that stupid, vintage helmet that really serves no purpose than to be some sort of bow to hermes, some nostalgic shrug to his father and world war one ( they'd talked about it, once, in a time before eobard existed, a place when barry allen wasn't anything more than an idol, when it was just eobard and his powers and his accidental intrusion on jay's life ) -- eobard sees it, he freezes, and a second is all it takes to capture him, all it takes for barry to come out on top, once again. free seconds are few and far between, anyway, and the second he sees jay emerge from the speed force he's already lost, even before there are handcuffs around his wrists ( specially designed, cisco says ) and barry's voice saying this is for my father, in his ear. but he hardly hears it, hardly notices anything other than the speedster veteran before him, the one who started it all -- jay garrick, the last remaining string of fate who kept eobard tied down to his last human impluses. the only one to take his line of thought off kill kill win destroy barry allen and push it into the sunny sides of early years, in the infancies of technology and the particle accelerator not even an idea yet -- into jay's hand in his own, kisses on his cheek like pleads for forever.
it only lasts a second, and then it's gone. a second in the past, a simpler time, and then he's back into the present -- still the past, technically, but the timeline must've shifted now if he's caught. barry allen's voice in his ear and cisco's handcuffs at his wrists and jay standing before him like some sort of homage to the gods, some herculean being in godly glory, and eobard's first reaction is run. ( he can't, he can't. ) when was the last time you saw me, jay jay? he wonders to say, when his face was his own and he was less the person he is now -- when he was young, when he was foolish, when he was so blindly in love with jay that it felt like having his skin ripped off to go back into his proper time after years of recharge, back to his own present when he learned to hate barry allen, where he ran back in time but to jay's future, and side stepped the love of his life altogether. hate before love, is the result here. he could've gone to jay, easily, could've ran and kept running until he collided head first into jay's arms. he chose instead to murder barry allen ( he didn't even get that, he got his fucking mother instead ), and that's the choice he always made, that he will always make. barry's death ahead of their potential life together. death to life. revenge to love.
there are sneering words and heartbroken faces, but eobard stays blissfully silent, save for a smirk graced on his lips as if to say this is all going according to plan. it's not, of course, it's an obnoxious bump in the road that has to be fixed to assure the timeline -- but he knows the pipeline more intimately than the rest of them, and he has his escape. timing is everything, and he waits his patient way, sits silently on the floor in his prized yellow suit -- not barry allen at all, but his antithesis, his reverse, the better version of him.
he's not the only one who gets time in his wait, though, and just as he plans his escape jay presumably also plans to visit him -- why, eobard thinks when he sees him enter the pipeline, why? was there some reason to rub in what could've been? some reason for this confrontation? maybe eobard feels shame in what he's become, in that he can't be the man who jay thought he was -- he will, instead, always be the man who runs away from him, the man who sees the helmet and takes off running, because what more can jay do to him? what else is there to say? i loved you once, in a time before, a time that potentially was only moments before in jay's eyes, a time that was eons, ages ago to eobard. he's old, now. older than his looks would suggest, on this face that isn't the face jay remembers, he's older than he was when he knew jay and he still feels a lifetime away -- even though this impenetrable glass is all that separates them, he's still unreachable, untouchable, unless he opens the gate...
maybe he can use him, then. has he ever been able to? has he ever had reason to? eobard frowns at the thought, because jay is untouchable in more ways that one, and he doesn't deserve this nasty, ugly side of eobard.
unfortunately, it's all that he has left. )
You came, ( he smiles, fake and foreign, sitting crosslegged on the floor, eyes far away and certainly not here -- somewhere in a time where things weren't complicated between them, when there was no them at all, because there certainly isn't now. does he still love him? ) what a surprise, Jay Garrick.
( no. he doesn't.
