Because I fell in love
Yes I fell in love
But wasn't good enough
For us
She's got that devil touch
That apocalyptic lust
I swear I'm not a sinner
I'm just beautifully broken
Now there's a darkness deep in me
I keep falling asleep
To these wicked dreams
Can't fight the darkness deep in me
It's where she likes to keep
Haunting my wicked dreams
You can call me fantastic Mr. Black
So cool, now there's nothing left
But an empty soul
Every thing is so bitter cold
I need a doctor please
Wicked, Boy Epic


"We'll be late for our own party," Rachel complained – or maybe wanted to - but instead her voice became raspy and quickly turned into a moan of pleasure when his lips traced a path down her neck to gently suck on her pulse there while his hand wandered up to her breast.

"So what?" He dismissed her worries with a shrug. "It's our party, after all."

"I like the way you think… I like this dangerous side of you," she then added, feeling herself being pushed against the wall and her dress riding up. "Um… I think this is a bit too public," she needed to protest. Truly the last thing she wanted at the moment was a guest from her own engagement party to walk in on them like this...

"Wouldn't be the first time we didn't get a room," the answer came.

"Yes, but at least then we were sure the Labs were empty…"

"Is future Mrs. Thawne scared?" he teased, but obediently let her dress go and made a step back, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. "But you're right. We should get going. I do have a speech prepared."

"Oh, really? Can't wait to hear it," Rachel assured her fiancé and then straightened her clothes and hair. "How do I look?"

"Thoroughly kissed and absolutely gorgeous," Eobard answered, his eyes conveying pure desire. "Like always."


Something definitely felt off ever since Barry left the house that day, but he couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was.

He hadn't figured it out till he walked into the restaurant in which he and Rachel were supposed to celebrate their engagement with their closest friends and first wondered whether it was closed for a private event. Only then…

He heard a voice he thought he would never need to hear in his life. And that made him even more confused. Confused and angry. And scared. The problem was that no one seemed to be screaming and the tone of the voice was perfectly leveled.

"When you find the love of your life," he caught when he got closer, frowning, his heart beating hard in his chest. He smelt trouble and was already cursing the universe for not giving them one evening, just this one thing to be normal and celebrate like normal people. "…it's like electricity pulsing through your veins, giving you a shock that you absolutely never want to end, because now… now you're a part of something greater. You're a part of something wonderful. And, frankly, surprising because you never know what face fate will be wearing when she shows up to knock on your door and change your life forever. When it does, for you, my wish is that that face... is as beautiful as the one standing next to me. To Rachel, the love of my life... and to our future together."

Barry was speechless. Everything inside of him told him to protest, to scream, to stop time as he saw Thawne dressed up in a suit, reaching his hand out to… indeed Rachel. Rachel who was radiating. She was so beautiful that she took his breath away… Only she wasn't looking like this at him.

Apparently now, again that breath was also Eobard's.

"Rachel?" Barry finally managed to speak, asking in a nearly broken tone.

Both her and Thawne turned to look at him. He would never be able to decipher the expression of the latter, but it didn't matter anyway because he was too busy looking at the woman he loved and he was supposed to marry.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" she yelled in anger, her expression no longer soft as now it was full of anger and hate.

And it completely leveled him down.

"What…? You… you are my fiancée. He's the Reverse Flash. He used you. He used all of us!"

"Oh my god," he suddenly heard a voice coming from the side and saw Cecile. "He actually believes what he's saying. I can sense it with my powers."

"Are you psychotic now, Allen?" that was Frost, her hands raised as she was already preparing to blast him with ice.

"I'm the Flash! I can prove it to you!" Barry started to panic, the sudden shock clouding his judgment, not letting in enough air for him to realize that the timeline had been altered so drastically and by no one else but The Reverse Flash.

He sped off and back… wearing the yellow suit.

"You're not the Flash, Allen," Thawne told him, changing himself and suddenly standing there in red. "I am."

"What did you do?!" Barry screamed. "Thawne, what the hell did you do?! Rachel!"

He barely escaped Frost's blast as he tried to move towards the woman he loved and then was hit with one coming from Gypsy.

"That's for Cisco!" she called out in pain and that was a bit too much. In this timeline he was apparently the Reverse Flash and he killed one of his best friends!

