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Eobard Thawne
There’s multiple ways it can be viewed. Divine retribution. Universal karma. A cosmic joke. No matter the take on it, it’s a simple fact that Eobard Thawne’s love story plays out in reverse.
The first time he sees you, you’re staring him down from the other side of his glass cage. You are (clenched fists, wild eyes, spitting venom) beautiful. Another version of him - a him he’s yet to become - has already earned your hatred and spite; he finds it a future to look forward to all the same. In a matter of minutes, you (furious, hateful, divine) bewitch him completely.
Years pass, as they tend to do. They pass in stutters and stops - occasionally rewinding completely. This is not as strange as most people would assume it to be. Eventually, he finds you again.
He’s wearing a new face, answering to a stolen name, yet somehow it is you who manages to be completely different. He’s never seen your eyes so soft. He’s never known your smile to be more than a baring of teeth. Here, you are younger and kinder and do not yet know all the ways in which he will break you - all the ways he’ll rebuild you.
When the circle completes itself - when Eobard Thawne is no longer flesh and bone but instead a paradox spilled in blood - he will consider you one of his greatest failures. It is superseded only by his failure to kill Barry Allen.
He knows you loved him. He knows you’ll spend the rest of your life hating yourself for the way he made you laugh and trust and care. He knows you’ll miss him, even if you’d sooner bite through your tongue that admit so. It’s still not enough. You never loved him enough.
Here is the truth of it: Eobard Thawne saw you for the first time, shaking with your fury, and he made a mistake. He saw the betrayal buried in you, shrapnel you had learned to breathe around, and he thought you’d been his, once. That, for him, you’d be his again. He saw all the ways his love had marked you and imagined his hand, bruising, upon your skin.
He’d spent years waiting for it. Years building his plans around it. He’d envisioned every way he could irrevocably scar you - every way he could hold you down and fuck you - until he deserved every inch of that unfathomable rage. He’d wanted (he wants) to carve his name into your bones.
Yet you never kissed him. You never even wanted to. You stood close enough he could feel your body heat and you laid your wide, calloused hands on his shoulders and you once - only once - hugged him. You never leaned into his touch. Your eyes never lingered.
You had loved him, and if he were a better man that would’ve been enough. But Eobard’s never strived towards sainthood, and he dies furious and betrayed and still (always) wanting you.
Lisa Snart
The death knell tolls the second you say I love you. You don’t hear it, but that’s okay. She hadn’t either, at first.
You’re half asleep. She feels heavy, drugged, watching the sweet flutter of your eyelashes and the slight part of your mouth. You trust her to see this. You trust her in your home, in your room, in your bed and that is already too much. Too naive, too innocent, too everything. To know you can fall asleep peacefully at her side sits like an anchor on her chest. She’s never wanted anything more than to be worthy of that trust. She’s never been more sure that nothing she could ever do would make her so.
You stir, hair tickling her neck, and mumble into the skin there. “Stop thinking so loud, Lis. M’trying to sleep.” Lisa tries not to feel too desperately fond. She fails, of course, but it’s a failure she’s come to enjoy.
“Sshh, darling, I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.” She plans all the ways she could slip out without waking you. She daydreams all the ways she could stay here forever without you ever wanting her to leave.
“S’kay. Love you.” The process of you startling awake happens as if from far away. She can feel your body tensing, can all but hear your brain rebooting, can easily imagine the thud of your pulse in the base of your throat. It all seems painfully distant. Love. He loves me, she thinks and it still doesn’t feel real.
She desperately wants it to be real.
“Do you mean that?” She asks and hopes her voice doesn’t convey just what your answer could do to her. She’s never been loved before - not like this. What will she do if you take it away?
She should’ve known better. Brilliant, lionhearted you. You’ve never been one to back down.
“Of course I do. I love you, Lis.” Something sparks, warm and pleased, in the hollow of her ribs. You settle back into her side - apparently deeming the situation handled - and you’re sleep warm and beautiful and everything she has ever wanted. You don’t ask her to say it back. You don’t even act like it’s expected. Brilliant, lionhearted, perfect you.
Only - God how she wishes she hadn’t thought that only - she wants to say it back. The words sit on her tongue, golden and precious and world altering. They stay there, curdling, stuck behind her teeth.
You deserve the world. You definitely deserve to know you are loved in return. You, with your steady hands and sunshine smiles and knowing eyes. You, who always watches her leave and never doubts she will come back. Brilliant, lionhearted, perfect, too good for her you.
Everything she knows about kindness, about love, she learned from her brother. It feels like the worst of betrayals to think it not enough. She’d gladly spend her days sharing in your successes and her nights guarding your dreams. She’ll always be willing to step in front of you, to take the force of the blows. She can’t imagine being anything other than fierce, protective, in the face of your love.
