Rachel needed some time for herself to recuperate, therefore she went home to her own apartment, by now so exhausted that even fear and heartbreak couldn't keep her awake as she simply collapsed into bed, immediately dead asleep.
It was good for her. Her body clearly decided to shut down since it was way too much all at once. Her mind was in a dire need of a break as well. She knew deep down inside that the way to healing would be long and painful and she couldn't even be sure there would ever come a day when she would not be wary of trusting someone again.
She woke up whole thirteen hours later, shocked that she'd slept so long, but it wasn't as though she hadn't needed it. On checking her phone, she spotted many messages from the team at the Labs. Few of the first were just Cisco informing about the mystery of the wheelchair he'd solved. Apparently, it wasn't just for show. There was a complicated futuristic device hidden in it on which Eobard Thawne had charged himself. At least she didn't need to think that she'd been stupid and he so in control of his body. He really had been running out of his speed and the theory was that he'd kept on losing the feeling in his lower body part due to using too much of it and being constantly depleted.
Next few messages came from both Caitlin and Barry, first telling her that Thawne had been hiding in the pipeline this whole time and also kept Eddie there. Right now, the first was gone and the second was rescued and safely back home with Iris. That wasn't the end, though. Apparently, the Reverse Flash had activated the particle accelerator again and it'd been set to explode. During the time Rachel had been sleeping, the team had been trying to find a way to transport the metas they'd kept in the pipeline. At one point, Caitlin and Barry had gotten worried that she hadn't been responding and she gathered from the messages that Barry had popped in very shortly to check up on her, but found her dead asleep, so he'd left her be. She didn't even feel like her privacy had been invaded. Quite the contrary, she understood perfectly why they would be worried and actually felt a little bit warmer in her chest that they'd come to such great lengths to make sure she was ok. She texted them that she would take the day for herself since they were busy with the metas anyway and if anything came up, they should let her know.
As hours kept passing by, she found she couldn't really focus on anything or do anything productive. Many times she caught herself on drifting off in her mind and staring far ahead of herself with unseen eyes, some kind of a fog clouding her vision. The time flew so fast she didn't even notice when it suddenly became evening and she grew tired again, yet couldn't go to sleep since her rumbling belly reminded her that she hadn't exactly eaten anything that day. She also had no idea where to go from now on or what to do with herself. Hopefully, Barry would soon deal with his enemy and they would all cease to live in fear, but then, what? She couldn't imagine her future anymore. It was a blank dark canvas of unknown…
…She woke up with a gasp, having just had a nightmare of the Reverse Flash lurking outside her window. Her heart was pounding like crazy when she got to her feet and ran there to check for herself, but she saw no one. Still, she couldn't be sure whether she'd really dreamt it or somehow felt his presence as he – while being a speedster – could easily disappear before she would even manage to spot him.
She hugged herself when looking outside at the city that seemed to be asleep and then she closed the curtains as though not seeing the window itself could shield her somehow. She knew it couldn't. She knew the only way to even begin feeling a little bit of peace was to get rid of her… what? Ex-boyfriend? They'd never officially broken up, but surely the relationship had been over the moment she'd found out who he really was.
She decided she wouldn't get more sleep that night anyway, so she could as well make a trip to the Labs and see how things were going.
Yet, the moment she directed herself to the bedroom for a change of clothes, her head felt like lit on fire. The pain came suddenly and struck hard, bringing a vision along. A vision so terrifying that she had the urge to scream, but all she managed to do in the end was to shed a few tears.
Not for herself.
Not even for Eobard.
But for Barry.
The vision she'd had while Barry had been attacked by Grodd was not just a nightmare, it was a real one. She couldn't explain why it hadn't stopped the moment Barry had been released from Grodd's influence, but it was real all the same – sometime in the future, Barry was going to die.
And after everything she'd so far been through, after everything she'd already lost, she couldn't, wouldn't handle losing him as well. She refused to even dwell on it and the feelings it brought, because she knew she could not handle them.
Just then, she saw a new text message from the man in question.
She read it while ignoring the pain it naturally caused.
They had Wells. They had the Reverse Flash.
It was their move now.
He was right there, kept in the pipeline, ready to have a conversation face to face, ready to maybe give her all the answers she wanted or needed. Still, she couldn't possibly do it. She couldn't bring herself to just go there and talk to him. It was all too much. Whenever she imagined herself standing in front of him, her mind just went blank and she started hyperventilating. And if she really went to talk to him, there would be no room for any kind of a weakness. She would have to hold her ground as she couldn't break. And she knew that right now she just wasn't strong enough, therefore she chose to avoid him instead.
She gladly let Barry in first since he was the one who deserved the answers to all the whys. He needed to get his father out of prison.