With his last effort, he snatched Rachel and sped her to their apartment, knowing that she was his best bet and that he didn't stand a chance against so many heroes present. Especially not when his emotions were affected like this and not when the last thing he wanted was to hurt one of them.

Rachel screamed when he put her down and she immediately got away from him.

"I'm not going to hurt you!" he tried assuring her when raising his hands up in the air. "Rachel, you have to believe me… the timeline… it must've been altered… I am Barry! I am the Flash!"

"No, no, you are the Reverse," she argued, frowning, her expression unsure whether to have this pointless discussion or to try to run. Though running wouldn't help her anyway since she was up against a speedster.

She didn't need to wonder any longer because Thawne sped there too and he brought Barry to the street, throwing him to the ground.

"What did you do?!" Barry repeated his question when getting back up and facing his greatest enemy.

"Oh, I did alter the timeline. I made myself the Flash," he informed idly, clearly enjoying himself. "I made sure that the lightning stroke me. That I never lost her. That Rachel and I got our happily ever after whereas you're the Reverse, the abomination."

Barry was shaking with anger and anxiety, desperately thinking until… his hand briefly faded away before he became corporeal again.

"Oh, that little thing? My insurance policy," Eobard informed him in a proud tone. "I finally did it, Allen. I went back and killed you as a child. I don't suppose you have much time left."

"What…?" This one was a bit too much. This one was a win. A win on the enemy's side…


"Are you ok?" Caitlin asked when meeting Rachel at the Jitters. "You know, coffee isn't the best medicine against stress. It actually does the opposite. Especially the Flash."

"How do you know I'm stressed?" Rachel queried, nursing the warm cup of coffee in her hands.

"You have a certain look when you're stressed," came in answer before Cait plopped herself into a chair. "I'm sorry your engagement party got destroyed. I know how long it's taken you, guys, to get to this point, but it was nothing more than Reverse Flash going up against us. We'll stop him. We always do."

"I know, it's just… it was… different this time, don't you think?" Rachel asked, still looking into her coffee mug. "He said he was the Flash…"

"He's clearly gotten delusional since last time."

Rachel finally lifted her eyes from her Flash signature coffee.

"Something was just so different and… desperate in a terrified, world crumbling around you kind of a way in him, you know? I remember Barry… Allen," she corrected, "who freshly inherited the Labs and wouldn't stop pursing me till we… well…" Rachel nearly blushed at the memory of how persistent he was and how he took what he wanted and that was her. She was young and naïve and she fell for it and let him into her bed first and then straight into her heart. Till the Flash actually exposed him, that was. "The Barry Allen I saw today looked like a completely different man. And he said the timeline had been altered."

"Oh, come on, Rachel! You can't possibly think he's right. Or… maybe now that you're officially engaged and planning a wedding, you're getting cold feet?" Caitlin suggested. "And that's why you're so hung up on this crazy story."

Rachel bit on her lip, looking into her coffee again as though she could find her answer in there, as though an image could just appear and… She couldn't shake that feeling off. Something was very, very wrong. Warped, even…


Seeing Caitlin didn't help at all and Rachel only came home feeling more and more confused, her head by now aching. She needed aspirin. And maybe she needed to sleep on it all and hopefully, the next day she would be back to normal. Cait might've been right. Maybe suddenly all this – her and Eobard – became real and sharp because of the upcoming wedding and she just needed a little time to process.

Time that wasn't given since Barry Allen was standing in the middle of her loft.

"Get away from me!" she screamed and backed off again, led purely by impulse and the memories she had in her head.

The memories she had… like a written book. Maybe that was the thing that seemed wrong? She suddenly thought. She had so many of them, all in her mind and yet, they felt more like a created world that did not really involve her. Or maybe just by being the writer she was, she was finally losing it herself and fiction started to feel more real to her than actual reality and the memories she had.

"Please… please," there it was again, this plea in his voice, the tone that was completely different from what she remembered. She was the one who'd spent the most time with him in private. She knew him. Or thought she did. Yet, the man standing before her now... he was nothing like who she knew. "Please, I swear… the timeline has been altered. I am not here to hurt you. I would never do such a thing. I love you. Rachel, you are the love of my life and where I come from we are happy together. Thawne… he's the Reverse Flash and the memory of him is fading. We are about to get married and we are so, so happy."

