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Auribus Teneo Lupum

All characters © DC Comics

It took Hartley Rathaway six hours, thirty-two minutes, and an unprompted case of indigestion to work out that the Flash was Barry Allen.

And no, it was not because he’d been ogling the man’s admittedly agreeable physique. It didn’t take much thought after he spotted the new gangly kid working at S.T.A.R. Labs. Looks aside, Barry was not exactly subtle about his records. ¹

That’s right, the records Hartley stole when he finally made his escape two days later, because Big Belly fries really didn’t agree with him and one could only take so much Madonna. Besides, Cisco had somehow found out that Hartley knew about Ronnie, so to say he was distracted would have been an understatement. And that was all Hartley needed.

He didn’t have his Cochlear Catastrophes (as Cisco called them), but the combustible wiring in his shoe did quite nicely, in the end.

After the time wraith, though, he found himself rethinking his whole evil plan to get the Flash’s frequency. With all the danger his former co-workers seemed to attract, there was a 93.5% probability Hartley wouldn’t even have to do anything before they got themselves killed.

It just didn’t seem worth it, anymore.

So he stole a few of Cisco’s flash drives (oh, the morons must have had fun with those puns) and made his dastardly escape, which involved renting a one-bedroom downtown with his parents’ trust fund and sound-proofing the walls so he could get more than four hours’ sleep at nights.

He spent the rest of the month reading, tinkering with new designs for his gauntlets, and drinking soy milk lattes for breakfast every morning.

He didn’t put any sugar in them, to remind himself of the fact that he was still very, very bitter.

It was two weeks before he ran into Cisco Ramon again purely by accident, and Hartley was silently punching himself for going out that night. What had he even been thinking? He hated bars. Too much noise.

Cisco was huddled over an alarmingly tall glass of beer, and as Hartley drew closer he noticed that he was sporting a shiner that looked fresher than Hartley’s personality. There was also a diagonal cut over one cheek and, judging from the way Cisco was carrying himself, further bruising.

“My, don’t you look the pretty picture.”

Cisco jerked his head up, expression surprised for a split second before morphing into something more annoyed. “As if my day couldn’t get any worse,” he grumbled.

Hartley grinned. “Don’t be like that, Cisquito,"  he said, drawing up the stool next to Cisco.

“What are you doing here, Hartley?”

“Even I can’t take weeks of solitude,” Hartley admitted. He winked. “And I heard the bartender’s single.”

Cisco rolled his eyes. Or at least tried to, giving only one of them was working properly. Hartley called the bartender over with a sultry curve of his finger and ordered what had to be the most expensive cocktail on the menu.

When the drink came, complete with a tiny purple umbrella on the side, Cisco just shook his head and went back to his beer. There was still that animosity there, buzzing like the static on a radio, but something had changed. Ever since the time wraith, with the three of them trapped in the pipeline.

Hartley knew all about the psychology of bonding over near-death experiences, and this was hardly that. Even so, he could not deny that something was different now, and the fact that Cisco was not getting up to leave meant that on some level, he sensed it as well.

“So who did this number on you?” Hartley asked.

Cisco snorted. “Like you care.”

“You’re right,” admitted Hartley, twirling his umbrella between his index finger and thumb, “I don’t care. I am curious, though. Who should I be congratulating on their superb upper cut?”

Cisco regarded him with a long, unblinking stare before pulling his gaze away and taking a sip of his beer. “Mick Rory.”

Hartley blinked and stopped twirling the umbrella. “The imbecile who teamed up with Captain Cold?” Yeah, he’d read about that one in the papers.

Cisco saw the look Hartley was giving him. “Hey man, he’s like two hundred pounds and seriously packing,” he said. “Plus, he was using a heat gun.”

“Now where would he have gotten that kind of technology?” wondered Hartley, even though it was becoming apparently obvious now.

“Hence this,” Cisco said, gesturing to his face with gritted teeth. “They—“ he swallowed, “they used Dante to make me do it.” The cuts on Cisco’s face were a rather special brand of nasty, now that Hartley got a closer look at them.

He took a sip of his drink and closed his eyes. “That’s why you shouldn’t get attached to family, Cisco,” he chided. Because he knew all about that, yesirree. “They’ll only get you hurt in the end.”

Cisco glared at him with those big, dark eyes, but ultimately he had nothing to say to that.

In a way, Hartley was glad he didn’t.

The next time they ran into each other it was over the phone, and it was not so much running as Cisco calling Hartley’s cell with a clenched jaw and pink ears.

“Wait, am I hearing this right? Are you calling me for help?” A slowly burgeoning sneer was making its way onto Hartley’s face, causing him to temporarily forget about the dismantled amplifiers in his lap.

“I knew this was a mistake,” Cisco grit out on the other end. “You know what? I’m just gonna let you get back to playing chess with yourself, or…whatever it is you’re doing.”

Hartley set the amplifiers on the table and leaned back in his chair. “No, no, by all means, how may the chosen one assist you?” he asked.

“I thought after meeting a real live dementor you’d finally dropped your pretentious Harry Potter title.”

“Well you are choosing me now,” Hartley noted.

Cisco uttered a curse in Spanish and heaved a sigh. “Okay, you, just—“another sigh—“say someone built a suit, or a robot, alright? And they needed some advice on the design.”

“Is there a reason you’re calling me about an engineering problem, Cisco?”

“Because,” Cisco said pointedly, “it’s also a physics problem.”

Hartley raised an eyebrow, even though he knew Cisco couldn’t see it. “Go on.”

“Sooo this suit,” began Cisco. “Say this person wanted to shrink it. Getting it down to a microscopic size—how would they do that? Hypothetically, of course.” Neither one of them bought that, but he tacked it on just for kicks.

“Oh Cisquito, please tell me you’re not building a shrink ray. If anything, you need to worry about the opposite problem.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

This was fun, Hartley thought. Getting under Cisco’s skin, rubbing IQs. Just like old times. A part of him wanted to admit he missed this, but he swallowed it down with effort.

“You’d have to start with the electrons, since those are the most spread out, and shrink the spaces between them. Then you do the same with the spaces between the atoms, which is essentially a vacuum,” he told Cisco. “Atoms naturally have a weak outer boundary, which means it shouldn’t be too difficult to decrease their atomic radiuses.”

Cisco paused. “So let me get this right; you’re saying if there is a way I can increase the atoms’ magnetic charge, it will bring them closer together.”

“Tisk tisk, Cisco. Do you need an explanation of Coulomb’s Law?”

“I think I can manage,” Cisco said, dry.

Hartley replied, “You have to increase the electrostatic force of the atoms, of course, but that would solve your Honey I Shrunk the Kids problem. A modified quantum splicer should do the trick. Got any of those lying around?” His chest gave a small twinge at the thought. Was he actually getting excited about this? He hoped not.

At this Cisco actually laughed. “It’s S.T.A.R. Labs,” he replied. “What do you think?”

He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone rang again, at an hour most normal humans would describe as ungodly.

“Do you realize what time it is?” Hartley groaned, squinting at the digital clock on his nightstand. “Speaking to you more than once in a span of twenty-four hours gives me a headache.”

“Sorry, I just,” Cisco was saying, later that night, “I was electrocuted earlier so I’m still a bit wired—“

“How unfortunate that didn’t kill you,” Hartley groused, but he found he was not able to put much menace into it at all. He wasn’t going to ask, he wasn’t going to ask—

“How did you get electrocuted, anyway?”

“Check this out, robotic bee. Went into anaphylactic shock, had some Flash CPR, but it’s all good. Look, I don’t even know why I’m calling you, but the shrinking suit looks like it’s going to work,” said Cisco.