But she doesn’t know how to stay. She doesn’t know how to make a home, a life. Her home has always been wherever she rested her head at night. Home is Lenny’s hugs and Mick’s gruff voice. It’s you; brilliant, lionhearted, perfect, too good for her, darling you. She’s always running and you’re the only thing to ever make her slow. After all, Lenny and Mick have always ran with her. But you won’t. Can’t. You define yourself in places and people and responsibilities. Maybe she’s your home, too, but it won’t be enough.
Oh. It won’t be enough. The death knell tolls again, and this time it’s all she can hear.
Lisa’s a thief. She’s covetous and sly and self-serving. She steals more of your time than is kind, knowing what she knows. It’s still far less than what she desires. You’re still her exception, after all. She thinks you always will be.
She never says I love you. The words still have permanent residence on the tip of her tongue, long after she forces herself to say goodbye.
Hartley Rathaway
He’s not sure when he became someone you trusted. He’s not sure when he became someone so openly desperate to deserve that trust. All he knows is there are days where you look to him - for guidance, for support, for a smile. All he knows is you don’t flinch from his presence anymore.
Hartley’s a million things, he knows, but he’s not a fool. You’d never want to know the lengths he’d go for you. You’d never want to see the mess you’ve made of him. You’d never want to think yourself capable of breaking his heart.
Okay. Okay. You’ll never know and he’ll never tell.
Caitlin Snow
One day you will tell her you had a crush on her, once. She’ll freeze - no, bad word choice. She’ll pause, hesitant and caught in indecision. There will be a part of her - forever hopeful and eternally disappointed - that will think this might be a confession.
Only, no. She’s heard you speak impossible things, marvelous things, into being before. This won’t be that. This will be your anecdote tone of voice. The one that starts off slow and sly and hints at a smile you won’t fully unleash until the punchline. Oh Cisco, she’ll think, helpless, you have never failed more at reading a room.
“I met you and, well, you were there, you know. You were amazing! You’re Disney Princess beautiful - don’t front girl, you know you are - and you were one of the first kind faces I saw that day. I was rocking some serious heart eyes after that first conversation. I totally knew how important you were going to be to me. Okay, sure, I got the context wrong, but I’m counting it!”
Caitlin has been beaten, chained, terrorized, and held prisoner in her own body. This will still be one of the hardest things she’ll ever endure. She will, though. Endure, that is. She’s willing to do far worse for you - pretending you’re not breaking her heart won’t even rank.
“I had a crush on you for, like, a month. It died out pretty quickly once I saw how good you and Ronnie were together.” Your smile will fade, here, like it always does when Ronnie is mentioned. The ache has dulled with time, but it will always be present in the both of you.
You’ll continue, because you’ve both promised to keep his memory alive as best as you can, but you’re voice will lose its entertainer quality. A small mercy is still a mercy. “You guys were so perfect for each other and I just felt so lucky to know you both. I loved you guys so much, you know? My amazing best friends, Ronnie and Caitlin. It was impossible to want to get between that.”
You’ll get that look on your face. The wide eyed, manic grinned one that means you’re determined to push through any awkwardness. It’s one of her favorites, if only for how it’s occasionally accompanied by the flush of your cheeks.
You will sigh, all false forlornness and wistful longing, “Oh Caitlin, you’re the one that got away!”
Ah. The punchline. The worst thing will be that you’re not being cruel. You won’t even be aware that you’re sticking your fingers into still gaping wounds. In your world, your best friend Caitlin Snow will giggle with you at the idea of the two of you ever being anything besides platonic. She’ll do her best to follow the script. She’ll pray you won’t notice the catch in her breath, the hollowness of her laughter.
You see, if there is a universe in which Caitlin does not love Ronnie, she will never witness it. Yet the multiverse has proven to her, time and again, that love doesn’t mean she will never lose him. It seems there is always a Caitlin Snow losing a Ronnie Raymond somewhere out there. There is grief in this, deep and swelling and shifting like the tides. There is also pity. Every Caitlin loses Ronnie. Not every Caitlin has you.
You’re the one standing beside her when Ronnie’s voice cuts out, leaving only static. You’re the one who dragged her from that godforsaken corridor; she thinks she would have spent the rest of her short life staring at that locked door if not for you. You’re the one who watched her shatter, again and again, with every realization that he was truly gone. You’re the one who held her up until she was strong enough to piece herself back together.
It happened slowly, without her realizing. Inch by inch, until she was drowning without ever having noticed the water. Suddenly, you’re her exception. Her line in the sand. You’re what pushes her forward and holds her back and returns her to herself. I can lose anyone but you. I could hurt anyone but you. Everyone can hate me but you. Your love is a miracle she’ll never deserve. It’s the sweetest ache she’ll ever have.
