Work Text:
"What language is that?"
Cisco doesn't even look up from what he's tinkering on. He'd greeted Hartley when he came in earlier, but seeing as they both have their own things to work on, there wasn't any need or room for a conversation.
He doubts there'd have been anything to talk about anyways, really, because while they do get along nowadays, the… well, maybe it is a friendship, he supposes, but it's still tentative. His and Hartley's personalities don't clash exactly, but they still slip into their old ways more often than not. Nowadays, it feels like banter rather than vicious insults, though, which is fine by Cisco. Still, they don't just hang out.
It's already taken a lot to reach the current arrangement, that Hartley could use his workbench if he needed, but only as long as he stays away from what Cisco is working on. First, the fear that Hartley might fall back into his villainous tendencies and choose to use Cisco's inventions to harm the team prevailed (and yes, maybe Cisco has a bit of a trauma from the Cold Gun, but can you blame him?) but by now he'd just end up annoyed when Hartley criticizes his work or – by far the worst – just changed things about it without even consulting him. Not that Hartley ever just touched any of his stuff without asking, but Cisco has a feeling that Hartley's know-it-all attitude could take over his hands sometimes. He gives off that – heh – vibe.
He supposes that with how often Hartley comes to work at STAR Labs, and with how frequently he helps the team nowadays (both behind the scenes and on the field) they should probably just put together his own workbench. It hasn't seemed necessary before, but now he shows up at least once a week and while Cisco doesn't mind sharing his screwdrivers and whatnot, he can tell it'd be much more handy if Hartley had his own stuff. But they haven't talked about it yet because, well, that's too close to an admission that he doesn't hate Hartley as much, and it would mean giving him a place. Hartley is much like one of those rats he likes so much, which means to Cisco that surprising him with a gesture might scare him off. Besides, their current arrangement works.
Well, most of the time, at least, because apparently Hartley is still not beyond snooping around the things scattered on Cisco's desk.
"What," he retorts, "I thought you spoke every language known to man." It's an exaggeration, of course, but Hartley is just the most insufferable kind of polyglot out there. There's knowing an impressive number of languages, and then there's mentioning it at every opportunity and flaunting it every two sentences when there's no need. Hartley is the second.
"Frankly, this looks like it doesn't come from Earth," Hartley says, and the frown is audible in his voice. He sounds irritated, like it's frustrating him not to be able to identify it.
Which does make Cisco look up eventually. As far as he knows, there's nothing here that should fit Hartley's description – the Dominators haven't exactly written any poetry for them, and whatever letters Kara may have sent would be found at Barry's apartment, not here.
When he turns his head, Hartley is already holding up a piece of paper. He's got his thumbs and index fingers pinched together at two corners, like he doesn't want to touch it too much in case it's cursed or whatever. It's… almost funny, especially with the way his eyes are narrowed and still full of wonder.
It takes a moment for Cisco to look away from that sight and instead glance at the paper. It's handwritten, by himself actually, and full of symbols rather than letters. There's blotches of ink where he crossed out things he'd copied the wrong way, and especially in the beginning the shapes of similar symbols still vary too much to seem like something he knows. The reason for that is that it's not his writing; he'd merely copied it.
"Oh," he makes when he recognizes it. He'd originally thought, when he'd looked at it only briefly, that it could be Gallifreyan, but then there were too many differences to that, too. Plus, unless Barry has hidden it from him, which would be rude, his best friend doesn't even watch Doctor Who. "That's– that's what Barry had written everywhere when we got him out of the Speed Force." Hartley hadn't been there for that, but they have told him about it, along with Barry's initial behaviour afterwards.
Convinced that it's no cursed object, Hartley turns the paper over in his hands again. "That's… fascinating," he decides. "So, it's what– the language of the Speed Force?"