( but do you ever really stop loving something you once called home? ) )
[ it's the formality, the lack of focus, the distant way eobard (is he really still eobard, his eobard, or merely a facade of the man he once knew?) says his name — jay garrick — that gets him more than anything. no, it's not the face, the features of a man jay has never seen before in his life, parading around with all the swagger of someone he used to know inside and out (of course he knew, from the moment he laid eyes on the reverse flash, he knew; eobard may have always been good at running, but he's never been good at hiding, not from jay). no, it's not even the circumstances under which they've been reunited (by fate? by chance? maybe simply by the law of gravity), the fact that eobard has blood on his hands he can never wash off (won't try to wash off), the fact that there's a hated in his eyes unparalleled to anything jay has ever seen (they were blue, once, like the sky, like the sea, like the gods of yore decided to put the whole world in eobard's eyes; now, they're darker, almost black, sometimes red, and jay wonders if the underworld resides in those eyes instead of the bright, curious world he once knew). it's simply his name, but it's a name that means everything and nothing at the same time — jay garrick, like they're strangers, like they never knew each other, like they didn't once love each other, when love was all that meant anything. ]
[ jay garrick. ]
[ desperation isn't an unfamiliar feeling, the weight in his chest all too reminiscent of the early days of the war, when he was younger, naive, optimistic, when the sounds of bombshells and gunfire and screams echoed in his ears and in his dreams and he knew what it felt like to watch a man die, begging for mercy, and wishing he could do more, praying to god and the gods, pleading, desperate to see the war end, to end the suffering, to make peace. a hero, they called him, but all he ever was was a coward too afraid to die — and what is he now but a man who runs faster than any human ever could, dodges bullets and saves lives? a hero, they still call him, but where were his powers then, when courage was more valuable than pleas of faith? when speed could have outrun desperation? it feels like someone is pulling his ribs so tightly they're bound to pierce his lungs, deflating them until all he's left with is the remnants of how his breath used to catch at the sight of the man who sits just on the other side of the glass in front of him. ]
[ what happened to you? ]
[ but he can't say it, refuses to. it's an answer he doesn't want to hear, afraid he already knows the answer. still, there's a pull, almost magnetic, that draws him to eobard — he wouldn't be here otherwise, in a time that isn't his own, in a time that isn't home. eobard was his home, once, in his present, a time eobard didn't belong — but he belonged to jay, and jay too belonged to him. now, with literal generations (centuries) between them, both of them far away from any time familiar to them, jay isn't sure who — or what — home really is. ]
Eobard. [ e, he almost said, but the familiarity gets caught in the back of his throat; it takes a precise effort not to sound choked, like eobard's name is too much, when, really, it's too little. a slight crease knits its way onto jay's brow, but not out of anger or frustration — no, it's mostly disappointment in what eobard has become, remorse that he wasn't there to stop it. ] You've changed. [ physically, mentally, emotionally. and yet — there must be something still there, some part of his eobard, and if speedsters are anything, they're stubborn, maybe jay even most of all. ] But I know you, E. [ and there it is, the impulse, the habit. he can't keep the facade quite like eobard can, can't pretend like he doesn't care when all he's ever done is care, maybe too much. ] You had to know I wouldn't be far behind. [ he just got lost by a century or two. ]
( eobard, he says. it's good to be eobard again, not harrison wells, mentor and tutor and all around barry allen number one fan -- eobard is more sinister, though he thinks his plight is far the better side of this war between speeds, when it's one speedster against three of them ( wally west, eobard grins, he's almost forgotten the sidekick ), and eobard still reigns supreme, still beats them at their own game, speed. barry isn't at the height of his career, yet, and wally is still new to the game altogether -- child's play and nothing more, and maybe they got the upper hand one eobard this time, but it's all thanks to an anomaly, something eobard couldn't have counted on.
because then there's jay, who eobard is all too aware that he can never beat, because he doesn't want to run from him but towards him, because the one part of his brain that always loved him refuses to die, like a candle that won't go out no matter how hard you blow. it's visceral, now, fine lines of code embedded into the very fibers of eobard's being that tell him to want jay, that it's impossible not to, that every inch of him craves the intimacies they once shared when eobard was young and learning his speedy ropes, and jay was younger still and explaining the rules and hazards of speed. jay taught him patience, taught him diligence, taught him that the products of hard work were as easy as phasing through walls, as running at top speed, as making electricity in between your fingertips. but he taught him other things, too, about what it feels likes to have love and be loved, about how the future and the past aren't about what time you're in, and instead who you're with.
home isn't a place. it's a person.
