Come to me
In the night hours
I will wait for you
And I can't sleep
'Cause thoughts devour
Thoughts of you consume
I can't help but love you
Even though I try not to
I can't help but want you
I know that I'd die without you
Stay with me
A little longer
I will wait for you
Shadows creep
And want grows stronger
Deeper than the truth
I can't help but love you
Even though I try not to
I can't help but want you
I know that I'd die without you
Warof Hearts, Ruelle


Cicada was dead.

It should feel like the end of their problems, but in fact those were just getting worse.

They managed to synthesize a metahuman cure and Barry even convinced Orlin to take it by also offering it to Grace who, as they discovered, was becoming a meta as well. However, no one foresaw future Grace using Eobard Thawne's time machine and going back in time just like Nora did. Cicadas faced what he'd created and paid the highest price – Grace killed him while calling him weak and his last words to the Flash were 'save her'.

Because of all those events, Rachel didn't really have time to talk to Nora and ask her all the questions that she still wanted the answers to. The right moment finally came when they were all gathered up in the cortex, freshly after the last meta attack and the successful handling of the operation. She could swear her daughter had tried to talk to her and Barry those past few days, but she quickly got discouraged since there truly was no time for it. Now, since they were all gathered together, timing seemed to finally be perfect, so Rachel simply asked, "Nora, there was something you wanted to talk to us about. What was it?"

Out of the sudden, her daughter had a very panicked look on her face to which Barry frowned.

"Nora, what is it?" Rachel prompted and quickly followed with, "Why didn't you answer my questions the other day? Why do I feel time like you've been hiding something this whole time?"

The younger woman's face flushed red and everyone could clearly see that she got very, very nervous.

"Nora?" Barry nudged, looking from one woman to the other. "What is your mom talking about? Is everything ok?"

"No, actually… No, dad, it's not," she finally confessed, looking down at the floor and avoiding everyone's eyes.

"There's someone out there, is there?" Rachel guessed. "Someone who taught you time travel. Who really came up with the idea to collect objects scattered throughout time to build a device to use against Cicada."

There was silence, Nora's cheeks flushing even more crimson.

"I… I've been… I mean… I didn't know…"

"Nora?" Barry's voice grew a bit harder as he could almost feel that whatever was coming was bad.

She braved it out, straightened up and face her father, "Eobard Thawne," the answer finally came and the was silence fell once again.

After a while, when everyone was still shocked and processing that information, she added, "He's in prison in the future. I went to see him."

In that moment Barry's façade finally broke as he couldn't take this anymore. His face contorted in pain – betray clearly visible.

"Nora… why would you do this?" Rachel asked, equally disturbed. "Did the future me not tell you about him?"

"Not the whole story, no," the answer came. "I didn't know much about him except that he was dad's nemesis and he used to date you, mom. And he was the only speedster I could get to. I wanted to ask him some questions only he could answer. It was safe. He's locked up and there's no way he can ever leave."

"How long?" Barry asked through clenched teeth. "How long has this been going on? Did your mother know?"

"It was just a few times and no, of course she didn't. I knew she wouldn't approve." Nora put her head down again. "He kept sending her messages to come and see him as his time was running out... They are actually going to kill him. But mom ignored them all. She never wanted to see him again. I guess… I guess she blamed him for your disappearance, dad. I… I read those messages… and I went to see him to get some answers… answers about being a speedster… And I… I wanted to tell you for so long, but I… I guess I didn't have enough courage. I just wanted to see my dad, to travel back to the past safely and to meet you… Eventually, I thought I could also save you. And he knew how. He knows how to manipulate the timeline, he…"

"He wanted me dead in the past and I'm pretty sure he wants the same in the future," Barry interrupted in anger. "Whatever he advised you… I guarantee you, he lied to you and everything you've so far done, you've only made things worse and you haven't even come close to actually saving me!"

Rachel uttered a sudden sob before she pressed her hand to her mouth, too shocked with this turn of events, too stunned. Ever since they'd let Nora stay, she hoped they had a chance, she hoped they could actually save Barry, but now… now she knew this was probably not going to be possible since Thawne had been involved all along.

"Oh, Nora…" she nearly whispered, having no strength to speak, "you have no idea what you've done…"

"As soon as I found out that he killed my grandmother, I stopped talking to him. I wanted to tell you the truth, but I couldn't find the right moment and I… I was too scared. I'm so, so sorry…" Now Nora started to cry, the magnitude of the situation hitting her full on.

