!" Rachel suddenly exclaimed.
Both Barry and Nora, ready by now to run, looked back at her in surprise.
"Thawne was right, wasn't he?" she asked, turning to her daughter with tears shining in her eyes again, breath elevated and heart ragging.
"What are you talking about?" Barry frowned, absolutely flabbergasted.
"You die, Barry," Rachel told him. "You die and therefore you will be raised without a father," she then turned to her daughter who could only look down at the floor.
"Nora?" Barry prompted shakily.
"Maybe… ehm," she cleared her throat, "maybe we should head back to the cortex, then."
Flash disappears. Vanishes in Crisis…
…Twenty Five years later. Flash still missing.
Rachel was shaking, not really knowing what to do, what to think or how to even act whereas Barry was just standing there with his hands on his head, reading the article Nora projected for them from the future.
"Your sister wrote both articles," she pointed out the name in the byline. "Ironic, isn't it?"
"And you say… Thawne told you this?!" Barry turned to Rachel now, anger permeating his tone.
"When he saved me during the Nazis attack, yes," she admitted with a nod. "But I honestly thought… or I hoped that he just wanted to mess with us like always."
"Oh, god… there really is no escape from this, is there?" Barry gasped, hiding his face in his hands now whereas the rest of the team was completely stunned into silence.
"Is that why you're here?" Rachel suddenly asked Nora, feeble hope entering her voice. "Did you want to change this? To save him?"
"But it's years before it happens," Barry pointed out. "It makes no sense."
"Yes and no. First of all, I just wanted to meet him. I never did before. I wanted to finally meet my dad, the legendary Flash," Nora said, her voice breaking a bit. "Saving never occurred to me before… well, before I hit that satellite with him. I did change something, but I'm still here. We all are."
"We can't let her get back to the future," Rachel told Barry. "She can be the key. She can help us save you! She has the knowledge we don't."
"Rachel… messing with the timeline… you saw what happened when I created Flashpoint…"
"I don't care!" she suddenly screamed, shaking. "I don't fucking care, Barry! I am done with this! I am done accepting this fucking fate! Ever since I met you, I've been seeing the moment of your death and yet, I still couldn't help falling for you and eventually just giving in! I want to save you! I want to have a future with you! Being a single mom was never something I could imagine even with my wild imagination!... You are not running back!" She turned to her daughter. "And it's not exactly like creating Flashpoint. We're going to live our present while she guides us. We can do this. At least we have to try since we already have this opportunity. I will not live this life without you, Barry. I want to marry you!"
There was silence, broken only by occasional sobs coming from her.
"Mom was never the same after you disappeared," Nora then told her dad. "She poured all the love she had on me, but she lived in her books. She wrote a whole series about this meta…"
"No!" Barry interrupted when raising his hand. "If we're going to do this, please, keep all the unnecessary information from us. Give us nothing more and nothing less than what can truly help us… Stay here," he then told her on noticing that Rachel left the cortex.
"Rachel? Rachel, honey!" He caught up with her in no time. "Where are you going?" He faced her and placed his hands on her shoulders.
"I… I can't do this anymore, Barry. I can't handle this. I need a break." She was full on crying now, not able to stop. "I don't know how to deal with this… I don't want to lose you… I will not watch you just slip away…"
"Hey, hey, it's going to be ok. We let Nora stay. She can help us," he tried soothing her and then he pulled her into his arms. "I will do anything and everything I can not to leave you two, I promise."
Only she knew he couldn't really promise anything of the sort. She loved him so much. Before she'd met him she hadn't even realized one could love someone like this, her only idea of love being what she had with Eobard. And love was dangerous, she knew that now. Because it truly had the power to destroy a person when it was over.
Nora watched her parents embrace from a hidden spot, knowing she needed to make notes and rely them to her mentor… He needed everything she could give him. He could save her father. After all, he promised.