eobard tries to remember when he forgot all that jay taught him, but no date sticks out. he must've forgotten to label it on his calendar.
e, he says, and eobard's eyes lift up almost in surprise. they're playing dirty, then, using a nickname that his muscles remember being pushed in between his shoulder blades, down the curve of his waist and up his thighs. he drops his smile, arms stretching out in front of him before lacing behind his head, leaning back without any ease as the motion would suggest. a nickname shouldn't have power over him, nothing should have power over him. who is he, if not the reverse to barry allen? where barry is all open emotion and crying his heart out over fallen hats and dead parents, eobard is closed off and cold, is the stuck-up kind of silent that implies a disconnect from all earthly emotions, anything that tied him down to any time period. even his face with a sacrifice he well endeavored to make without batting an eyelash -- anything for the cause, anything to murder barry allen.
he thought he was disconnect, at least. he thought leaving jay in the past spoke enough of his choice to drop love and pick up a pair of running shoes, to run, away and further yet to the other side of the world, a century in the future. he left home, left jay and that should've been the end of it. but of course it isn't, because when does it ever stop with speedsters? they don't know how to put the past behind them, and eobard is as much a victim to it as the rest -- he is, after all, here, feeling things he'd thought he abandoned when he he was a younger, more handsome man. jay's gaze is unfair, endlessly, but eobard isn't ready to say barry has won just yet. not for love or something as foolhardy as that. it's a cheap shot, but eobard will teach himself to hate all over again -- one look and he's falling in love, but he'll make the next fall back out ( or maybe he can love for a little while longer, maybe, because what's a couple seconds to a speedster? long enough ). )
Jay Jay. ( he sighs -- it's not cruel in the way it's said, as his other words have been, just exhausted, just unfairly distraught by a man, a face, and a name. ) I couldn't know that. I don't have all the answers. ( sometimes he does. he certainly likes barry allen thinking so, and as long as the future is assured, he knows how things play out. sometimes it pays off to be detail-orientated, meticulous, obsessive. ) How does Barry Allen feel about you visiting me?
[ it's something, at least -- jay jay -- a small glimpse of who they were when they were still able to look at each other with something other than disdain. does jay resent him for leaving? in some ways, yes, but jay's always known eobard to be selfish. he knew it was coming, eventually, knew he would never really be enough for eobard, not when he had lightning coursing through his veins, all the power of the world at his fingertips. jay taught him everything, opened his eyes to see the world in a new perspective, maybe opened his heart to love more than just himself -- but in the end, eobard just wanted more, and what else could jay offer but himself? ]
[ in the end, jay just wanted him. to stay, to be with him. but this story doesn't have a happy ending. maybe it's fate's way of getting back at them for messing with time -- no matter how fast they run or how many different times they meet, eobard will always want for himself and jay will always want for him. isn't that why he's here? because he couldn't just let eobard go, he had to run, to chase after him, to not let the best thing in his life slip through his fingers. but, for once, jay wasn't fast enough, wasn't fast enough to catch him, wasn't fast enough to see his undoing coming. he wishes he could blame eobard, because wouldn't that be easier than admitting he lost? to a speedster unlike anything he'd ever seen before, something so evil and yet familiar at the same time. this is zoom's fault, really -- but it's eobard who saved him, after everything, without even knowing it. ]
[ the speed force is a dangerous place for speedsters. jay would almost say it's like heaven. maybe, really, it's more like limbo, like a purgatory for speedsters who run too fast and can't control where they're going. jay never thought he'd actually see it, much less get stuck in it (thrown into it, more like). in the speed force time doesn't exist and yet all of time exists all at once -- it's a paradox of the highest caliber. it should be inescapable. how do you run to anything when everything and nothing are in a constant state of flux? he can't even quantify how long he was there -- years? decades? centuries? maybe it was only seconds, only minutes. time is relative, irrelevant. speed saved him, eobard saved him, in everything he did to make barry allen faster, in the beacon he became through every moment in time. eobard was the door without a key, a key he fashioned on his own. jay should commend him, should thank him, but how can he? this is never what he wanted eobard to become. ]
[ a lightning rod isn't supposed to hurt you. it's supposed to lead you home. ]
[ is he home? is eobard really the man he once knew? jay can feel it, some tiny thrum of energy between them, despite the cell, despite both of them trying their best to pretend like they don't care. jay wouldn't be here if he didn't, wishes he could leave. the others don't understand eobard like jay does -- jay isn't even sure he understands, but however dangerous eobard has become, he won't hurt jay. he can't. maybe jay's faith is his weakness, but he still believes in eobard. maybe that's enough, for now. ]
He doesn't know. [ privacy he knew he would need and jay doesn't have anywhere else to go but here, so here he is. the others have all gone to pursue other endeavors. ] How do you feel about me visiting? [ he steps closer to eobard's cell, arms folded across his chest. ] Surely, you haven't forgotten about us. [ it's meant to provoke him, to see how he'll react, testing the waters to see if his feet will get wet or if he'll just be electrocuted instead. but even jay, for all his trying, can't keep eobard at arm's length for too long, can't play mind games like eobard can. his face softens, yet still holds creases of disappointment and an unearthly longing. ] Did you ever think about me?