Barry simply turned around and walked out of the cortex.

"Barry!" Rachel ran after him, catching up with him in the hall. "Honey…"

He was shaking, shaking with anger and hate and then he suddenly exclaimed, "I'm not there… in the future… and… and Thawne…!" He shook his head, looking aside for a moment. "Thawne is raising my child?! My baby?! And what was she thinking?! She thought that just because he was dating her mother and was a speedster himself, he would what?! Redeem himself in the eleventh hour by actually helping her?!"

"Dad… I… I know it was stupid…" they heard Nora again who clearly came after them. "If I could take it all back… I know I did something horrible!"

Rachel raised her hand, finding herself standing between them both.

"Barry, you have full right to react like this. I feel this hate and this anger as well. Then again… our daughter was raised without a dad, having just me and probably a few of our friends to protect her. No one could teach her how to be a proper speedster. I'm sure we did our best, but we could never explain to her how to go back in time, how to manipulate certain events and how to use her powers. Because of that alone, her age and curiosity and the need to meet her father, I can understand why she did what she did. Still, I fully agree it was wrong."

"Have you not seen him since you found out the truth about him?" Barry asked his daughter.

"I… I only confronted him to tell him I was done."

Barry only nodded before speeding off.

"Barry!" Rachel screamed, but it was too late. He was already years apart in the future…


He ran straight to 2049 to Iron Heights where he knew they must've been keeping the Reverse Flash.

"I knew you'd come sooner or later," he heard the voice he wished he would never need to hear again and as the man turned around, he spotted a small smirk effectively placed on his face. It was of satisfaction that only proved to Barry that Thawne knew exactly what he was doing and was in no way helping anyone but himself.

"You killed my mother…" Barry started, his fists clenched so hard it was painful, but in the same time he needed this pain to keep himself in check. He was seething with rage. "You took my future wife and now… now my daughter?!" He couldn't control himself in the end, screaming that as his face contorted in both pain and anger, his fists finally pounding the glass wall separating him from his enemy. "WHY?!"

"The answer always was and always will be the same," Thawne answered slowly, making his way closer to the glass wall in order to look Barry in the eye. "Because I hate you."

"Do you hate Rachel as well? Because she's the one you're hurting the most."

Thawne's expression changed almost imperceptibly.

"Whatever action you take against me or our daughter… it will always, always impact her. If my destiny is to really disappear… to just… melt away… the biggest pain will be felt by her, not even me. I'll be long gone. I hope you think of that," Barry told him, finally moving away from the glass. "But then again, you won't understand it. Because you cannot love. All you can do is hate and try to possess people." With that, he decided he would not outstand his welcome and he sped off, coming back to his own timeline.


"Barry?" Rachel asked in a quiet, nearly defeated tone as she entered their apartment sometime later. "Barry, are you in here?"

She had no other idea where to look for him anymore. He wasn't answering his phone and she knew that even if he did run to the future to confront Thawne, it didn't matter how long that would take since he could always get back to the exact moment in which he left.

To both her surprise and relief, she found him in the bedroom, lying on top of their bed, fully clothed only with shoes off as though he'd come home and just thrown himself there helplessly.

"I'm sorry. I needed… I needed some time to process," he said, covering his face with his hands and rubbing on his eyes. Then he looked at her standing in the door and he pulled himself up to a sitting position.

"Did you go see him?" she only asked before making her way to the bed and sitting on the edge of it.

"Yes."

"And?"

"Nothing. I told him a few things. The only answer I received was because he hates me, which is nothing new, really. I… I really think he might've fucked everything up. I mean things were already pretty bad, but now…" Barry closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Rachel. I'm sorry he's always out there somewhere, controlling our lives. I'm sorry that we couldn't get rid of him for good."

"It's not your fault," she assured him when placing her hand on his. "It's all entirely on him. Maybe we should focus on something positive like that despite his manipulations and machinations, we still found our way to each other. No matter the timeline, no matter what he changes, this never breaks. We never break."

Barry nodded, turning his hand around and locking hers in it. Then he met her eyes.