She was staring at him for a moment, somehow resisting the urge to just go over to him and throw herself into his arms, an urge she didn't understand.

"What do you want from me?" she eventually asked in a suspicious tone.

"I… I need strength. I can still undo this, but… I don't have much time left…"

A part of him faded away again before it came back.

"Are you… dying? Wait… you're… you're being erased from existence, aren't you?" she realized with a gasp, recognizing the signs. She was engaged to a speedster, after all.

"Yes. Thawne did it! I only have a small window to get to the right speed and with a help of an ally, I can undo this. But I need strength. I need to know you believe in me. Everything I do, I do for you. Because I love you. Because I want to keep you and our future daughter safe. Nora. Remember? She came to us once from the future… she wanted to see us finding each other and falling in love… because our love is spectacular. Rachel, please…"

"Get away from her!" Thawne suddenly sped in, standing in between them, already raising his vibrating hand. And that could never go to Barry's advantage. Even if by this he was proving to Rachel that he wasn't who he claimed to be, Barry would be dead before she realized that.

And then something remarkable happened.

Thawne froze and just fell to the floor, revealing Rachel standing behind him with some kind of a weapon in her hand.

"Cisco made this for me to use against the Reverse Flash in case he ever came for me again. It temporarily freezes speedsters' motion… Go."

She knew she made the right decision the moment she shot Eobard. Her heart knew it all along. And she knew her mind well enough to tell the difference between what was real and what was imprinted there. Maybe it was the writer in her. The worlds and characters she created always felt so real to her she could almost touch them…

"I love you," Barry said with a smile on his face and then he sped off, being faster than ever. That was what he needed. Her faith, her love breaking through even this, even with Thawne, her old love; it finally gave him not only the boost he needed, but chased away the fear he always carried inside.


It was rather an uneventful day and also one that brought absolutely no inspiration to Rachel. Only half way through it she got frustrated and ordered lunch for the team, now sitting in the lounge with Caitlin and Cisco, talking and laughing.

"Rachel!" Barry appeared out of the sudden, a panicked expression on his face, but also relieved. "Thank god!" he then added before speeding to her and pulling her straight into his arms.

"Barry… what's wrong? What happened?" she asked, truly not sure whether she should be panicking or simply be happy with all the attention.

"It's so good to see you, man!" then Barry proceeded to Cisco, hugging him as well.

"Um…" the other guy uttered in confusion. "What the hell, bro?"

"Really now," Rachel spoke, alarmed. "What happened?"


The team was just sitting there, completely stunned once Barry finally told them what Eobard Thawne had done and that he'd barely managed to reset the timeline with the help of an unlikely ally.

"I… ah…" Rachel stammered as she processed all the information, still not knowing what to say whereas Cisco exclaimed, "Damn, man! That was close!". Caitlin was just sitting there with a horrified expression on her face.

"I was able to tell that something was wrong?" Rachel finally made sure. "Wow. I'm… I guess I'm impressed by my own self."

"You were absolutely amazing," Barry turned to her, his eyes shining. "I couldn't have done it without you."

She went back in her memories to the time she'd actually been in a relationship with Thawne – known then as Harrison Wells – and she knew well how blinded and in love she'd been. It was, indeed, remarkable than when paired up with the man again and deceived in the most perfect way possible, she still knew something was wrong. The circumstances were probably different and she was older and smarter, but she still did see right through him and chose Barry against all odds, even when having fake memories of him being the Reverse Flash.

She didn't have any more time to ponder over this as Cisco just received an alert on his phone.

"Well, I guess I can't say now that you're not gonna believe this… Thawne's at CCPD."

Barry was gone in a flash.


As it turned out, the day could get even weirder as Thawne didn't make an appearance to kill Barry or to even fight him. He just made some noise so the Flash would show up and he could publicly ask him for help.

The Reverse Flashpoint – as Thawne called it – was prevented, the normal timeline almost fixed again and therefore he began to fade away. And because of that, he asked team Flash for help.

Barry brought him to the Labs and locked up before talking to the team.

"I think we should just let him die," he voiced his opinion. "I gave him a chance to change. He refused. He's still bound on destroying me and everything I hold dear."