"Come on, Barry, ask it," Eobard Thawne in the body of late Harrison Wells, encouraged, standing face to face with the younger man; only a glass wall of the pipeline prison separating them.
"Why did you kill my mother?"
The Reverse Flash was right. There was no time for platitudes. They'd been doing this dance long enough.
"Because I hate you," the simple and emotionless answer came. "Not you now. You years from now."
"In the future."
"In the future. Yes." Thawne confirmed with a nod. "We're enemies, rivals, opposites, reverses of one another…" He proceeded to explaining why he'd killed Nora Allen out of revenge when he couldn't kill the little Barry and then, how he'd gotten stuck in the past and needed to create the Flash and mentor him, so he would get faster and faster to eventually make it possible for Eobard to get home. The more words flew from his mouth, the more disgusted Barry felt, especially when Thawne got to the part in which he voiced how proud he was of Barry and how he understood Joe and Henry now. That was a little too much.
"What about Rachel?" the Flash then asked, already done listening, yet still pushing. She was so traumatized that she couldn't even face the man. Barry didn't know which crime was worse or maybe they were both just as bad, only in different ways. Thawne had killed his mother and ruined his life and he'd also gotten Rachel to fall for him while lying to her and using her the whole time. He'd truly used them all.
"What about her?" Still, the Reverse Flash had the audacity to query.
"Why her? You can't honestly tell me that you really love her. A man like you cannot possibly be capable of love."
Thawne chuckled and Barry wasn't sure whether it was only to spite him or provoke him some more.
"You know very well why," his answer was ambiguous. "Deep down inside, you know. I hate you, Barry," he emphasized while coming closer to his side of the glass wall. "All I do, all I have ever done is to hurt you… Yet, I can give you a chance to actually save your mother. All I need in return is you helping me get back home."
"No! That's out of the question! We cannot aid and abet a criminal like Thawne! He needs to pay for what he's done and going back in time, opening this whole…" Joe came to a sudden stop, looking for the right word.
"Wormhole," Cisco provided.
"Yes! Doing that just to send him back to the future… that's… what if something or everything goes wrong?!"
"And what if I get to save my mom, Joe?" Barry asked the perfect question, looking at everyone present in the cortex next. "We have the Reverse Flash, yes, but how are we going to prove that he really killed her? How are we going to get my dad out of prison? And what prison can even hold Thawne? We tried to save the metahumans that we locked in the pipeline and now they're out there, wreaking havoc again! Yes, he killed my mother, but I can actually undo it. Let him go to where he belongs, to the future. It would make all of our lives better. It would be like it never happened. Caitlin… Ronnie… you get to have your happy ending without any tragedies. Rachel…" Barry turned to her now, "you would never have to get hurt by him, because he wouldn't be there to hurt you in the first place."
Rachel did think about that. And wasn't sure how she even felt about it. At this point, it was hard for her to imagine going on, not to mention the impossible idea of undoing the past. That was a thing taken straight from books. That wasn't something that actually happened. Then again, she'd just had a horrible vision of Barry dying – worse even - being ripped to shreds while screaming in agony sometime in the future. Maybe this way he could live. Maybe this way he would get to survive as well.
Yet, she felt like it was a crazy idea in a pile of things she already needed to deal with and she needed to retreat for a moment and think.
She didn't foresee Barry following shortly after she closed the door in the small adjacent lab she'd disappeared to.
He didn't say anything. He just walked over to her sitting in a chair and took the empty one next to her.
"Isn't it crazy…" she eventually started, "that I really do want to rid myself of this betrayal, of… him, but in the same time, I am terrified of that change? I have no idea, no way of knowing who I am going to be and how my life would go from there… I don't have it now either after everything that happened, but at least I have you, guys."
"Who knows. Maybe you'll get to meet the real Harrison Wells," Barry suggested.
"Do you think I'm still going to meet you?" she suddenly asked and finally looked up at him and into his eyes.
"Maybe," he said softly, almost revealing that what he really wanted to say was 'I hope'. There was something in his eyes, something she couldn't quite decipher – or she didn't want to – and she needed to look away. She closed her own eyes briefly, immediately tortured by the vision she'd had. Maybe this would really save him. This could also save her as she wouldn't need to worry about getting powers she'd never asked for, powers that were more of a curse than a blessing.
"Do it, Barry," she then told him in confidence before raising from her seat.
"Would you like to…" Barry stopped, hesitating, but then he finished anyway, "talk to him? Before…?"
"No. I can't do this. I just can't face him."
Was there even something left to say? And just maybe, her absence would actually speak more than her presence.
In the end, nothing happened as planned.