Hartley got it, he really did. That in no way meant he appreciated being woken up at two in the morning, but he knew what it was like when you had a breakthrough and just needed to tell somebody. What Hartley couldn’t get was why that somebody happened to be him, but it was too early for that kind of thinking.

“Well la-di-dah, you can make yourself even more insignificant, congratulations,” he said, and yawned. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to back to bed.”

“Do you have somewhere to be in the morning?”

“If you must know Cisco, Mercury Labs offered me a position.”

“What?”

“Seems there was a shortage of workers after multiple attacks and thefts on her property caused a third of McGee’s staff to resign,²” Hartley said, lip curling. Cisco was currently making strangled noises over the phone. And here Hartley thought he was the melodramatic one.

“But…but…they’re like our sworn rivals, buddy,” Cisco practically whined. “The Empire to our Resistance and all that. We just fought a former Mercury Labs employee, and boy, do they make them crazy.” There was a long gap, long enough to make Hartley think that Cisco had hung up. But he would have heard that, so he waited until Cisco decided to speak.

“Why don’t you come work for S.T.A.R. Labs again?”

Hartley couldn’t help it, he started laughing. He wrapped a hand around his stomach and laughed for a solid minute.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” he wheezed out, when he had gotten himself mostly under control. Still snorting a little, he wiped his eye and said, “Thanks, but no. I’d rather work someplace where my talents are appreciated.”

“We appreciated your talents,” Cisco argued. “Just not your personality.”

“I know that you think me saving your asses in the pipeline gives you the right to call me at all hours of the night to science,” Hartley said, “but we are not buddies.”  He wrinkled his nose. “And unless you suffered amnesia with your anaphylaxis, let me remind you that I don’t trust Harrison Wells.”

There was another silence on the other end. Only this silence was different, heavier. Finally, Cisco said, softly, “At the moment, neither do we.”

Now that was new. Hartley frowned. If something had made Teacher’s Pet Ramon change his mind, then things had to be bad. Not to mention the whole stinking mess of Harrison Wells wasn’t something he needed at this hour, but now that it had been regurgitated oh so abruptly into his ear Hartley was reminded of something he had come across last month. At the time he’d had no reason to use it, so he had catalogued the information to a back cabinet of his mind for later use.

“Uhh...Hartley? You there?”

Now it was Hartley’s turn to sigh. Fuck this, fuck Cisco and his graphic tees, fuck everything. He grabbed his glasses and, bidding farewell to the warm confines of his sheets, shuffled over to his computer.

“Don’t ask me why I’m doing this Cisco, because technically you owe me one, but do you remember last month when I, shall we say, procured some of your flash drives?”

“That’s a very fancy word for what you did,” Cisco replied, voice hard. “But yeah, I remember.”

Hartley moved his mouse out of screensaver mode and pulled up a file on his desktop. “One of those files contained a 3D model of the S.T.A.R. Labs building,” he said.

“I know,” Cisco said, annoyed. “I made that myself.”

“Did you ever take a look at Sector four?”

“Of course I did. What’s your point?”

Hartley paused for effect. “What about Sector 443?”

“There is no Sector 443,” Cisco said slowly. “It stops at 442. Wait, gimme a minute, I’m opening it up.”

“Granted, I spent most of my time in your little prison after the explosion,” Hartley recalled, “but that hallway leading to the cortex? It sounded funny to me.” A moment later he heard a sharp inhale.

“Why beam me up, Scotty,” Cisco breathed. “You’re right.”

Hartley cracked his knuckles. “As usual.”

“Okay, that’s not supposed to be there. This is…” He could hear Cisco double-clicking the mouse on the other end. “I can't believe it. There’s a whole room behind that wall that we just…never noticed.”

“If Harrison Wells is hiding anything, my bet is that it’s in there.”

“I—I have to go,” Cisco mumbled. He sounded distracted. Not that Hartley could blame him.

“You’re welcome,” he said, but Cisco had already disconnected the line.

Hartley removed his glasses and returned to bed, but found it difficult to fall asleep again. He turned the noise cancelling dials on his earpieces up to their highest settings. The little red numbers on his clock slowly crawled their way to the next hour, but still, he could not stop thinking. Hartley blew out a breath and threw an arm over his eyes.

He wasn’t worried, he told himself, as the first winks of sunlight seeped in through the window blinds.

Excluding the compulsory 90s lab coats, Mercury Labs was any physicist’s wet dream made reality. The pay was admirable, the competition nonexistent, and McGee didn’t care who Hartley slept with as long as he made entropy happen.

Then one Tuesday morning Firestorm was all over the news, and Hartley almost dropped his microscope slide when he heard the radio. It was a general rule that Mercury Labs did not allow radios. However, the security gates outside did.

He’d known, of course, but he had never told Cisco (or Caitlin, for that matter) about Ronnie. He could have at any time, only he’d been too wrapped up in his own angst to bother.

The fact that he was feeling bad about it was deeply alarming.

What was worse was that he actually paid them a visit the following night. Ronnie had been the only person working at S.T.A.R. Labs apart from Harrison Wells who Hartley could even remotely stomach.

Hartley told himself that he wasn’t really visiting for them, but to satisfy the itch that had started up in the back of his mind ever since he had uncovered Sector 443. Something about that had been bothering him.

And Hartley hated not knowing.

Caitlin answered the door, happy in a way that momentarily transported Hartley back to last year. She was wearing pink and her smile looked radiant and young.

…Yet troubled, though Hartley refrained from pointing it out in a rare display of tact.

Caitlin’s mood was such that she invited him in and offered him something to drink, which Hartley did a pathetic job of snubbing. He could hear Ronnie a few rooms over, talking on the phone with Barry. The apartment smelled like pizza.

“If you are planning on having the wedding in Paris, I was serious about that invite,” Hartley told Caitlin, in French. ³

Caitlin glanced briefly at the door to make sure Ronnie was still on the phone. Then she cupped a hand alongside her mouth and whispered back, in perfect French, “You can be a flower boy.”

Hartley snorted.

Despite any residual hostility Caitlin may have held for him, she smiled and asked him how working at Mercury Labs was. Hartley tried to the best of his abilities to give answers with minimal snark. But he was distracted, focused not on the questions Caitlin was asking but how she was asking them. She was happy, that much was obvious, but there was something deeper nagging at her—something Hartley guessed had nothing to do with Ronnie and more with that phone call in the other room.

“So,” he drawled, as Ronnie came into the living room, “that’s your plan to expose Harrison Wells?”

Ronnie blinked furiously. “Were you eavesdropping?” he asked.

Hartley pointed to his ears. “Can’t help it, I’m afraid.” He crossed one leg over the other and looked at them matter-of-factly.

“Hello to you too, by the way,” Ronnie said, looking amused. Hartley gave him an acknowledging eyebrow and sipped his lemon water.

“Harrison Wells, evil mastermind,” he mused. “It certainly explains a lot. I mean, the guy liked Wagner.⁴ That should have said something."

“I still can’t believe it,” Caitlin told him, hanging her head. Ronnie came over and rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. “We’re going to have to confront him about this. Eventually.”

“Finally, something we all agree on,” replied Hartley, dry. He flicked his eyes up to Ronnie. “It’s a solid plan, except for one teensy thing.”

Caitlin and Ronnie looked at him expectantly when he failed to elaborate.

“Well?”

Caitlin leaned back in her chair. “He wants you to ask him,” she told Ronnie.  

Ronnie crossed his arms. “I’d forgotten how annoying that was. Fine,” he said, expression sour. “What teensy thing?”