Now, it’s Cisco’s turn to frown. “Well, that’s– we don’t know? Usually, when Barry communicates with the Speed Force, he just… understands it, so we figured it speaks English. Of course, it could just have an automatic translation going on that Barry doesn’t even notice or whatever, or he’s fluent in the language and didn’t know it, but–”
“His connection with the Speed Force could entail that,” Hartley agrees with a nod. He’s always been curious about Barry’s powers, even if he didn’t show it at first – and when he still felt some kind of resentment, since Barry got a cool side-effect from the accelerator explosion while he suffers pain – and ever since he learnt about the Speed Force, he’s only grown more interested. So had Cisco, initially, but by now he’s realized there are just some things you can’t unravel (even as a scientist). Hartley, however, doesn’t give in so easily.
“Yeah,” Cisco says. “But there’s also the fact that while he was in the Speed Force, Barry basically lived through the past, present and future. So basically, there’s a possibility that it’s… either from whenever, or maybe he’s just jumbled up a lot of things he encountered.” Considering how out of it Barry had been, it’s a real possibility. But then again… “I managed to translate some of it, but it’s utter gibberish, really.”
Hartley’s eyes, which had just been fixed on the paper, snap up immediately. His mouth opens in surprise. “You translated this?”
“Well…” Cisco scratches the back of his neck with the screwdriver in his hand. “The computer did, anyway. I just wrote a code.”
Hartley clenches his jaw in return, before admitting, “Impressive.”
At once, Cisco can’t help but break into a grin. “What was that? Can you repeat it?” He says, moving a hand behind his ear. “Because that sounded like a compliment.”
Hartley rolls his eyes before fixing them on the paper again. “So, this is just a repetition of the same phrase, yeah?”
“Uh-huh,” Cisco agrees. “It says ‘This House is Bitchin’.”
“Haha, very funny.”
Cisco blows a raspberry and puts down his screwdriver at last. “I ain’t kidding,” he declares. He pushes his chair forward, joining Hartley at the table, who has the audacity to huff – seriously, it’s Cisco’s workbench, he should be glad he’s even allowed to be here – when their knees clash. “Hang on, I got the algorithm,” he says and digs out his laptop from under a pile of sheets.
“Your organization is atrocious,” Hartley decides with a sneer.
Cisco grins. “One man’s chaos is another man’s organization.” He boots up the laptop and thanks himself mentally for leaving the programme he used for decoding Barry’s message on the desktop. Hartley wouldn’t ever let him hear the end of it if it took him more than 5 seconds to open it. While the programme loads, he explains, “There were a few more letters he scribbled, but they didn’t add to any words – besides, the repetition of that one phrase was an easy starting point, so…”
When he looks at Hartley, he notices that they’re much closer than he had anticipated. Added to that the fact that Hartley is staring at him, he quickly turns back to the screen. There’s a task at hand and he really doesn’t need to be distracted by the fact that he doesn’t hate Hartley’s stupid face as much any more. If he kept looking at him now, he might catch himself trying to count the moles spread around yet again , and then he’d start thinking about that again, and so far there’s never really been an explanation that wasn’t– well. Anyway. Task at hand.
Thankfully, the laptop is quick and the letters he did feed to the programme appear on screen after just another moment. “Like I said, I couldn’t make sense of most of it and even if it is a proper language, what Barry has written in it makes absolutely no sense, so–”
“I… recognize some of these.”
Now, there’s absolutely no way that Cisco can not turn to Hartley. His face is illuminated only so slightly by the light of the laptop, but Cisco can still tell the paleness doesn’t just come from it.
Hartley looks… taken aback, somehow. He leans forward, squinting at the letters. He looks like he’s just about to reach out and point at some of them. “Yeah, they’re–” He stops himself and swallows hard.
“You’ve seen this before? Where?” Cisco wants to know. Part of him feels joyous at that development – seriously, he may have admitted defeat to some mysteries they have to deal with, but that doesn’t mean they don’t annoy him, and this language is one of them – but the other is kind of confused by Hartley’s reaction.
He just looks so unsure how to deal with the reminder to wherever he’s seen the language before. But after a beat, Hartley starts, “Sometimes, Harrison would make short notes that looked like this. I thought it was some kind of shorthand, but…” His eyes widen at the screen before he finally turns away, something like disgust written into his features suddenly.