"Not saving someone doesn't mean killing them," Caitlin spoke as well, her voice ice cold. "We should just accept this and move on."

"I don't know…" Cisco said, undecided, his hand on his chin. "I hate him as much as you do. He did try to kill me twice now and almost succeeded, each time in a timeline that was luckily prevented, but… Wouldn't that be like… becoming him?"

"We aren't going to kill him," Caitlin protested. "We're just not going to help him."

"Can you?" Rachel finally spoke up, having heard them all and still having conflicted mind about this herself. "Can you really save him? Did we even think of that?"

There was silence and from the way Barry avoided her eyes, she could tell he did.

"You already found a way, haven't you?" She confronted him. "Barry… I know what he's done to you. To me. To all of us, but… I can't help thinking Cisco's got a point there. It's one thing not to be able to help him when we can't figure it out, but if you already know a way… then that would simply be answering revenge with revenge. That is not the right thing to do."

"He stole you, Rachel!" Barry suddenly raised his voice, his hands closing into fists. "He stole you again! I almost didn't make it! You would've lived in a world where Cisco's dead and you think Thawne is the real Flash. That he's the good guy."

"Well, I'm actually not so sure about that," Rachel disagreed calmly. "You told me I knew something was wrong, that it didn't take that much for you to get to me. Why so little faith, then? Barry, you did restore the timeline. You did make it out of there alive. You did get the girl and you are the hero. And the very definition of the latter is exactly why you have to save him… Please, guys, tell me you're in on this…" She looked around. Barry did look down at the floor as though ashamed. "Doctors, they don't check who the person needing saving is. They have the moral obligation and the vow they made to always help. And yes, it is hard," she continued, now looking at Caitlin. "They need to save murderers and rapist and all kinds of horrible people sometimes. But they do it, because that is exactly what makes them different than those people. Their hearts. Their compassion. Their heroism."

"Ronnie died because of him," Cait slowly said after a moment of silence. "I will always hate him for that."

"No one asks you to stop."

"We can save him by severing his connection to the negative Speedforce. Permanently," Barry finally shared his idea. "If I hit him with enough voltage, it will happen. Without his powers… he won't be erased from existence."

"Then let's do this before it's too late," Rachel agreed.


"You can't honestly tell me you're gonna be happy with Barry Allen!" Thawne mocked Rachel when they all appeared in the cortex, standing united in their decision, yet one that wasn't made for the sake of him. It was for the sake of them.

"Really?" Rachel just asked him, folding her arms over her chest and facing him bravely. "Watch me," she then said and turned around, walking away. She heard Caitlin talking to him as well, angry and hateful after everything he'd done to her.

In the end, Barry was left there with Cisco to do his worst, the other man needed to monitor the voltage.


"Thawne's safely behind bars in Iron Heights," Barry notified when he joined Rachel in the lounge later on. "He hates me even more now. Screamed to me that I took his life because his speed was just that for him."

Rachel shook her head. "Coming to us for help and yet, ending up ungrateful. How typical."

"Because we didn't get him the solution he wanted, apparently."

She shook her head again while biting on her lip, a frown appearing on her forehead.

"What is it? Why do I get the impression that there's something on your mind?"

"Ah, it's just… I don't know… It's all a bit weird. Him asking for help like this, knowing how dangerous it was. I mean, I guess he knew that you wouldn't let him die, not even him, but… still… he must've known what we were about to do, right? How else would we save him?"

"Well, I don't think even Thawne is as stupid as to let his powers be taken from him and to end up in prison. Finally. I mean, how he's ever going to get out of there?"

"Unless he knew what would happen and was acting all along?" Rachel suggested. "Maybe he knew this was the only way to prevent him from being erased from existence and maybe he does know how to get his powers back?"

"I don't think so. He's a psychopath, Rachel. He told me how his hate for me started and seriously, an event so small…" Barry just shook his head. "Let's just be glad it's over. I'm so…" he stopped and sighed. "I can't tell you with how much power and energy it filled me to see you recognizing what we had even in that Reverse Flashpoint."

"Well, I hope you never doubted my love."

"No, but… he was always there, like a thorn at my side and now… once and for all I am not worried about anything. You and I are meant to be. Our love is strong."

"It's indestructible," she agreed, half-whispering before leaning in for a kiss.