Satisfied, Hartley replied, “There’s a technique in chess we like to call a discovered attack. You can’t see it until it’s too late.” He tapped his chin knowingly. “Wells is almost as good as I am at distractions, and he’s likely to use them. You need to be careful.”

“You could help us,” Caitlin offered.

Hartley made a face. “I just found out Harrison Wells is a speedster from the future. That’s a pie I’d rather not stick my fingers in.”

“So you’re just going to sit there while Doctor Wells destroys everything we’ve worked for?” Ronnie asked.

“See, it didn’t go so well the last time I tried to confront a father figure, so yes, I am.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere near S.T.A.R. Labs, if you don’t want to,” Caitlin began, “but if you have something to offer, anything at all, it would really help us.” She clasped her fingers together. “Please, Hartley. Nous avons besoin de toi.” 

Hartley gave them a long look before answering. It wasn’t that he wanted to, exactly, but it was becoming increasingly evident that Harrison Wells needed a good kick in the cojones.

“Well, since our combined IQs rival the number of sections in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, ⁵ I’m sure we can think of something,” he sighed. He really was going soft.

And he would think of something. Not because he was concerned for their wellbeing, or because of his ears. That wasn’t it.

It was, if anything, for the fact that Harrison Wells had played him like a goddamn chess piece and that really, really pissed him off.

It was no secret that Mercury Labs was rather liberal with their resources, which was where the rats came in.

Hartley discovered, mostly by accident, that he could influence living things with the right sonic frequencies. As it turned out the rats at Mercury responded to both binaurally beated alpha patterns and, on the other side of the spectrum, concentrated, ultrasonic sound waves.

So far Hartley had gotten them to perform base physical tasks, like fetch, but he knew with time he could do more. There were three: Democritus, Pliny, and Hamelin. He even developed a little rat whistle for them.

This didn’t do much good with the Wells issue, of course, but it was still fascinating.

“You were always my favorite,” Harrison Wells said, arm leaning against the glass and a glint in his blue eyes.

Hartley gave a cold, gentle smile. “I bet that’s what you tell them all,” he said, before sealing the pipeline doors.

The singularity did not kill him, but it nearly did. His head wanted to explode with the noise and he covered his ears. It was like nothing he had ever heard before. The chasm of spacetime, its wide open mouth vibrating, vibrating with a billion overlapping frequencies and he was the only one who could hear them. It was music upside-down, on-beat syncopations, Cage’s 4’33” in reverse. ⁶ Hartley screamed into the void, and the void screamed back.

This was it, this was how he died. Hartley brought his hands away and saw blood speckled on his palms.

He couldn’t think, only move. His legs were taking him to the water, in the direction of S.T.A.R. Labs. Because it had to be them.

Those idiots, he thought.

“You don’t mess with time, Cisco,” he’d said earlier this morning, because apparently their phone conversations had become a thing and Hartley was too proud to admit that he enjoyed them, to some extent.

“We already have,” Cisco had said.

“And that’s supposed to mean what, exactly?” Hartley was in the lab. He put his phone on speaker and set it down on the table beside him so he could feed Hamelin a nibble of cheese.

“That we can send this—" here Cisco uttered a colorful expletive—"back to wherever and whenever he came from.”

Hartley dropped Hamelin back into his cage. “Language, Cisquito.”

He expected Cisco to bite back, but instead Cisco gave a tired exhale. “Sorry, I—I just finished talking to Wells. Eobard. Whatever his name is. I try not to let him, but he really gets under my skin,” Cisco said.

“Now you know how I felt working with all of you.”

Cisco huffed a small, humorless laugh. “I don’t think you mean that, Hartley,” he exclaimed. “At least, not anymore. You’ve been helping us for two months now. Or has all of this just been a fluke?”

Hartley grimaced at the f-word. People had their little pet peeves, he knew, their little squicky buttons, and his was fluke. It was an affront to scientific vocabulary everywhere and Cisco knew he couldn’t stand it.

“It’s called self-preservation, moron,” said Hartley. “If your little team screws up God only knows what will happen to the rest of the city.”

See? He’d told them. But did they listen?

Hartley stared up at the singularity with his ears and nose dripping blood, feeling dizzy and small. He was going to lose consciousness, soon.

His last thought before crumbling onto the asphalt of the S.T.A.R. Labs parking lot was that if a black hole swallowed everything he’d finally be rid of all the imbeciles. Cisco Ramon included.

Somehow, the thought was not as peaceful as he’d imagined it would be.

“I think you’re a good influence on Hartley.”

Cisco choked on his coffee. “I’m sorry, what?”

It was pouring outside; Jitters was packed. The rain left little tear trails along the glass, which Cisco had become enraptured watching until Caitlin had distracted him with that disturbing piece of information.

Cisco shook his head vehemently. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Not possible.”

“Maybe you don’t see it, but I do,” Caitlin argued. “Hartley was in a really bad place when he came back after the explosion, but…” she trailed off. “I don’t know what it is. He seems calmer, now.”

“That’s because he’s biding his time,” said Cisco. “There’s probably some fancy chess term for it. Laying low until before you know it, bam!”  He smacked his palms together. “The viper strikes.”

Caitlin only smiled. “Do you really think that?” she asked.

“Cait, this is Hartley we're talking about. Y'know, he of the superiority complexes and scathing comments? I mean, I get that he's helped us—“

“He’s helped us a lot,” Caitlin pointed out. “And it wasn’t always in it for him to do so.”

“So great, that rules out sociopathy,” Cisco said, twirling the little straw around in his coffee. “I still think he qualifies for borderline personality disorder.” He was only half-joking about that one. He missed Barry.

A clap of thunder rumbled outside, making them both look up momentarily.

“He’s Hartley,” Caitlin repeated, after a pause. “He was wronged just as much as the rest of us, and I think he could use a friend like you.”

“Even though he’s an assface?”

Caitlin giggled. “Even though he’s an assface,” she agreed.

It was a wet and sticky day in September, filled with all likes of insects bent on tormenting as many Central City denizens as possible before being swatted into oblivion.

Cisco slapped a particularly obese horsefly against his bare arm with perhaps more ferocity than he intended, but today had been shitty so hey, he felt he was entitled to a little violence.

Very few individuals had the ability to put Cisco in a truly crappy mood, the most notable of them being anybody in his immediate family. As was the case today.

He walked into the S.T.A.R. Labs cortex, where the windows were open and Hartley was reading some obscure Greek tome in his shirtsleeves. Hartley didn’t speak until Cisco plopped into his rolling chair.

“Not that I care, but I’m in a good mood today and I don’t need you killing the vibe,” he said, not looking up from his book.

It was four months after the singularity above Central City. Barry was in a self-imposed, guilt-ridden exile, Caitlin had taken Hartley’s place at Mercury Labs, and Cisco had thrown himself into work.

And Hartley, well. As annoying as Cisco and Caitlin were they were never on his vendetta list, and S.T.A.R. Labs just seemed so pathetic with its cracked spire and empty halls. He’d always liked their facilities better anyway.

McGee even let him keep Hamelin.

“I’ll keep my vibes to myself, then,” Cisco grumbled. The sonic gun prototype really needed tinkering, but at the moment he never felt less like working.

Hartley looked up. “I know that expression,” he said, closing his book. “Who is the lucky object of your affections?”

Cisco rummaged around in his drawer for a hair tie. “No one,” he confessed, pulling his hair away from his neck and securing it in a half-bun. “My mom tried to set me up with her work friend’s daughter. Have to say, didn’t go so well.”

“I didn’t know you played for the other team, Cisco,” Hartley said, tilting his head. There was something unreadable in his expression.

