Archive of Our Own ^beta

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          Barry picks up the phone. There’s shaky breathing on the other end of the line.

          “Hello? Who is this?”

          “My name is Thad Thawne.”

          Barry’s eyes widen in shock, his hand grips the phone tighter. He was well aware of Thad Thawne.

          “Please don’t hang up. I know you don’t know me, or maybe you do, and that my name is reason enough for you to hang up, but I need your help.”

          “Why?”

          “Like I said I need help. You’re Barry Allen, the Flash…”

          “No, why did you contact me?”

          “This facility only allows outgoing calls to assigned legal consultants or family.” Thad pauses, “And I’m…technically your grandson, aren’t I?” It counted enough for the phone call to go through.

           Barry was silent, but Thad could hear the older speedster’s breath over the phone. He hadn’t hung up on him yet. What Thad couldn’t see was they way Barry’s blue eyes flickered rapidly with his thoughts. Each one mulling over the complexity and potential danger of this situation. He could just put the phone down now and pretend as if the call had never occurred. His eyes flashed to the photo of his family that sat upon the desk in his and Iris’ bedroom. It was from the last family picnic they had together. Wally, Linda, and their kids Irey and Jai; Bart, Max, the Garricks, Jesse, and even Jenni had attended. It had been a long time since everyone had been together and happy. His lingered on the visages of Max and Bart. The disappearances and losses had fractured the family and put time between them, but somehow the universe had brought them together again. There were changes in all of them of course. He sighed as he stared at the smile Bart wore in the picture. He had beamed when he saw Max at the picnic, but this smile was different. He had grown up again into a wonderful young adult, but there were scars and pain behind his smile. Things he had experienced and never talked about. Barry knew what dying was like and how it had tinged him so blatantly for a time. It was inexplicable to anyone else, something he never wanted to talk about to his loved ones.

          Thad had caused this in his own grandson. Stolen his life before his time, left him and the rest of his family with a painful experience they could never take back, scars that would never fully heal, and things that he and his grandson could never talk about.

          “Barry. Please.” Thad’s pleading voice crackled over the phone. But as he heard the fatigue in the young man’s voice he couldn’t help, but wonder about him.

          With the Thawnes he had encountered in his life: Eobard, his own brother Malcolm, and others were all the same. Each one held anger and jealousy. He had never seen one of them smile in happiness or in joy. Their anger had driven them and everything that they were. 

          Was Thad the same?

          Had this young man known anything other than that in his short life?

          Barry closed his eyes and gripped the fabric at his knee. Perhaps he was flawed in his thoughts or feelings. He felt angry at Thad for what he had done to his family, but also pity. Max had spoken to him about Thad just once, but what he had said about the clone had made him wonder.

          “Alright…I’ll see if I can.” He was hesitant and uncertain as Thad spoke further giving him the coordinates of the facility, and in a silent flash Barry was off.  He would hear him out.

          Just this once.

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          As foolish as it sounded when referring to a clone: Thad was practically a mirror image of Bart. He had longer hair just like Bart, styled in a similar way too, but it was blonde like his own. 

          Barry breathed out a sigh. He was tired. Though Thad looked worse sitting stooped upon his meagre bed within the clear-walled cell; Cuffed at his wrists and his ankles connected to the back wall allowing him to walk if he wished. He looked fatigued in a way Bart had when he first...returned. Barry remembered that day well, he remembered how Bart had hugged them all so tight, it felt as if his grandson never wanted to let them go. His smaller hands had clenched tightly around the fabric of his scarlet suit. Barry’s chest squeezed at his heart.

          And here Thad was with those same eyes. That same look on his features.

          Those tired and distant eyes flicked up at the sight of Barry, there was silence between them for the first few moments, before finally in a quiet voice Thad spoke, “I didn’t actually expect you to come….” He swallowed, ”Thank you.”

          “I...” Hadn’t expected to come either? Wanted to see if it was actual you? If you were actually alive? Questions swirled in Barry’s mind as he stared at the young clone, but instead he asked, “Just what do you want from me?” He needed to be blunt. Distant. “Why did you call me instead of a Thawne?” He may have looked like Bart, but he wasn’t. He had killed his grandson.