The next few days Nora was tailing Barry as he was her hero since he was both the Flash and her father and thanks to him she inherited those extraordinary powers herself. Rachel didn't mind and was not feeling jealous at all. If so, she was actually grateful for that since as much as she was awed by her daughter coming from the future, she was still overwhelmed. Just within one day her life had – again – turned completely upside down and she needed to adjust. Of course this surprise was nowhere near as painful and horrible as finding out that the man she was building her life with was a liar, a murderer and a manipulator, but still…
She was watching Barry and Nora together, finding it so fascinating, but in the same time sad. She'd never expected she would look at the man she loved and agreed to marry with such fondness, pride and affection while he was spending time with their child and actually finding herself wanting it all; wanting this happy life they could build together. Only then she grew terribly sad on remembering why their daughter was really here. It was ironic, truly, as the moment she realized she did want it all and with Barry, because she loved him so much her chest sometimes felt like it was going to explode; she also found out she might lose him. That all along she was destined to lose him. And then something hit her and it made her furious. Because originally, before Eobard Thawne altered the timeline by going back to the past to kill Barry as a child and settling on killing his mother in revenge instead, she and Barry must've had a happy life together. Life that Thawne wanted to destroy. All along, every single problem they had, every single tragedy – it was somehow all on him. The very same man who'd so effectively seduced her that she'd fallen in love with him.
"Everything's ok? Rachel, honey, we haven't lost yet," suddenly, a very concerned Barry was by her side. "The very reason to why we let Nora stay for now is to stop me from disappearing, to figure this out and prevent it from happening. And we've already altered our fates so many times that it can actually work."
"I know. I just realized that the first and biggest fate alteration was Thawne going back in time. Because before he did it, you and me… we were a couple like we always supposed to be. And you were there, alive and well," she pointed out. "I just… It just hit me out of the sudden and made me feel sick. I hate this man so much. I wish we could…"
"I already tried to save my mom," Barry reminded her. "And I messed up even more. I don't know whether Thawne was always suppose to alter the timeline or he did it so extremely that my mother's death became a fixed point in history, but… we can't change that. We can only change the future now, because it's still the future."
She nodded. "I'm really trying to be strong, Barry. I… I'll do my best not to lose it. I'll do my best to keep my faith that everything's going to work out. We are destined, after all. It can't just be over like this."
He smiled at her.
"If it helps," he then added, "I really feel like it might work this time. I really believe we can do this. That we can have it all. Get married, create a beautiful life for ourselves and then create Nora."
Rachel smiled as her eyes grew teary.
"I never thought I'd say that, but… I actually do want it. I want it all. With you."
His smile grew bigger and he was about to come closer to kiss her, but in that moment they were interrupted by an alarm in the cortex.
"Perfect timing," he complained, his voice sarcastic. "Let's go."
Rachel needed to take a few deep breaths since the events of the past hour were a lot.
A new villain seemed to appear in the city and he was targeting metahumans. There were already a few bodies found with only one common denominator – meta gene.
Both Barry and Nora went to face the newest meta threat when this guy showed up, nearly killing the Flash, his dagger somehow causing everyone around him to lose their powers, making them an easy prey. When Nora screamed 'Dad!' in terror and they heard the police sirens, it somehow caused the unknown criminal to stop and flee the scene.
"This dagger…" Cisco started, his eyes opened widely, "it's some kind of a metahuman dampener and… uh oh…"
"Uh oh?" Barry picked up on that, raising his eyebrows.
"Guys, I believe it's a shard from the satellite that fell down when Barry and Nora punched it."
There was sudden silence as they wondered how much damage that actually must've caused and what could still happen. Satellite's shards infused with dark matter… it could mean more new metahumans… more for the villain to hunt down and kill.
"Listen to this sound… it sounds like an insect," Caitlin commented while they were watching the footage from the event.
"Cicada," Nora provided with, her voice foreboding.
"You know about him?" Barry turned to her in curiosity.
"He was in the Flash museum."
"So you can tell us how to defeat this guy so he wouldn't take any more lives," Rachel suggested, in the same time wondering whether that was altering the future too much and how it could affect Nora.
Only then her daughter provided the information, "Actually… I can't. Cicada was the only bad guy dad never caught. No one knows his real identity as well."