Cisco sighed. “I play for both teams,” he said. He waved his hand dismissively. “Anyway, it was a disaster. I don’t really want to go into it. Can we science something?”

“That’s not a solution,” Hartley told him.

“This coming from the guy who hasn’t talked with his parents in two years?” Realizing what he just said, Cisco squeezed his eyes shut like he always did when he blurted out something he shouldn’t have. “Okay, that was low, I didn’t mean it. Mea grande culpa, alright?”

Hartley’s bewildered expression dissolved, and he chuckled. “That was a horrific mangling of the Latin language.”

“What does it care, it’s dead anyway.”

 While Hartley rolled his eyes, Cisco went into the next room and returned with a few tools. He spread them out on the table, set a Twizzler between his teeth, and began working. Hartley watched as a lock of hair fell out of Cisco’s bun. For a while the only noise was the soft clinking of metal parts and the flip of turning pages.

“What frequency did you have your gauntlets on again, when you shot the time wraith?” Cisco asked Hartley, after a stretch of time.

“I never got the exact frequency the wraith oscillated at, but the gauntlets were set to 140 decibels,” answered Hartley. He checked his nails absently. “Try starting with three kilohertz.”

Cisco squinted into the partially assembled gun with a pair of tweezers. “Yeah, um, I know I designed this micro-amplifier, but honestly—and yes, I’m actually saying this—you’d probably be better at setting this than I would,” he said.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you make a sonic projector for the Black Canary?”

Cisco twitched. “Which was nowhere near the level of your gauntlets, as much as it pains me to admit it,” he replied.

Hartley set his book down and walked over to Cisco’s desk. Cisco was doing something appalling to the interface; there was a metallic twanging that grated on Hartley's ears. Somewhere, Elon Musk was weeping inconsolably.

"You're doing it wrong."

"Hey, I'm trying to engineer a sonic gun, so excuse me if there's no manual," Cisco said with a sniff.

“It’s not that difficult,” Hartley said, exasperated. “Here, give me that—“

His hand brushed Cisco’s wrist as he took the amplifier and Cisco froze, dropping the tweezers onto the table.

Hartley was no stranger to trauma; he knew exactly what a trigger looked like on someone. Cisco’s face was blank, dissociative.

Shit, he thought.  

Instead of trying to snap Cisco out of it Hartley stepped back and waited. It took a good thirty seconds before Cisco seemed to realize where he was and he startled, blinking a few times.

“Hartley?”

“Earth to Cisco,” Hartley said. “You’re not going to freak out on me, right?”

“No, I just…zoned out for a bit. No big deal.” Cisco plastered a goofy smile on his face and picked up his tweezers again like nothing had happened.

Fine. Two could play at that game.

And hey, if he seemed alright, Hartley wasn’t going to ask. Like he said before, he did not need Cisco killing his vibe today.

…Even if a little voice at the back of his head told him it was already dead, in the ground, right next to Latin’s tombstone.

“Why are you reading Max Tegmark in the supply closet?”

Hartley looked up from his tablet. “It was the only place I could get some quiet,” he answered, glaring.

Cisco peered at him. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Hartley, but I’ve seen dead guys with better color than you.”

“That has to be the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s because it’s not.” Cisco glanced down. “Exactly how is the multiverse theory going to help our time wraith problem?” he asked, scratching his head.

“Exotic matter,” Hartley declared, giving Cisco one of his ‘holier than thou’ eye rolls. “Time anomalies are like homing beacons when it comes to transdimensional energy. And traveling through time or through multiple universes—in theory—could be a way to lure a time wraith out.”

“To test our sonic guns,” finished Cisco, nodding. He frowned. “But that still doesn’t explain why you look like one of them yourself.”

Hartley sighed. “It’s called a migraine, Cisco. One of the occasional downsides of tinnitus.” ⁷

“Oh.” Cisco looked oddly sympathetic, like he wanted to add something. After a moment’s deliberation he snatched Hartley’s tablet out of his hands. Hartley reached for it, but too slow.

“Uh, excuse me.” Hartley raised his eyebrows.

Cisco turned on his heel and walked out of the closet. He waved the tablet in the direction of the cortex. “C’mon.”

Hartley followed, grumbling, “Oh I’m sorry. Do I steal your screwdrivers when you’re trying to work, Cisco?”

“Actually you steal a lot of things, but I’m not going to mention it because you look like you’re seriously contemplating dying in a corner somewhere.”

“Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant.” ⁸

They entered the cortex, which was mercifully empty. Dust motes from the afternoon sun sparkled in the air, somehow highlighting the bareness of the room. Martin was out, and Barry’s presence was a rarity these days. The only movement was Hamelin, twitching his tale in his glass cage by the window.

“Sit,” Cisco said, gesturing to the examination cot. Hartley just stared at him with bloodshot eyes.

“What are you looking at? Go,” Cisco gestured more emphatically. “I’m only doing this because sometimes you’re not a complete dick, so at least try to be grateful.”

Wordlessly, and because he was too exhausted to argue, Hartley eased himself onto the cot. Cisco set Hartley’s tablet aside, reached into a nearby drawer, and brought out an unmarked jar of potpourri. He handed it to Hartley. “Inhale,” he ordered.

Hartley did, and was pleasantly surprised to greet a combination of soothing scents. He could not place them all, but he did recognize lavender from a childhood memory: the perfume his mother used to wear.

He must have been smiling, because Cisco smirked. “Permission for physical contact, your highness? It’ll help.”

Hartley heaved another sigh. “If you must,” he said.

After removing his glasses Cisco placed the pads of his fingers gently along Hartley’s temples and began to rub. Almost immediately, Hartley felt some of the thudding pressure begin to ease. He closed his eyes and found himself drifting.

When he opened them again Cisco was staring at him with a mildly triumphant look on his face.

“Better, right?”

“It wasn’t too horrific,” admitted Hartley.

Cisco shook a strand of hair out of his eyes. "Well don't do me any big favors."

Hartley picked up the jar (though now he noticed its contents were more like paste than potpourri). “How did you come up with this?” he asked.

“There was this, uh, thing,” Cisco floundered, squirming a little in place. “Some recipe from my aunt. It’s a technique passed down through generations, you see.”

“Yes, I see. With aromatherapy you just happen to have lying around despite the fact that you make it a habit to avoid your family at all costs.”

Cisco shrugged, suddenly fascinated by his screensaver. Hamelin gave them both a pitying look from his glass cage.

“You always were a terrible liar, Cisco,” Hartley said, smiling thinly. “Whatever it is you’re not telling me, I’ll find out eventually.”

Which was mostly true. If it had just been a matter of headaches, Cisco might have told him. Hartley had the silver tongue, but there were other ways to keep secrets. Cisco did so with his body language and the occasional deflecting pop culture reference, Hartley knew.

He also knew that one of Cisco’s more aggravating virtues was that he tended to be open about, well, mostly everything. So the fact that he was keeping Hartley in the dark about…something, did not bode well at all.

They had gotten into a routine, of sorts.

By now Hartley could predict the movie references Cisco was going to make before he made them, and Cisco knew not to play music in the cortex because it gave Hartley headaches. Cisco began asking for soy creamers on coffee runs because Hartley was lactose intolerant, and Hartley started trusting Cisco with feeding Hamelin. Cisco learned to just shut up and let Hartley quote his Pliny and his Thoreau, and Hartley learned not to ask on days when Cisco trudged into the Labs with bruised shadows under his eyes.

They argued. A lot. Sometimes it was in English, sometimes it was in Spanish, and sometimes it was a combination of both.