          “Why not your own family?” Thad could hear the animosity that underlay the scarlet speedster’s words. 

          Barry Allen was a living legend. Thad couldn’t deny that as he looked upon the hero. He had died saving the people he loved time and time again. He sacrificed himself for others. While Thad and his family had endangered and threatened his family time and time again. It didn’t hurt in the least to hear the contempt from Barry, to hear how his voice became sharp and full of distaste as he spoke his family name.

          “‘My family?’” Thad spoke. His voice sharp in that instance.

          But Barry hadn’t expected to hear the same animosity in the clone’s own voice. He wasn’t parroting him. Thad wasn’t angry at Barry for how he spoke of the Thawne family.

          Thad’s hands clenched within his restraints. “My family?!” He said again, and in that instance Thad wanted to bitterly laugh, but he couldn’t even manage that. They didn’t deserve anything from him. 

          “They are not my family.” He shakes his head as he stands and walks to the edge of his cell to look at the older speedster directly. He could barely manage to speak of them, Barry could see the disdain, the hatred in those tired eyes. He just couldn’t help, but wonder if it was real or not. That was always the question when it came to Thad, wasn’t it? A question of what was true about him and what was false. Was that fair for him to think?

          Max had told him what little he could of Thad when is name had first arose in a conversation. Wally’s and others words were vehement and venomous. But Max had always had a different perspective when it came to the clone. Barry couldn’t tell if it was pity that he saw in the older speedster’s eyes as he spoke, or rather a lingering fondness.

 
***

          Max had walked away from the group, as the conversation had shifted to less unpleasant topics, one that wouldn’t bring up terrible memories in them all, and Barry had followed.

          ‘You alright, Max?’ He asks placing his hand on the older speedster's shoulder.

          ‘I was just…thinking, no need to worry.’  Max says, but the look on his face is clearly troubled.

          ‘You seem to be thinking pretty hard. Anything you want to talk about?’

          ‘I can’t help, but think that if he had guidance…the right guidance and someone who actually cared about him things…things wouldn’t have turned out like this.”

          “Max—” He knew he had meant himself.

          “If you had seen him, seen how much he had changed in that short span of time then you would understand why I couldn’t stand there.”

***

          Barry stood in front of the clear cell. He saw a young man that was tired, a young man that looked like he had been through more, and seen more than most men his age should. In that light his image stood next to Thad.

          His eye drift away and shakes his head, “I don’t think you should have called me.” He saw Thad, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Bart. How deeply his death had hurt his family, and how Thad had cause that pain. Bart might have been back, but that pain still echoed throughout them all.

          “THEN WHAT DO I DO?” The yell rips through the Thad as his hands slam against the cell wall with panic and fear causing Barry to look at him. His own blue eyes wide as he stares at this young man with fear written in each look and movement. He was scared. Frightened of being left again. But not only that. 

          “I don’t want to DIE here!” His voice cracked as his throat tightened with emotion he couldn’t hold back. He banged against the cell wall staring at Barry purely frightened, “I didn’t ask to come back to life, but I don’t want to die here either!”

          He had nothing left except a life he didn’t want. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. He never did. And in he end he never had a chance to be anything else.

          “Thad—”

          “No!” He yelled forcing Barry to listen, “What am I supposed to do?!” He asks and asks so earnestly, “Beg my so called father to not use me for spare parts? Plead with Eobard that I’m not a failure? That I can be of use to him?! Lie for my life even though I hate them all?! I was nothing to them! I am nothing to them!” Barry can see him breathe out of breath and how his body trembles ever so slightly. “I—I couldn’t go to them. I don’t want to go back to them, so I asked you. Alright? I couldn’t.”

          He tries control himself, but his body won’t stop shaking; just as Barry can’t stop the squeezing in his chest.

***

          An hour later Barry quietly returns to the warmth his home with a simple promise to Thad in tow. He would return tomorrow, and he would not abandon him there to die. 

          Though inside Barry, as he sat on his side of the bed and placed his head in his hands, he felt a mess of contradictory emotions clash inside him.  