On reflex, Cisco shuts the laptop. He’s not sure if prodding would do any good – just like all of them, Hartley had been a victim to Thawne’s manipulation, and it’s a sore topic still. Maybe more so, but Cisco’s has always shied away from asking about how far the connection between the two men had truly run. Until now, he couldn’t figure out whom he wants to keep away from the truth.
But Hartley keeps talking. “It’d make sense,” he says, his voice weirdly calm, “that Harrison would know a language Barry learnt while he was stuck in the Speed Force. From what we know, he’s spent an incredible amount of time studying the secrets of it.”
Cisco finds himself nodding along. “You think he got so obsessed with everything, he wrote to himself in that language?” He prompts.
Hartley still doesn’t look at him. His eyes are fixed on the closed device in front of them and it takes Cisco an insane amount of willpower not to reach out and force him to look away. The way Hartley’s closed off like that, the coldness to his voice… It’s kinda scary, actually. Cisco’s familiar with venom colouring the other man’s words, with delight or glee, curiosity, but only in the most dire situations do they sound so… so empty. It’s no good sign.
“I know he did,” Hartley says and swallows. Then, he blinks before he finally turns to Cisco, who watches him lick his lips. “Not that he ever showed me, of course. I suppose it was a slip on his part.”
It must have been. Thawne had crafted his life as Harrison Wells so carefully, doing his best that nobody would be the wiser about the truth behind the man. But if he’d conversed it that language for so long – and who knows, maybe it was his mother tongue, too; they wouldn’t know what linguistics look like so far in the future – it could have been hard to shake it off, especially when he jotted down notes that were only supposed to be for himself.
The fact that Hartley was around him enough to notice something like that is a bit worrisome, truth be told, and Cisco can’t help but feel sympathy for the guy.
And Hartley didn’t fully break out of his stupor, as it appears, because he keeps talking. “We should look if he left anything behind. Maybe your programme could decode his notes and then we could–” He hesitates a little, clearly not sure where he’s going with this.
Cisco nudges his knee against Hartley’s, this time on purpose. It’s the only contact he’ll allow himself – not just because suddenly being all touchy-feely with Hartley would be hella weird, but also because… well, because he’s not so sure what Hartley would allow right now. But his next words need to be said. “Hartley,” he starts tentatively. “Wells is dead.”
At once, Hartley’s eyes narrow. He leans back a bit and spats, “I know.”
Of course he knows. Cisco remembers how Hartley behaved when they told him – the way he’s thought with anger, about not being the one to do it, and confusion. Sadness, because they all mourned the man they thought they knew, and relief since he was gone and couldn’t screw over any more of them. the way Hartley had become uncharacteristically loud, switching from cackling to throwing stuff around. It’s been a memorable moment, one that was scary and good at the same time, because Hartley had finally allowed himself to be human, open, about his feelings. Cisco won’t ever forget it.
“So, what good would it do to look at his stuff?” Cisco asks carefully. He tries to look at it rationally, and it feels odd. Usually Hartley is the one who keeps a clear head while Cisco freaks out. But still… “It’s not like we could change things.” Well, theoretically they could, but recent developments with time travel only showed why they shouldn’t. Sure, Barry traveling back in time is what made Hartley join the Team in the first place, but that was just a lucky outcome.
“It would give us clarity,” Hartley says, and his hands are drawn into fists almost automatically. “About what was real and what wasn’t.”
Cisco swallows. He remembers, faintly, Wells’ words from another timeline. About how he’d shown him what it was like to have a son. How often had he wondered if that had been a lie? Why shouldn’t Wells have been telling the truth if he thought Cisco wouldn’t have been around to remember it anyways? But why should he have given him that gift? If Wells had kept a journal, it would probably be in there. But what good would it do to open those wounds?