By October, S.T.A.R. Labs had gotten its patchwork team back together. Hartley was more of a consultant than a full-time member, only stopping by a couple times a week either late at night or early in the morning when no one was around but Cisco or Harry.

To be fair nobody liked Harry, but Hartley had the most trouble reconciling the Wells that he had known with the one before him now. By contrast he actually tolerated Martin, which Cisco found both reassuring and incredibly disturbing since Hartley seldom liked anyone. At least he didn’t call Barry a moron to his face anymore (Cisco seemed to remember something about Barry coming up with the idea of tungsten composites to dampen vibrations and their relationship improving drastically after that).

It was all…Cisco was reluctant to say nice, because Hartley wasn’t. But something had definitely changed, and Cisco admitted that he had a whole lot of other people he could hate more than Hartley Rathaway.  

Pigs are flying, he thought to himself, shaking his head.

“I hacked into your Amazon account, and guess what I found?”

“Tell me Hartley, are you really that curious about my leisure purchases, or do you just have nothing better to do?”

“You had it delivered to S.T.A.R. Labs. Of course I’m curious.”

“Wow, you really hate not knowing things, don’t you.”

“But ASL, Cisco, really? You know I have the opposite problem, right? Or have I vastly overestimated your intelligence?”

“Not the point, Hartley. What if your hearing aids go on the fritz or worse, they get amplified? There’s no harm in being overly prepared.”

“Be still my beating heart. That’s actually kind of touching.”

“Hah, hah. If you weren’t so sarcastic about it I might’ve actually taken that as a compliment.”

In theory, shouting was the last thing you’d expect to find at a prim and proper, state of the art research facility.

In reality, that was not so much the case.

This new Harrison Wells was prickly, and there was a lot of bad blood between him and Jay Garrick. It didn’t help that “fight me” was practically Harry’s modus operandi—and with the rest of the team as well, who still needed time to fully process that “Harry” was not Eobard Thawne. Lately S.T.A.R. Labs had borne witness to several vocal arguments, as well as the occasional throwing of punches and various scientific objects. ⁹

What none of them had expected was one of these shouting matches to involve Hartley.

Hartley never raised his voice. He spoke in a soft, gentle tone that contrasted wildly with his abrasive personality, which made what he said extremely effective. In all the time they had known him Hartley always expressed his anger quietly, through excessive sarcasm and glib. 

Nothing like what Cisco could hear now, through the walls. It was difficult to make out exactly what was being said, so he popped in some earbuds and tried to concentrate on modifying Doctor Light’s stupid photokinetic gloves. It didn’t work.

Hartley stormed into the workroom shortly after, pale save for two flushed blotches of pink spread over his cheeks. Hamelin was perched on his shoulder, which brought it all home for Cisco that things were bad. Hartley only ever took Hamelin out of his cage during his blackest moods.

Cisco removed his earbuds and set the gloves down. “What was that about?” he asked. Hartley straightened his glasses and looked at him pointedly.

“You,” he replied.

“Umm…” Cisco scrunched his nose, trying to think of something to say. Wait, Hartley was getting upset over him—

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hartley demanded. He came over to the desk where Cisco’s computer was, but did not sit. “I get why you kept it from the others, but I would have understood better than any of them,” he said. Hamelin’s tail curled around his shirt collar.

Cisco turned to face him. “And how exactly does that work?” he asked. “I don’t see you with powers.”

“Because I know what it’s like to be outed before you’re ready!” Hartley snapped.

Oh. Now Cisco understood why Hartley was so angry. It was personal. Cisco bit his lip and twisted a screwdriver around in his hands. Hands that he knew could give him visions if he touched the right things.

“I guess I did just come out of the genetics closet,” he said, slowly. “Is this what it was like for you?”

Hartley made a noise in his throat. He turned the wheeling chair so the seat was facing him and eased into it, setting the rat down in his lap. “Not even remotely,” he said, sounding tired.

Cisco looked up. He knew he shouldn’t pry, but it was likely Hartley had never shared this with anyone and probably needed to. “When you—when you told your parents, what did they say?” he asked quietly.

“They didn’t say anything,” replied Hartley after a moment, grimacing. “At least not right away. They walked out of the room, and the next day I got a notice that Rathaway Industries was transferring ownership to my cousin. Whose good looks, might I add, mask the fact that he’s got the cranial aptitude of a moth.”

Cisco snorted gently. “Dick move,” he said.

Hartley raised an appreciative eyebrow at him. He looked down and ran a finger along Hamelin’s back. “Anyway, you’re quite lucky, Cisco,” he said.

“I know,” Cisco replied. “Everybody was going to find out sooner or later, but I’m glad they took it so well. Except for you,” he joked.

Hartley coughed. “I did just give Harrison Wells an earful. Which was surprisingly therapeutic,” he added.

Cisco smiled wanly. Hartley’s mood seemed to be improving, which was more than he could say for his own. Cisco picked up Doctor Light’s glove again and began toying with the wires in it, avoiding Hartley’s eyes, which were narrowed.

“Something’s bothering you,” Hartley observed.

“Of course something’s bothering me. I have powers. It’s terrifying.”

“And you’re wondering what to do about it.”

“There’s nothing to do,” said Cisco. He started counting on his fingers. “We have too much going on right now with Zoom, getting Barry faster, closing the breaches, figuring out what the deal is with Harry—“ he broke off with a frustrated sound.

After dropping Hamelin back onto his shoulder, Hartley rose. “Not everything is about Barry,” he said softly. “At some point we’re going to have to train you, too.”

Cisco squinted. We?

“Don’t give me that look. Your powers utilize vibrations.” Hartley pointed to himself. “And who knows vibrational frequencies better than anyone else around here?”

“So you’re going to train me,” Cisco repeated, still squinting. He leaned back in his chair. “Alright. Where’s Hartley and what did you do with him?”

Hartley rolled his eyes. “Do get over yourself, Cisco.”

“No, I mean really. Maybe I’m talking to your doppelganger right now, because our Hartley would never in his right mind agree to train me.”

“He would if he didn’t trust any of those buffoons in there to do it,” Hartley said, tilting his head in the direction of the cortex. “Despite how annoying you are, my ego always wins out in the end.”

“Okay, that sounds more like you.” Cisco scratched his head and asked, “But why, again?”

“The particle accelerator royally screwed us over,” said Hartley, “and not in a fun, speedy kind of way. But you learn to work with it, use it. I mean, extrasensory perception. That’s not too shabby at all.”

Cisco looked over and saw that Hartley was smiling. He had on one of those smiles that Cisco rarely saw: his real one. Here was Hartley, preened and conditioned all his life to be the business head of a rich company, Hartley, who knew how to flatter and mingle and catch flies with honey, Hartley, master of the fake smile.

This smile was awkward and lumpy, but in it was his love for science and discovery.

Cisco wanted to see it again.

Hartley turned to exit the workroom. “I know a place we can start. If no life-threatening crisis gets in the way, meet me here next Friday,” he told Cisco.

Cisco shook his head. “Fine,” he conceded. His brain was still busy wrapping itself around the fact that he was going to be Hartley’s padawan, so it took him a few seconds to find words. “Oh, and uh, Hartley?”  

Hartley turned, eyebrows raised.

Cisco cleared his throat. “Thanks. For, you know.”

That seemed to genuinely throw Hartley. He straightened his glasses, pursed his lips, and finally said, “Anytime.”

Cisco contemplated the silence after Hartley had left, wondering when they had crossed the line from enemy rivals to actually working together. It was probably some form of traumatic bonding, or some equally confusing psychological condition that made a whooshing sound as it flew over Cisco’s head.  

