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There were wires missing. Barry had put this together yesterday and now there were wires missing.
No one else should have been here.
No one else could have been here.
He hadn’t been in Eobard’s office before. He’d respected his privacy, and it had seemed like a bad idea, setting foot in the museum that held the story of Barry’s life.
He’d been content in the curator’s apartment above it, able to work on his Treadmill while alone, and with Eobard the rest of the time.
He’d been happy.
But this wasn’t his home.
He had to go home.
The door opened right as Barry opened the first drawer to start looking for his missing piece. He didn’t turn.
Didn’t want to face him.
“What are you doing?” Eobard asked. “I thought you said it was too dangerous to know your future.”
“It is,” Barry said. “But I know my future is in the past. Why else would this be a museum?”
“And I can help you-”
“I know.”
Barry turned to face him and Eobard looked so on edge.
His eyes glanced at the open drawer next to Barry.
“It’s my home,” Barry said. “I have to go back. I don’t belong here.”
“You stayed in the future for her,” Eobard said. “Why won’t you do it for me?”
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“You’re happy here, with me, aren’t you?” Eobard darted forward and grabbed Barry’s hands. “You’re happy, so why leave?”
“My home is there,” Barry said. “My life is there. I do love you, Eobard, but I love them too. My family, my friends.”
“But you don’t need them,” Eobard said. “You have me, you don’t need anyone else.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“What use is family?” Eobard said. “What do they do other than judge you? You are everything, you’re my world, you always have been, and you came here right to me, doesn’t that mean something?”
“I don’t know why the other speedster sent me here,” Barry said. “But your museum is proof I need to go home. I can’t spend the rest of my life just another exhibit in it, shut away from the world in your apartment because no one else can know I’m here. We both know that’s not who I am.”
Eobard stepped back, his lips pursed and Barry ached to relent.
“I need to be there,” Barry said.
“I understand,” Eobard sneered. “You want her, not me. It’s easier in your time.”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” Barry said. “It’s unfair for me to ask you to abandon your home, your life, to a time that won’t accept you, a time you don’t belong in, force you into my shoes. I won’t do that.”
“You just wanted-”
Barry grabbed him and dragged him into a bruising kiss, making sure this last one Eobard would feel until long after he’d gone.
“I’m going home,” Barry said. “You can’t stop me any more. You can’t keep me here any more. Good-bye, Eobard. I hope you find someone to make you happy one day.”
Barry turned from him, and ran.
Barry was gone.
Eobard had raged, leaving his office in disarray in his anger as Barry, as the only person he had ever loved, turned and left him, abandoned him, refused him just like they all did.
He glared up at the statue in the heart of the museum, Barry sweeping Iris West up into his arms, into his embrace, into the passionate kiss that should have belonged to Eobard.
He fiddled with the ring on his finger. He’d chosen yellow for his suit, yellow like the various Kid Flashes. Yellow was the colour of the Flash’s sidekicks, but yellow was the colour of the speedster Barry had fought, the one who had sent Barry tumbling forward through time, straight into Eobard’s lap.
If Barry didn’t want him to be a sidekick, if he wasn’t willing to be as devoted to Eobard as Eobard was to him, then Eobard would have to find another way to force himself into the centre of Barry’s life.