“It’d help with moving on,” Hartley says quietly, as if he heard Cisco’s question. Something about his voice sounds defeated, like he’s admitting something he’s kept in for so long.
Cisco swallows. “We can’t even be certain the programme can read it,” he tries. He figures that giving a real explanation as to why they can’t go through with it might work better with Hartley. For himself, too, actually, because if Cisco is true to himself, he has to admit he understands Hartley better than he’d like.
“No, I’m sure,” Hartley insists. “That is the same language. If you feed it to your programme, it’ll work.” There’s a heat to his words, the way he’d sound when they’re arguing about an invention. It’s the same way he sounds when there’s only one last resort to go with.
Cisco’s never been good at countering that stance. And the problem is that he knows it, too. His programme would work it out, one way or another. Hartley’s pushing the right buttons to get him to agree to this, and Cisco kind of hates that he knows them in the first place.
“Did you guys ever even look through his things?” Hartley wants to know. This time, he puts pressure to his words, maybe anger, too.
In reply, Cisco can’t do anything but shake his head. They hadn’t. At first, nobody had felt like coming back in the first place – besides Barry, of course, who’s done the utmost to keep the rest of the Team at an arm’s length. And then, between that and the next danger, nobody had dared to even step into Wells’ – Thawne’s – office. The police had taken care of his house after Barry turned over his admission to Nora Allen’s murder, but Joe had somehow arranged that they stay away from STAR Labs – too much of the whole truth spread around here. So what actually mattered stayed here, the whole time, and nobody wanted to deal with it. Cisco was scared of learning just what Thawne had meant to cook up, and now that Hartley has brought it up, he realizes he’s also been scared to learn of the truth behind how many lies he’s been told.
Maybe Hartley is right. Maybe it’s time to figure that out. It’s been years now since Eddie sacrificed himself and got rid of Thawne, but somehow his things remained here, for all they know. That paradox in itself is already worth exploring. And now enough time has passed by to deal with the damage all those manipulations have done.
“We should talk to the others,” he reasons. Still, it’s an agreement. “They have as many rights to this as we do.”
For a second, he thinks Hartley would want to argue. Cisco wouldn’t fault them for that. There’s so many personal, private things that Thawne had messed with, and showing them for everyone to see… Cisco doesn’t feel completely comfortable with that either. But they should all be present to it, so they can say stop if needed – who knows, for all they know, they’d come across secrets from Barry’s childhood or something before there was even the first mention of any of the others. It would be cruel to go through all of that without his knowledge.
Hartley seems to come to the same conclusion, because he nods. He shoots another cautious look at the laptop and bites his lip again. “That… seems reasonable,” he agrees. Then, he lets out a long and hard breath, as if he’d just done something incredibly hard.
It is a lot, Cisco has to agree. That’s why he puts his hands on his thighs and pushes himself up from his seat. “Come on,” he orders. “We need to get out of here.”
Hartley’s gaze follows him, but he looks unsure.
“It’s late,” Cisco tells him. “We’ll tell Barry and Caitlin about this in the morning. And I don’t know about you… But I could use a drink or two.”
It takes a moment, but then Hartley breaks into a smirk. “Are you asking me out, Cisquito?” He says and leans back.
Cisco rolls his eyes. “Don’t push your luck,” he answers, but he can feel the blush creep onto his face. He really could use a drink, that wasn’t a lie, but he’d also pay for Hartley’s if that meant some more repetitions of an evening like that, yeah. Not that he’d say that out loud. He doesn’t even know what it means.
Hartley chuckles and gets up as well. He follows Cisco to the doorway before he stops and declares, “Wait, I forgot something.”
When he stalks back to the desk right away, opening the laptop with a swift motion, Cisco blanks. If Hartley send himself a version of the programme, he can't be sure just how fruitful his reasoning had really been – Hartley had shown often enough just how irrational je can get when it comes to the fake version of Harrison Wells. "What are you–?"
But all Hartley does is press the power button, turning off the laptop. He looks completely nonchalant when he comes up to Cisco again, saying, "Now we can leave."