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that stupid, vintage helmet that really serves no purpose than to be some sort of bow to hermes, some nostalgic shrug to his father and world war one ( they'd talked about it, once, in a time before eobard existed, a place when barry allen wasn't anything more than an idol, when it was just eobard and his powers and his accidental intrusion on jay's life ) -- eobard sees it, he freezes, and a second is all it takes to capture him, all it takes for barry to come out on top, once again. free seconds are few and far between, anyway, and the second he sees jay emerge from the speed force he's already lost, even before there are handcuffs around his wrists ( specially designed, cisco says ) and barry's voice saying this is for my father, in his ear. but he hardly hears it, hardly notices anything other than the speedster veteran before him, the one who started it all -- jay garrick, the last remaining string of fate who kept eobard tied down to his last human impluses. the only one to take his line of thought off kill kill win destroy barry allen and push it into the sunny sides of early years, in the infancies of technology and the particle accelerator not even an idea yet -- into jay's hand in his own, kisses on his cheek like pleads for forever.
it only lasts a second, and then it's gone. a second in the past, a simpler time, and then he's back into the present -- still the past, technically, but the timeline must've shifted now if he's caught. barry allen's voice in his ear and cisco's handcuffs at his wrists and jay standing before him like some sort of homage to the gods, some herculean being in godly glory, and eobard's first reaction is run. ( he can't, he can't. ) when was the last time you saw me, jay jay? he wonders to say, when his face was his own and he was less the person he is now -- when he was young, when he was foolish, when he was so blindly in love with jay that it felt like having his skin ripped off to go back into his proper time after years of recharge, back to his own present when he learned to hate barry allen, where he ran back in time but to jay's future, and side stepped the love of his life altogether. hate before love, is the result here. he could've gone to jay, easily, could've ran and kept running until he collided head first into jay's arms. he chose instead to murder barry allen ( he didn't even get that, he got his fucking mother instead ), and that's the choice he always made, that he will always make. barry's death ahead of their potential life together. death to life. revenge to love.
there are sneering words and heartbroken faces, but eobard stays blissfully silent, save for a smirk graced on his lips as if to say this is all going according to plan. it's not, of course, it's an obnoxious bump in the road that has to be fixed to assure the timeline -- but he knows the pipeline more intimately than the rest of them, and he has his escape. timing is everything, and he waits his patient way, sits silently on the floor in his prized yellow suit -- not barry allen at all, but his antithesis, his reverse, the better version of him.
he's not the only one who gets time in his wait, though, and just as he plans his escape jay presumably also plans to visit him -- why, eobard thinks when he sees him enter the pipeline, why? was there some reason to rub in what could've been? some reason for this confrontation? maybe eobard feels shame in what he's become, in that he can't be the man who jay thought he was -- he will, instead, always be the man who runs away from him, the man who sees the helmet and takes off running, because what more can jay do to him? what else is there to say? i loved you once, in a time before, a time that potentially was only moments before in jay's eyes, a time that was eons, ages ago to eobard. he's old, now. older than his looks would suggest, on this face that isn't the face jay remembers, he's older than he was when he knew jay and he still feels a lifetime away -- even though this impenetrable glass is all that separates them, he's still unreachable, untouchable, unless he opens the gate...
maybe he can use him, then. has he ever been able to? has he ever had reason to? eobard frowns at the thought, because jay is untouchable in more ways that one, and he doesn't deserve this nasty, ugly side of eobard.
unfortunately, it's all that he has left. )
You came, ( he smiles, fake and foreign, sitting crosslegged on the floor, eyes far away and certainly not here -- somewhere in a time where things weren't complicated between them, when there was no them at all, because there certainly isn't now. does he still love him? ) what a surprise, Jay Garrick.