Barry went into the wormhole and Rachel was watching from the safety of the cortex; Eobard Thawne in his Reverse Flash suit getting himself ready for the journey when… Barry suddenly came back, clearly having decided to defeat his enemy instead.
That started a series of events that only led to tragedy.
Caitlin and Ronnie barely managed to shut the particle accelerator down when Flash and Reverse Flash started battling each other. At the sight of the clear advantage the Man in Yellow had, Rachel forgot about her own safety and ran straight to the pipeline, desperate to help even though she had no idea how.
She would have been too late if it hadn't been for Eddie who… turned his gun on his own self, taking his life and causing the Reverse Flash to let Barry go just before he was about to kill him.
Right now, all Rachel could do was to stand still and stare as the face she had loved, touched and kissed; transformed in front of her eyes until she was looking straight into the eyes of the real Eobard Thawne, a man so different from Harrison Wells that it was shocking. Terrifying. Disturbing. It was a stranger. Stranger that had lived with her for over a year, that had made her believe he loved her.
She felt sick.
And the worst part was that nothing was fixed. In the end, Barry hadn't changed anything. They were all still here with the horrible memories of everything that had happened, having lost Eddie, a good man. Rachel briefly thought of poor Iris who was engaged to him.
Apparently, it wasn't even the end as the wormhole opened up again and she screamed Barry's name when he rushed into danger without thinking it through. In that very moment, it hit her. It hit her why she'd seen him dying in her vision, why he would always sooner or later die – because of this. He rushed into danger to save people because he could, because he had the powers to do so. Powers he hadn't asked for. And that was who he was always going to be.
Sometime later…
There was brief knocking on Rachel's door and once she opened, she saw a tear-stricken Caitlin. Caitlin, her dear friend who'd lost Ronnie twice now.
Only this time, he was truly dead. Killed in the wormhole after he'd saved everyone by closing it.
"Cait, I…" she barely managed to say when suddenly, Caitlin's hands were cupping her face and bringing her closer for a kiss. "Caitlin!" she called her name when making a step back, surprised by that behaviour. "Caitlin, what are you doing?"
"Just kiss me."
"Caitlin!" Rachel made another step back, her eyes opened widely. "Caitlin, you aren't in the right state of mind. You're grieving. This won't help you. We tried this before, remember? It didn't work."
"So what? I just need to feel something else!" Cait erupted, despair painted all over her face. "I see him everywhere! I see how he died! I see the life we could've had… Rachel, I can't do this! I can't take this pain anymore! I… I really do not know how to go on," she then whispered, tears streaming down her face again.
"I don't either," Rachel admitted, remembering the Harrison Wells she'd lost and then, the vision that was still haunting her dreams. Barry was going to be next. He was still alive, having survived the wormhole, but there was always going to be another crisis and after Eddie and Ronnie, she couldn't bring herself to face more tragedies. She couldn't even bring herself to go to the Labs anymore. "I have no idea what to do…" she started and in that moment, when she met Caitlin's eyes again, she just gave up.
Or maybe gave in.
Cait finally effectively closed the distance between them, cupped Rachel's face and captured her lips, kissing her. And this time, Rachel wasn't fighting it anymore, understanding the need to feel something else, to get herself lost in anything other than pain and grief and fear and this horrible hopelessness her powers had brought upon her.
She was kissing Cait, bringing old memories back to life, let the other woman push gently until her back collided with the wall. Caitlin's lips proceeded to suck on Rachel's neck as hands cupped her breasts, massaging them through the shirt till her nipples peaked and poked and she couldn't help but open her mouth and moan deeply. Rachel completely surrendered now, raising her arms and allowing for Cait to sweep her hands under the shirt and pull it off and along with the bra and then, slightly cold hands were on Rachel's bare breasts, teasing till one was replaced by Caitlin's lips, sucking and flicking her tongue over the peak. Wetness gathered in Rachel's underwear and her legs started to shake as more memories flooded her mind. Two college girls who'd barely started to be friends and had such awful experiences with guys. One night Caitlin had simply kissed Rachel over opened bottle of red wine, desire sparking.
Rachel pulled Caitlin back for another kiss right after Cait got her own shirt out of the way, exposing the small perky breasts. She wanted to be touched too and Rachel complied when the kiss deepened, Cait moaning in her throat, pressing against her, wanting more of her, her hand reaching down and sliding inside Rachel's jeans, finding her underwear already soaked and stroking her clit, sliding the fingers in between the folds, rubbing just the way Rachel liked, just the way Caitlin remembered. Then Cait's mouth returned to working on Rachel's breasts and she was quickly lost, trashing and coming around Caitlin's fingers and under her lips, a sweet oblivion so welcomed…