“But none of that’s the important bit! The point is that I knew, from the moment we met, that I would love you in a deep, defining, embarrassingly gooey way. So proof: I was psychic even then.” She’ll stare at you, at the dimple in your chin and the loose wave of your hair and the depth of your eyes, and be breathlessly grateful. A deep, defining love.
She’ll only wish you meant it the same way she did.
Barry Allen
The night of the lightning strike is hazy in Barry’s memory. It’s been desaturated, stripped down to its base components, over time and trauma. He doesn’t remember why he returned to his lab. He can’t recall what he was thinking when he saw the explosion through the window. He doesn’t know if he was frustrated or panicked or annoyed or all of the above as he struggled to close the skylight.
But he’ll always recall, in perfect detail, what it felt like to be struck by lightning. It’d stolen his breath. His hair had stood on end and his chest tightened and his muscles seized. Every nerve in his body had lit up in stunning, brilliant pain as they were taken from his control.
He hears a lot about that night, anyway. Freak accident, a lot of people say. Shit luck, the more blunt might add. That night wasn’t anything he ever could’ve prepared for. It was a one in a million (one in seven hundred thousand, actually) chance. If he were anyone else, in any other life, that’s all it would’ve been. But he’s not, is he? He’s Barry Allen and he was always going to be struck by lightning. It was never a question of if, only when.
So please know he doesn’t make this comparison lightly: that is what this feels like. These past years a slowly brewing storm he never could’ve stopped. You’re a destiny he never could’ve avoided. You bite your bottom lip, distracted and a million miles away, and there. Lightning strike. Every nerve in his body fizzling and utterly beyond him.
You’re a force of nature that’s going to remake him. That was always going to remake him.
The thing is, Barry’s always running late. It’s a habit he’s tried desperately to outgrow, but it lingers like smoke around him. It’s an irony he can never seem to avoid. Barry’s always late, and this is no exception.
If he’d had this realization years ago, maybe even months ago, there might have been a chance. You would’ve looked up just to catch him staring and smiled. Maybe you would’ve been watching him, too. Now you flinch from every accidental touch. There are days he wants to run away with you while you won’t speak to him at all.
He knows he’s selfish, when it comes to you. Another habit he can’t shake. Another thing that’s breaking him down. He’s always wanted everything from you, even before he realized quite what that meant. He wanted all of your considerable focus, your inside jokes, your loyalty and love and unwavering faith. He’s never been as good as he should’ve been when it comes to returning the favor.
And now here he is again, grasping for more from you. His mistakes always seem to hurt you the most and yet here he is wanting to lay claim to yet another piece of you. He’s afraid he’ll take everything from you if you let him. He’s afraid you’ll never let him anywhere near you again.
Harrison “Harry” Wells
You’ve always deserved better than him. You always will. This is a universal constant Harry will never doubt, despite the world trying so very hard to make him doubt everything.
Your hands (calloused, steady, beloved) are capable of ripping holes into the seams of the universe. Your feet have guided you into unimaginable worlds. Still he knows that for every world you discover in which the impossible thrives, you’ll never discover a world in which your presence in his life is anything but a miracle.
He hopes you know that. He thinks you do. You’ve always seen through him far too easily.
(It’s why he’d hated you, in the very beginning. Your eyes were sharp and bright and rendered him transparent. You hadn’t liked what you’d seen, all of Harry’s ugly intentions mixed up with all of the weighted history that came with his name and his face. It’d seemed easier, at the time, to make you hate him on his own terms. He still wonders sometimes, if you could’ve loved him then. He’d been so angry and so afraid and so twisted up inside. He thinks you could’ve. He knows you would’ve tried.)
In this moment, in your own impossible universe, you are laughing at baby sloth videos. It’s a different sound from all those years ago, when Harry was an outsider and blissfully forgotten. Less carefree, maybe. Or no, not less carefree but more hard earned.
You’re still the type of person who grabs onto joy with both hands and tries to ensure everyone gets their equal share. It’s just that now you are also the type of person who’s had to climb mountains and swim oceans and dive impossible depths just to find said joy. You’re now the type of person who has grabbed onto joy with bruised fingers and vicious determination and won.
It still leaves Harry feeling as dumbstruck, as stupidly smitten, as it did so long ago.
You look up, eyes crinkled and cheeks dimpling, and beckon him over with ridiculous grabby hands. Your phone emits the (admittedly cute) squeaks of tiny little sloths.
Your damp hair is curling slowly against your shoulders as it dries. His shirt hangs, slightly too big and tempting, over your bare legs. There’s a mark high on your neck, right where Harry knew no shirt would cover it. It’s terribly cliché and horribly sappy, but you’re his home. The love of his life. Whatever other phrase that finds its place in Hallmark gift cards. You’re it for him.
He’ll never, not in a million years, deserve you. He joins you in bed, bracketing in your warmth as he leans in close, anyway. Harry’s never claimed to be anything but selfish.