( no. he doesn't.
( but do you ever really stop loving something you once called home? ) )
no subject
[ jay garrick. ]
[ desperation isn't an unfamiliar feeling, the weight in his chest all too reminiscent of the early days of the war, when he was younger, naive, optimistic, when the sounds of bombshells and gunfire and screams echoed in his ears and in his dreams and he knew what it felt like to watch a man die, begging for mercy, and wishing he could do more, praying to god and the gods, pleading, desperate to see the war end, to end the suffering, to make peace. a hero, they called him, but all he ever was was a coward too afraid to die — and what is he now but a man who runs faster than any human ever could, dodges bullets and saves lives? a hero, they still call him, but where were his powers then, when courage was more valuable than pleas of faith? when speed could have outrun desperation? it feels like someone is pulling his ribs so tightly they're bound to pierce his lungs, deflating them until all he's left with is the remnants of how his breath used to catch at the sight of the man who sits just on the other side of the glass in front of him. ]
[ what happened to you? ]
[ but he can't say it, refuses to. it's an answer he doesn't want to hear, afraid he already knows the answer. still, there's a pull, almost magnetic, that draws him to eobard — he wouldn't be here otherwise, in a time that isn't his own, in a time that isn't home. eobard was his home, once, in his present, a time eobard didn't belong — but he belonged to jay, and jay too belonged to him. now, with literal generations (centuries) between them, both of them far away from any time familiar to them, jay isn't sure who — or what — home really is. ]
Eobard. [ e, he almost said, but the familiarity gets caught in the back of his throat; it takes a precise effort not to sound choked, like eobard's name is too much, when, really, it's too little. a slight crease knits its way onto jay's brow, but not out of anger or frustration — no, it's mostly disappointment in what eobard has become, remorse that he wasn't there to stop it. ] You've changed. [ physically, mentally, emotionally. and yet — there must be something still there, some part of his eobard, and if speedsters are anything, they're stubborn, maybe jay even most of all. ] But I know you, E. [ and there it is, the impulse, the habit. he can't keep the facade quite like eobard can, can't pretend like he doesn't care when all he's ever done is care, maybe too much. ] You had to know I wouldn't be far behind. [ he just got lost by a century or two. ]
no subject
because then there's jay, who eobard is all too aware that he can never beat, because he doesn't want to run from him but towards him, because the one part of his brain that always loved him refuses to die, like a candle that won't go out no matter how hard you blow. it's visceral, now, fine lines of code embedded into the very fibers of eobard's being that tell him to want jay, that it's impossible not to, that every inch of him craves the intimacies they once shared when eobard was young and learning his speedy ropes, and jay was younger still and explaining the rules and hazards of speed. jay taught him patience, taught him diligence, taught him that the products of hard work were as easy as phasing through walls, as running at top speed, as making electricity in between your fingertips. but he taught him other things, too, about what it feels likes to have love and be loved, about how the future and the past aren't about what time you're in, and instead who you're with.
home isn't a place. it's a person.
eobard tries to remember when he forgot all that jay taught him, but no date sticks out. he must've forgotten to label it on his calendar.
e, he says, and eobard's eyes lift up almost in surprise. they're playing dirty, then, using a nickname that his muscles remember being pushed in between his shoulder blades, down the curve of his waist and up his thighs. he drops his smile, arms stretching out in front of him before lacing behind his head, leaning back without any ease as the motion would suggest. a nickname shouldn't have power over him, nothing should have power over him. who is he, if not the reverse to barry allen? where barry is all open emotion and crying his heart out over fallen hats and dead parents, eobard is closed off and cold, is the stuck-up kind of silent that implies a disconnect from all earthly emotions, anything that tied him down to any time period. even his face with a sacrifice he well endeavored to make without batting an eyelash -- anything for the cause, anything to murder barry allen.