Chapter Text

 Barry sat with Iris at their kitchen table. Two cups of coffee between them and what distance that came of their conversation Barry could only hope would not turn to a rift. Family was important to them. Their little Flash family meant so much to them, but family was complicated. Not always was it blood as they both knew well enough, but blood was hard to escape.

 Iris listened silently as Barry spoke and struggled. Her eyes did not betray her thoughts, nor hinted at her feelings. Barry had only glanced at the widening of her eyes at the mention of Thad’s name. For a moment he was unsure if he should continue or if his wife wanted to continue this talk, but she made no gesture for him to stop.

 Their kitchen was full of family photos. Of happy times with Bart, Wally and his family, Max, and the Garricks. It was a stark difference to what Barry had seen in Thad last night. 

 “You should have seen the look on his face, Iris. In that cell he was…” Barry shook his head, “He reminded me of how hurt Bart had been when he first came back, and he reminded me of myself when my Mom died and Dad….” He could see flashes of those moments in his mind and he was dragged out from his own home where his mother laid prone and motionless while his father was arrested, how empty and without hope his eyes had been, and with Bart all he could think to do was wrap his arms around his grandson. That empty pit of helplessness had swallowed him in those moments. There had been nothing he truly could have done in those moments. Nothing he could have done for everything to suddenly become all right. 

 Thad with his fear and desperation had the same sort of helplessness in him when had started to walk away. He had come to him for help. He had reached out, and Barry couldn’t just ignore that.  

 “I want to help him, but…” He looked up to his wife, a pair of more recent photos of the two of them with Bart was on the wall behind her. The three of them were close together smiling. In the second one they were all full of life as Iris laughed at how Bart had swung an arm around Barry and playfully ruffled his hair, a wide grin on each of their faces.

 “But what he’s done to our family…” He began and stopped. It was like two sides of a coin. You couldn’t have both could you? “What he’s done to Bart, and you, and Wally…I can’t just…It wouldn’t be fair to you three either.” But it didn’t seem fair to abandon Thad either when he needed, wanted, help.

 Iris settled her mug of coffee back down on the table and let out a sigh. Thad certainly wasn’t an easy topic for the family. He had repeatedly tried and eventually succeeded in hurting their family in multiple ways before he had died. Part of her could understand why or at least how someone from a young age could become like that, what Meloni had told her of her father back in the future, but despite that she couldn’t just forget what he had done. He may have changed or be different now from what Barry says, but she wasn’t certain.

 What Iris did know was her husband, and how huge and kind his heart could be. Iris placed her hand over Barry’s own at the center of the table, “I love you, and trust you, and if you want to help him…to give him a second chance I’ll…I’ll accept it, but I can’t just accept him…Not now. Not yet.” Iris squeezed Barry’s hand tightly just once before picking up her coffee and walking upstairs for a moment to herself. It was all she could give in this moment and that was fine with him.

 They wouldn’t tell the others just yet about their decision.

***

 “Thawne, visitor.” A guard announced and in walked Barry.

 “You actually came back.” And for once Thad’s eyes actually seemed bright. From beneath that tired empty look in his eyes shone the smallest light.

***

 The days began to pass faster than they ever did before for Thad. No longer did they blend together in monotonous routine in a world in which he could feel every second tick before him.

Barry’s visits were a bright spot in his days once he had come to accept that Barry’s visits weren’t a temporary thing. A moment of pity before he forgot about the clone and left him like a thing to be put away and out of sight.

 They talked about the past. His own at first as Barry sought answers that only Thad had. Thad explained his creation. Struggled past the speculations he had made and the hard truths he had come to understand in his time alone with his thoughts. And to his surprise Barry would empathize. Tell him that what he had been through wasn’t fair. That sort of life wasn’t fair to a child.

 In those moments Thad would stare at Barry as if what he was saying for utterly foreign to his ears and eyes. That someone sympathizing with him, that someone actually cared what he said was simply a surprise. As if he didn’t recognize it.

It was new to him and with every following conversation Barry could tell.

He wondered what a good environment and just a semblance of a normal life could have done for Thad.