Hartley would know.

“Aren’t these kinds of things normally done in a deserted building, or on a mountaintop somewhere, like in the movies?” Cisco asked, staring at the roaring water below. His hair was already starting to frizz from the spray.

“I like the Cleveland Dam,” said Hartley. “Especially this early, when the noise of cars is absent.”

“Yeah dude, it’s like seven in the morning,” Cisco groaned. He rubbed his face. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”

“Today,” Hartley told him, “we’re going to start with molecular vibration in relation to psychometry.”

Cisco frowned. “Psychometry?”

“Touching things and feeling things,” Hartley enunciated. Cisco resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at him.

“As we know, everything gives off vibrations. This bridge, the water, my shoes. Normally you’d need some sort of infrared spectroscope to tap into how the molecules of a certain object are vibrating, but the beauty of your powers is that you don’t need that,” continued Hartley. “Somehow, you can sense the frequency of the object internally. Now combine that with extra-sensory perception and you can draw mental imprints from virtually anything you touch.”

Cisco took a moment to process all of that. “Sooo…how do I sense the frequency of something?” he asked.

The corner of Hartley’s mouth curled up and he raised a finger. “See, that’s what we have to figure out. I thought we could start by calming the mind, grounding yourself in your own vibrational frequency,” he said.

“Is that why you didn’t let me have coffee?”

“Here.” Hartley pulled something out of his jacket and handed it to Cisco.

Cisco blinked. “Hey, is—is that my coupling wrench?”

“It’s Harry’s.”

“Oh he is going to have words with you when we get back.”

“Focus, Cisco.” Hartley nodded to the wrench. “In physics, we study all different types of motion. One such motion is called simple harmonic motion.”

“You know I did take physics in college,” Cisco said. “I don’t need the lesson.”

“We use simple harmonic motion to see how molecules vibrate,” Hartley explained, ignoring Cisco. “In music, harmonics are the pitches derived from the overtones of a vibrating string. They are easy to hear because they vibrate quicker and you can actually see the string going back and forth.

“To our eyes, that wrench isn’t moving. Nor is it creating any overtones that our ears can perceive—but I want you to sense how that wrench is moving on a molecular level. Sense its harmony. Can you do that?”

“Maybe if you stop talking, I can.”

Looking mildly offended, Hartley stepped back and opened his palms.

Cisco took a deep breath in and closed his eyes. He could hear the rumble of water, taste it in the sharp autumn air. The wrench felt cool and heavy in his hand. Cisco concentrated on its contours, how the shape of it molded against the skin of his palms, and listened.

Nothing.

Cisco opened his eyes. He glared at the coupling wrench and bit his lip. “This is going to need some work,” he said.

Hartley crossed his arms. “Obviously.”

Turning the wrench over in his hands, Cisco said, “I tried man, but I can’t hear the frequency.”

“Are you listening or sensing?” Hartley asked. He stepped forward and took the wrench from Cisco.

“You can’t hear this,” he said. “I can pick up radio waves from miles away and I can’t hear this because I'm not a bat. You need to sense it, and how it moves. Patientia sit virtus, Cisco. Try again.”

Cisco took the wrench back, swallowing. It all seemed silly and pointless. But so had engineering, when he’d first started. Like anything, this needed practice. He stifled a yawn and leaned back against the dam’s inner rail.

Which was a big mistake, because the moment he did he was assaulted with a number of images—none of which he understood, some of which he was glad he didn’t.

Hartley was peering at him expectantly. “Did you see something?” he asked.

“Um,” Cisco shook his head, trying to get his heart rate back to normal, “no, not exactly.” It was not a complete lie, though Hartley looked skeptical.

“I’ve thought about this before, ever since I started remembering things that had happened in an aborted timeline…” Cisco swallowed again, suddenly finding his mouth dry. “Is it possible to, uh, ‘vibe’ something in another universe?”

Hartley thought for a moment. “If you were able to tap into the vibrational wavelengths of that universe—and that’s based on the assumption that a, there are other universes, b, they exist right beside our own in spacetime, at an undetectable frequency, and c, they operate with only minute differences in their quantum fields, then theoretically it might be possible to access parallel or multiple universes.”

“So you’re saying it’s not entirely impossible.”

“Cisco, after the particle explosion I’m finding there is very little that is impossible.” Hartley narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything?”

Cisco sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He wrinkled his nose. “Hypothetically, would there be any universe in which you’d wear lace-up boots and a hoodie?”

Hartley stared at him as if he had grown another eye.

“Forget it,” Cisco said. He really didn’t want to know. Also, because he hadn’t liked the expression Hartley had in that universe. Or timeline, whatever. Not one bit.

With a sly look, Hartley asked, “Speaking of which, don’t you need a silly nickname and a costume, now that you’re a superhero?”

Cisco picked at a bit of flecking paint on the wrench. “Like the Pied Piper?” he said. “Well, Barry did suggest Vibe, and I gotta say, it has a ring to it.”

“And for the costume, have you considered leather?” Hartley mused. “It happens to be a fetish of mine.” He gave an impish smile.

Cisco shuddered. “Okay, that just gives me a reason not to go there. Ever.”

Hartley took the wrench from Cisco again and stuck it back in his jacket. “Our next step may be devising something that would help you hone the frequencies of certain objects," he said, "like a sort of resonator that you could wear. Also, I want you to read some Tegmark before we meet again. "

"Yes, Sensei."

Smirking, Hartley walked past Cisco and patted his shoulder. "Good first day, Cisco,” he said.

It was Cisco’s turn to goggle at Hartley. Because wow. “Did you just compliment me? In a not-sarcastic way?” he asked, awed.

Hartley scoffed. “Don’t be stupid.”

He turned, digging out his car keys, and if Cisco noticed a smile playing at the corners of his lips as they headed back, he did not mention it.

“Out of the question,” Hartley said, scowling. “Frankly you are the last person to be advising me on this.”

“Point taken,” Cisco admitted, “but it’s been two years, Hartley.”

“Two years in which they could have sent me something other than pocket money in envelopes, but I guess they don’t really care,” replied Hartley. “And why are you suddenly interested in my relationships, Cisco? You can’t seem to hold on to your own for more than two weeks at a time.”

“To be fair, Kendra was actually a reincarnated Egyptian princess. She needed to sort some stuff out.”

“That wasn’t exactly fair.” To you, Hartley did not add. How had they even gotten into this conversation?

“And what do you call Barry and Caitlin and the rest of the team, a flu—“

“Don’t say it.”

Cisco threw up his hands. “You can get rats to make a crop circle,” he exploded, waving to Hamelin in his cage, “but you can’t fix things with your parents?”

“I’m done trying to please them,” said Hartley, annoyed. “And it’s my problem, so you can stop trying to help.”

“Right. So it’s totally okay to butt into my business, but when I try to butt into yours you shut me down?”

Hartley crossed his arms over his chest with a dour expression.

One of them had to back down, so Cisco slumped his shoulders and leaned against the wheeling cart behind him. “It’s not about pleasing them,” he said, quieter. “It’s about getting them to see you for who you really are rather than who they expected you to be.” He pursed his lips. “Just trust me on this one.”

And somehow, impossibly, Hartley did. Later that night, with a bottle of whiskey balanced in his lap, he picked up the phone. He thought about what Cisco had said, about all that had happened in the past two years. He was different now.

Maybe, just maybe they would understand that.

He listened to the dial tone and found his hands weren’t even shaking.

Cisco felt everything now. It was like the world had gained another layer. The trees were suddenly singing, the buildings tingling, the water supple and twisting over shifting sand and stone.