"I love you. I love you so much… And I hate him so… I felt like a puppet today. Like my whole life was manipulated by him again and it actually started long before I even realized it. He became my mentor and I trusted him and then I found out what he did, what he did to me, to my mother… to you… Now he played my daughter the exact same way and I just…" Barry's other hand squeezed into a fist. "I honestly don't know how to handle this anymore."

"I kind of think that my future self could've done more," Rachel suddenly confessed. "I could've told Nora more… prevented all of this…"

"Nah. You've done such a wonderful job raising her. Don't blame yourself. You did… or will do… absolutely all a single parent could when handling a speedster child. In fact, I'm so proud of the future you." He met her eyes again as he said that. "I am always going to be proud of you. I understand why you wouldn't tell her all the gory details too soon. She was already being raised without a father…"

That was a bit too much and the dam broke again as tears flew down Rachel's face and her hands started to shake.

"I'm really trying to be strong, Barry…" she confessed in an equally shaky voice, "I really am, but… Nora gave me hope that we could actually change things, that you'd be ok in the end and… now… What if what she really unknowingly did, was to make it all worse…?" she asked the perfect question that Barry was already sure he knew the answer to, therefore he was at lack for words of comfort.

All he could do was to pull his fiancée close and hug her tight as she clung to him, only making him feel more powerless and more frustrated.

"We need to defeat Cicada," he eventually said, choosing further action. "And I feel like the only way to do this is to appeal to the good part of Grace, to her as a child. The adult Grace is a goner… We do everything we can to wake her up and we give her the cure. That should erase the older her from existence. We can end this."


Just when Barry and Rachel were gone, Caitlin and her mother were attacked by Icicle. Nora was there to aid them, but in the end Cicada showed up and now Thomas Snow was dead and the team was even more determined to put an end to all of this. Even if Barry was there, he still wouldn't be able to fight as the dagger negated all meta powers. Their only chance could really be Killer Frost, if she could get close enough to the little Grace to administer the cure… this could all be over, therefore they were working hard on orchestrating it after actually coming up with a laser gun that could get rid of just about anything…

In the meantime, Rachel was really trying to be strong and not to give in to negativity and fear, but as much as she managed to so far be successful during the day, the nightmare always started at night.

Her dreams were back.

She saw Barry running very fast for something and the fastest he was moving, the more it caught up with him, affecting him, making him disintegrate in an unimaginable pain and…

Usually by then she woke up, screaming with her heart racing and Barry was there, right by her side, alive and warm and still with a breath in his chest, but… for how long?

He hated to see her suffer like this and tried his best to give her hope and to make the nightmares go away, but it wasn't that easy and they both knew it. In the end, Rachel tried to just ignore it, focusing on the present, on stopping Cicada and for a good reason as they created enough meta cure to start offering it to people in Central City who were scared of being killed or never wanted to have abilities in the first place.

She-Cicada did show up, but for that they were actually prepared, having the laser gun with them and Killer Frost on standby as Caitlin was the doctor administrating the cure.

They got so, so close.

Until Ralph - who just heard from the source that Grace had never had the dagger in the future and she didn't need it anyway to kill people – screamed at them to stop.


"You want to tell me what it was back there?!" Barry was angry at him, confronting him back at S.T.A.R. Labs. "We had it! We had her! And I would've shot that bloody dagger to…"

"We can't destroy the dagger!"

"Why not?!"

"Because the dagger is the only thing keeping Thawne in prison," Ralph told them.

"What?" Rachel asked, frowning in confusion as she shook her head.

"Think about it. Nora came to him and he decided to use her against you, guys. Of course, the obvious reasons are there, but… what if this was actually never only about messing with Barry? Yes, we figured he told Nora what to do to get rid of Barry, but… why sending her to this specific timeline? Why telling her to punch the satellite? What does this have to do with this mysterious Crisis Barry is supposed to disappear in? No, Thawne somehow manipulated the events so we ended up with two Cicadas. So we ended up with Cicadas we could stop. With Cicadas we could find. What if he helped us so we could destroy the dagger and free him?"

There was sudden silence as they were processing that information, seeing perfectly clear why Thawne would go to such lengths – to save his own ass and hurt the person he always wanted to hurt in the process. It was a perfect plan. And in the end Thawne would go free.

"Then how are we going to defeat Grace?" Cisco asked the perfect question. "If we can't destroy the dagger…"

"What if we use Cecile to create a psychic link with the little Grace and convince her to take the cure?" Nora suggested. "If we can't physically wake her up, wouldn't that work? We have to take a chance and try. I could maybe do it. Maybe she would listen to me as technically, she's just continuing the work of the man she calls her father."