he thought he was disconnect, at least. he thought leaving jay in the past spoke enough of his choice to drop love and pick up a pair of running shoes, to run, away and further yet to the other side of the world, a century in the future. he left home, left jay and that should've been the end of it. but of course it isn't, because when does it ever stop with speedsters? they don't know how to put the past behind them, and eobard is as much a victim to it as the rest -- he is, after all, here, feeling things he'd thought he abandoned when he he was a younger, more handsome man. jay's gaze is unfair, endlessly, but eobard isn't ready to say barry has won just yet. not for love or something as foolhardy as that. it's a cheap shot, but eobard will teach himself to hate all over again -- one look and he's falling in love, but he'll make the next fall back out ( or maybe he can love for a little while longer, maybe, because what's a couple seconds to a speedster? long enough ). )
Jay Jay. ( he sighs -- it's not cruel in the way it's said, as his other words have been, just exhausted, just unfairly distraught by a man, a face, and a name. ) I couldn't know that. I don't have all the answers. ( sometimes he does. he certainly likes barry allen thinking so, and as long as the future is assured, he knows how things play out. sometimes it pays off to be detail-orientated, meticulous, obsessive. ) How does Barry Allen feel about you visiting me?
no subject
[ in the end, jay just wanted him. to stay, to be with him. but this story doesn't have a happy ending. maybe it's fate's way of getting back at them for messing with time -- no matter how fast they run or how many different times they meet, eobard will always want for himself and jay will always want for him. isn't that why he's here? because he couldn't just let eobard go, he had to run, to chase after him, to not let the best thing in his life slip through his fingers. but, for once, jay wasn't fast enough, wasn't fast enough to catch him, wasn't fast enough to see his undoing coming. he wishes he could blame eobard, because wouldn't that be easier than admitting he lost? to a speedster unlike anything he'd ever seen before, something so evil and yet familiar at the same time. this is zoom's fault, really -- but it's eobard who saved him, after everything, without even knowing it. ]
[ the speed force is a dangerous place for speedsters. jay would almost say it's like heaven. maybe, really, it's more like limbo, like a purgatory for speedsters who run too fast and can't control where they're going. jay never thought he'd actually see it, much less get stuck in it (thrown into it, more like). in the speed force time doesn't exist and yet all of time exists all at once -- it's a paradox of the highest caliber. it should be inescapable. how do you run to anything when everything and nothing are in a constant state of flux? he can't even quantify how long he was there -- years? decades? centuries? maybe it was only seconds, only minutes. time is relative, irrelevant. speed saved him, eobard saved him, in everything he did to make barry allen faster, in the beacon he became through every moment in time. eobard was the door without a key, a key he fashioned on his own. jay should commend him, should thank him, but how can he? this is never what he wanted eobard to become. ]
[ a lightning rod isn't supposed to hurt you. it's supposed to lead you home. ]
[ is he home? is eobard really the man he once knew? jay can feel it, some tiny thrum of energy between them, despite the cell, despite both of them trying their best to pretend like they don't care. jay wouldn't be here if he didn't, wishes he could leave. the others don't understand eobard like jay does -- jay isn't even sure he understands, but however dangerous eobard has become, he won't hurt jay. he can't. maybe jay's faith is his weakness, but he still believes in eobard. maybe that's enough, for now. ]
He doesn't know. [ privacy he knew he would need and jay doesn't have anywhere else to go but here, so here he is. the others have all gone to pursue other endeavors. ] How do you feel about me visiting? [ he steps closer to eobard's cell, arms folded across his chest. ] Surely, you haven't forgotten about us. [ it's meant to provoke him, to see how he'll react, testing the waters to see if his feet will get wet or if he'll just be electrocuted instead. but even jay, for all his trying, can't keep eobard at arm's length for too long, can't play mind games like eobard can. his face softens, yet still holds creases of disappointment and an unearthly longing. ] Did you ever think about me?