Everything was alive, and with a single touch he could gather that life in his fingertips, know its secrets.

Deep down Cisco knew that if he tried, he could crumble this reality into pieces. Make it his own, or destroy it entirely.

But that kind of thinking was dangerous.

He’d seen that, too.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Hartley,” Barry noted one afternoon, at Jitters.

“Yeah, he’s been training my powers,” Cisco replied, carefully.

Barry took a sip of his decaf Flash ¹⁰ looking, well, if Cisco didn’t know any better he’d say relieved.

“That’s great man,” said Barry. “I’d been meaning to say; there’s just been so much going on and I feel bad we haven’t gotten around to exploring your powers, but Hartley knows a lot about sound and vibrations.”

“Mmm,” Cisco agreed behind his mug.

Barry smiled knowingly. “Not exactly Yoda, is he?”

Cisco drained the last of his coffee and shrugged. “He’s not as bad as an evil speedster, so I can’t complain.”

“It’s Hartley,” Barry said with a laugh. “Of course you can complain.”

Shortly after New Year’s, Cisco discovered he could create shock waves.

It was kind of by accident, really. They were discussing (read, arguing) the finer points of kinetic energy ¹¹ when Cisco did something with his hand and a pulse shot out of it. The pulse rippled the air in spirals before it collided with the rail of the dam, neatly cracking it through the middle.

“Incredible,” breathed Hartley, walking over to inspect the rail more closely. “This is similar to the function of my gauntlets, but while my sonic blasts operate at a more concentrated, destructive frequency you literally make the air around you vibrate at the speed you want it to.”

Cisco’d never seen Hartley this excited, even when Hartley had gotten Hamelin to spell out words.

Though he would never admit that to anyone save Caitlin, perhaps, it made him feel just the tiniest bit proud.

Another time Cisco managed to glimpse into the time vortex itself. Which made him puke.

It was too much. He saw too much. There was Captain Cold icing his own hand. Grodd drawing an indecipherable formula in wet clay. Vandal Savage laughing as he crushed a pile of bones beneath his boot to powder. The death of Laurel Lance.

Himself.

The next thing he knew Hartley was easing him up by the arm and handing him a napkin. Cisco mumbled something in Spanish, disoriented.

“We’re getting in the car,” Hartley replied, also in Spanish. His voice sounded strained and higher than usual. Which Cisco tried to point out, but he wasn't doing so great with the whole words thing right now.

Hartley made him wait in the car while he made a quick stop at Jitters to pick up an enormous cup of strong, black coffee. “Drink,” he ordered. Cisco was still too pale for his liking, so Hartley hit the gas a bit harder than was legal. But hey, he could hear a police radio a mile away, so it didn’t matter much in the end.

By the time they reached downtown Cisco was starting to feel a little more like himself. He blinked, sweeping his eyes over what was undoubtedly…

“Why are we at your apartment?”

Hartley punched in his key code. “Do you really feel like answering questions?” he asked. Cisco realized that Hartley had a point. If he walked into S.T.A.R. Labs the way he was now the others would take one look at him and flip their shits.

Hartley’s apartment was neat and impersonal. The color schemes were dark, the furniture modern, and everything seemed to have its place. Somehow, Cisco thought, it suited him. He wiped his mouth, trying to quash the sour taste there. 

“Shoes off, Cisco.”

Of course. Cisco slid out of his sneaks and, too dizzy to bend over, simply toed them into the corner by the door. He then stared at Hartley’s tan oxfords, which Hartley was making no effort to remove. Cisco gestured to them with his eyebrows raised.

Hartley arched an eyebrow of his own to mirror Cisco’s expression. “I’m not the one getting into bed,” he said. 

“What? Neither am I—“Cisco swallowed—”I’m fine, Hartley. Really.”

“Please. You’re about as good as lying as you are at dressing yourself,” Hartley said, picking something up from a nearby surface and holding it out. “Here’s a coaster for the coffee—I want you to finish it—and then we’re going to make sure today never happens again.”

“Agreed,” Cisco said, nodding. He wondered why Hartley was still using his Spooked Horse voice with him. 

Hartley, as it turned out, was surprisingly Spartan about the whole nursemaid thing. Who would have guessed? He removed their coats, got one of those pillows with arms, and propped Cisco up on the bed.

“I actually am feeling much better,” Cisco protested. “Can we go back to S.T.A.R. Labs now?”

Hartley’s only response was to take Cisco’s phone from the inside of his coat pocket and power it off.

Cisco sighed and leaned back. His head banged against the headboard. Ow. “Look, I’m flattered that you were actually concerned about me, for a change, but I’ll be fine,” he said. “I had a little overdose with my powers, that’s all. It’s happened before.”

Hartley’s gaze could have been etched in stone. “Cisco, you went transparent.”

Cisco gaped at him.

Hartley bit his thumb lightly, his brow furrowing. “It was just for a second, but I think you were vibrating between physical planes of reality,” he said. “You nearly disappeared.”

“That would be awesome if it wasn’t so horrible,” Cisco groaned, closing his eyes. “Actually, it explains a lot. I feel kinda floaty.”

“A side effect that should pass. Your molecules were vibrating at an unnatural frequency,” Hartley noted.

“You know what else is unnatural?” Cisco motioned to the pillows he was lying on. “This,” he said. The mere concept of Hartley being nice to him was difficult enough to digest, and he'd already puked once today.

Hartley paused.

“You’re not supposed to take care of me,” said Cisco. “This goes against our rivalry.”

“I think our rivalry’s about as dead as Latin,” Hartley remarked.

Cisco cracked an eye open. “You still use Latin,” he said.

“And you see the dead,” replied Hartley. “Nothing lasts forever.”

“Huh.” Cisco closed his eye. “I guess not.”

Hartley got up, brushed some nonexistent lint from his pants, and declared, “Your color’s still off. Take an hour, rest, and then we’ll head back.”

Hartley didn’t even have to ask. Cisco, already half asleep, barely had time to register the fact that Hartley was playing Fleetwood Mac from his computer before he slipped into an exhausted, dreamless rest.

“I don’t think you should go to Earth-2,” Hartley admitted.

“Are you worried?” asked Cisco.

“No,” Hartley said, but he looked down at his nails.

“Central City will survive two days without the Flash,” Cisco reassured him. He frowned. “But that’s not what’s bothering you.”

Hartley angled his head so the fluorescent lights caught his glasses and hid his eyes from view.

“Can’t you figure it out?” he asked.

It all fell apart in hour forty-six, when Geomancer’s seismic surprise destroyed the speed cannon meant to bring Cisco, Barry, and Harry home. Hartley was poking at his takeout Massaman when Caitlin called. She was half frantic and it took two tries before Hartley could understand her, even with his super-hearing.

Barry would have been proud of the record time he made getting to S.T.A.R. Labs.

“Well,” Hartley stated, eyeing the gouges in the walls, “that’s going to leave a mark.” He was careful not to trip over the chunks of unearthed plaster as they made their way to the lower level.

“Jay’s working on the electromagnetic insulators, but we don’t know if that’ll be enough to redistribute the quark matter,” Caitlin explained in a hurry. “You know almost as much about particle physics as Doctor Wells did. There has to be something you can do.”

“Depending on the flavor of quark, creating an equilibrium could take time that we don't have,” said Hartley, walking into the basement and pulling up the schematics on the main grid. In front of them, the last remaining breach spluttered and flickered like a candle flame in the wind.

Jay suddenly slapped the adjacent computer. “Dammit!” he hissed. “We’ll need to reboot the insulators manually. Which means you have to operate the controls while I…create a vortex." He broke off in a frustrated sigh. "I just don’t know how much longer the V9 will last.”