"I don't know. That sounds a bit too dangerous…" Rachel hesitated, looking at Barry for support.

"No, I think we should try it," he disagreed. "We need to locate the adult Grace and surprise her, send her into a breach to buy us time… Let's just try."


"Hello, Rachel. Long time, no see," she heard a very familiar voice that caused the little hairs on the back of her neck to stand up.

They'd failed.

Well, technically they hadn't, but the turn of events hadn't exactly gone to their advantage either.

Nora managed to convince Grace to take the cure, but her adult version came back a little too soon and seeing that she would soon disappear, went into a fit of rage, using her powers on everyone and almost stabbing Nora with the dagger…

…forcing Barry to use the gun and destroying it for lack of a better choice, freeing Thawne in the process.

They didn't exactly expect he would come straight to them, more thinking he would escape hence both Nora and Barry just went to the future.

Too late, though.

"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" he asked when she first froze in fear and then slowly turned away, facing him bravely. "Even more beautiful than the first day I saw you."

"Spare me," she managed to say in a normal voice, having used all of her control. "What do you want from me?"

"Well… what I want is…" Only he never finished, because both the father and daughter just came back, punching him and sending into a wall.

All Rachel saw was flashes of different lightnings and she picked up running outside of the building while grabbing a gun on her way, correctly predicting that she would find them there, now also in the company of Cisco, Ralph and Frost who quickly joined the fight.

"You'll never lay a hand on my daughter or my wife ever again!" Barry screamed in rage, throwing himself at Thawne and choking him.

"But she's not your wife. Not yet. Are you sure you can even get as far?" the Reverse Flash provoked, though struggling to breathe.

"Dad!" Nora suddenly screamed in a voice so terrified that it truly was the only thing that could get to him through the rage that was currently consuming him. "DAD!" she called again, followed by Rachel screaming Nora's name.

Barry let go of Thawne, turning around to face his daughter and he froze, seeing that her hands started to flicker, turning into light particles and that could only indicate…

"I guess a new timeline is settling in," Thawne commented. "I'm sorry, little runner," he then spoke directly to Nora before taking one last look at Rachel and speeding off.

Barry didn't have the time or will to chase after him, getting to his daughter instead.

"What's happening to me?!" she asked both her parents as they were now by her side, the rest of the team only helplessly watching from close distance.

"You're… you're being erased from existence," Barry provided in a shaky voice.

"No! I don't want to! I…" Nora started to shake, her entire body lit up now. "How do I stop this?!"

"You can't," Barry provided helplessly while only able to stand there and watch. "Nora, I…"

"Maybe it's because the Nora we will have never made this trip to the past," Rachel provided the explanation or one that she wanted to believe in. "Maybe… maybe our Nora won't need to…?"

Barry really wanted to believe that, but something did not add up and he had an inkling as to what. It shouldn't be a question whether they would make Nora, not now after Rachel loved their daughter so much. It was rather a question of whether he would be able to help make her.

For now they could only gather together, hold their baby like there was no tomorrow till she disappeared completely, Rachel crying quietly, Barry having tears in his own eyes.

However, next thing he did, he sped off and back into the Labs. He needed to know…


"Oh no, no, no, no…" Barry was frantically whispering while placing his hands on top of his head in a helpless gesture.

"Barry, what are you…?" Rachel followed him, entering the time vault and he had half a mind to hide this from her, but he resisted. He wanted to marry her, to build a life with her, he could not possibly start lying to her. "Barry…" she then gasped, her eyes opening widely on seeing the article from the future titled Flash missing. Vanishes in Crisis.

"We were right all this time," Barry said in a strangely stone cold and detached voice. "Of course he used our daughter. Of course he hadn't changed. He escaped death penalty and managed to screw with our future in the process. Because that's who he is. Because he hates me so much."

"But nothing seems to have changed," Rachel said, seeing the article and not really getting Barry's point. "At least he hasn't made it worse, has he?"

"Look at the date. That is exactly why Nora disappeared."

Rachel made a few steps forward and then she stumbled as she finally saw the date of the article.

"But this is… this is just a few weeks from now," she gasped. "We were supposed to have years, not weeks!"