A vortex. The answer suddenly dawned on Hartley and he ran to get his gauntlets.

“There’s another way to redistribute the quark matter,” he told them, out of breath. He held up the gauntlets and looked at Jay. “We just need to raise the temperature. Which I can do, if I use sonic blasts to make the molecules around your vortex oscillate at an extremely high speed.” He grinned breathlessly. “No manual needed.”

“Hartley you really are a genius,” Caitlin exclaimed. On another day Hartley would have basked in that, but basking required time. And time was short.

“We’ll need to amplify my gauntlets,” he informed Jay. “They have to reach the highest frequency, which will probably short them out so it has to be quick. If I give you an auxiliary amplifier, could you modify it?”

“I can try,” said Jay.

Hartley set his jaw. “This is going to hurt,” he muttered, reaching for his cochlear tubing.

One agonizing hour and three tries later, they did it. The speed cannons were up and running—and not a moment too soon. Cisco and Jesse were the first to fall through the breach, and something Hartley had not known he was clenching released in his chest. He wiped perspiration from the nape of his neck and breathed deeply.

After all the excitement and, admittedly, the shock of losing Jay, Cisco found Hartley piecing together the fried remains of his gauntlets in the workroom.

“Heard you helped stabilized the breach,” he said, leaning on the door frame.

“It wasn’t too hard,” replied Hartley. “Except for the splitting headache I now have.”

Cisco grinned. “You know, I have some terrific aromatherapy that can help with that.”

Hartley stared at him for a moment before huffing laughter. Still giddy from his trip, Cisco found himself joining him.

“Earth-2, man,” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “It was so dope.”

Hartley raised an eyebrow. “Indeed.” He fiddled with a loose wire sticking out from one of the gloves. Still looking down, he said, “Barry tells me you were quite the superhero.”

“Yeah, I saved everyone, no big deal,” Cisco said, looking proud. “But actually, that was thanks to you. I would have been toast over there if I hadn’t known how to use my powers.”  

“Well,” Hartley commented, “it would have been awfully quiet here without you.”

Cisco bit back a snigger. “Are you kidding me?” he said. He blinked when Hartley didn’t say anything. “Please tell me you're kidding.”

“Only half,” admitted Hartley. “I have watched at least seven movies vicariously through you. What can I say? It’s an exciting life.”

None of them could disagree with that.

“Now that we know about parallel worlds, things are going to get a lot more exciting,” remarked Cisco. The way his eyebrows drew together told Hartley that the idea frightened him. Hartley could sympathize.

“You know we still need a costume for you,” he pointed out, changing the subject.

Cisco jabbed a finger at him, grateful to talk about something else. In a sense. “Whatever it is, it better have pockets. You can only fit so many Twizzlers into a pouch,” he informed Hartley, pained.

Hartley gave him a flat look. “Trust me, I have a superb fashion sense,” he said. “We’ll make you Vibe in no time.”

“Nuh-uh,” Cisco said, holding up a finger. “That’s what the public gets to call me when I become famous and ballin’. You can stick with Cisco.”

“Hmm.” Hartley straightened his glasses. “How about a pain in my ass?”

“Only if I get to call you major dick.”

“By all means. I love compliments.”

Cisco clicked his tongue, because he'd seen that one coming. He knew Hartley too well.

Hartley popped the loose wire back into his gauntlet, sobering. He looked up. “It’s good to have you back. Cisco.”

“A capite ad calcem,” Cisco replied. ¹² Hartley blinked in surprise and broke into a lumpy, rather awkward smile. For all the fun he made of Cisco’s pitiful attempts at Latin the language sounded good coming from him, when he said it right.

Cisco nodded at the gauntlets. “Whoo," he exclaimed, "those are going to need some serious repairs.”

Hartley remembered telling Cisco he’d give him a week here, tops, back on some distant Earth the both of them had left behind, and realized how funny everything was. He’d gone from spoiled son to family outcast, vengeful genius to reluctant ally, tentative friend to family. A year ago S.T.A.R. Labs was a place Hartley would have never dreamed calling home, and yet here he was.

Definitely not a fluke.

As he watched, the wire he had just fastened into place popped back out with the world’s most pitiful ping. Cisco seemed to lament it as well and poked his bottom lip out at the wire.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Probably start with the wave tubes. The system was overloaded when we were redistributing the quark matter,” Hartley said while internally, he groaned. This was going to take weeks. The time wraith was coming, and soon, which meant he’d have to push back his work with Hamelin if they were ever going to get the sonic blasters ready for it.

Sometimes he hated S.T.A.R. Labs, the literal danger magnet of Central City, with its not-morons and its vortexes and its habit of giving anyone who entered a bad case of hero complex.

Today his beautiful gauntlets had paid the price, sad and limp in his lap. “It’s going to be a while before I get them fully functional,” Hartley added, bitter.

Cisco folded his arms. “Let’s get to work, then.”

Wordlessly Hartley handed him a screwdriver, which Cisco took, grinning.

Okay, maybe he’d lied.

S.T.A.R. Labs wasn’t so bad, in the end.

Finis.

¹ Cisco complained extensively about cleaning up the Flash’s fight scenes. While Barry didn’t make a habit of getting his ass kicked, which was good because blood was the first thing to get analyzed, Cisco still hated trekking out with his scrubbers and bleach.

Barry doesn’t know this, but Cisco also created a fake Metro card for him (because not having a car nor any records of transit fees while living in the suburbs of Central City looked pretty suspicious when you worked for the police.) If you asked Cisco, secret identities were a bitch to keep.

² Christina McGee had been trying to nab Hartley for the better part of a year. She’d been furious at losing him to Harrison Wells, and then to the explosion, so when she heard Hartley was job-searching again she hadn’t even bothered with the interview.

³ Hartley happened to be the only one privy to the fact that Caitlin had minored in French her sophomore year of college—not even Ronnie knew she was fluent. Caitlin had planned on surprising him at the ceremony.

⁴ We hear Eobard listening to Act 3 of Puccini’s Turandot in episode eleven, which is not Wagner, granted, but. It’s Italian opera, and Eobard always was a ham.

⁵ Philosophical Investigations is a work by Ludwig Wittgenstein containing 693 sections. This can be interpreted as either an underhanded compliment by Hartley—since that would’ve had to mean everybody working at S.T.A.R. Labs minus Wells had an IQ of 170 or higher—or that he considers his own IQ to be above 200. 

⁶ 4’33,” by John Cage, is a musical composition consisting of no notes, pitches, or effects. It is a completely silent piece, meant to have the sounds of the audience and the surrounding environment become the piece itself.

⁷ Hartley's form of tinnitus presented itself as a high, whining E♭, slightly stronger in his left ear than in his right. 

⁸ “May barbarians invade your personal space.”

⁹ While true that S.T.A.R. Labs equipment was, as Cisco put it, “hella expensive,” a good amount of it had been stolen, blown up, and on two occasions defenestrated. The tools were government funded, so the consensus was that it was generally okay to throw them.

¹⁰ Strangely, caffeine had little effect on Barry’s speed. He metabolized it like he did alcohol, save for the unfortunate side effect of vibrating while he talked. So if Barry wanted to avoid any uncomfortable questions, decaf it was.

¹¹ They were arguing about the Turtle, actually.

¹² Cisco bought a Latin phrasebook (off Amazon), and has been slowly memorizing it in between saving the world. This particular phrase means, “From head to heel.” Or, from top to bottom, through and through. It was Cisco’s way of saying that he’s back and here to stay.