Chapter Text
Plotting the murder of politician Hugo Thawne had been easy.
He was already well hated, a polarizing figure in his campaign run and then he'd closed down several factories around Keystone, turning more against him. An assassination wasn't even particularly surprising and the most anyone could say in sympathy was to extend their condolences to his wife and son.
Lillian Thawne was harder.
Always surrounded by people, she wore black to every interview, voice perfectly soft, eyes perfectly wet. She spoke of Hugo as though he'd been a loving pillar of the community instead of an arrogant opportunist. If she ever felt genuine grief, it hid beneath the polished stagecraft she'd mastered. She wept just enough to look devoted, never enough to be messy. She held herself like a woman performing a role she'd memorized long before she'd ever needed it.
But she was still an obstacle, and Eobard had known from the second he arrived in this time they both needed to die. Hugo first. Then Lillian. The timing mattered. The emotional trajectory mattered. The boy mattered most of all.
Eddie Thawne had not slept well since the funeral three weeks ago.
He was short for eleven and round in the way boys his age were all too eager to make fun of him for. His T-shirts clung wrong, his pajama bottoms twisted around his ankles when he tossed and turned, and he chewed the cuff of his sleeve whenever he got nervous. The house felt too big now. Too empty. Too loud in the places it used to be quiet. Too quiet in the places it used to be loud. His father's study door hadn't been opened in nearly a month.
Eddie was meant to be asleep. He'd gone to bed at nine, like always, but grief made sleep slippery. His room felt hollow without the low hum of his dad's late-night phone calls or his mom pacing downstairs while clearing away their wine glasses before bed. The silence pressed on him until he couldn't take it anymore. So he crept out of bed, tugged down the hem of his T-shirt, and padded barefoot down the stairs toward the kitchen for a glass of water.
The living room lamp was on, casting a warm glow across to the dark kitchen. His mother must be reading, he thought as he tip-toed through the left doorway and veered further left to the fridge, pausing at the cabinet to get a glass. He pressed his glass to the water dispenser with a yawn.
The machine hummed, then a stream of chilled water began filling the cup. He blinked blearily over at the clock on the stove that blinked 12:14 back.
"Get out of my house before I call the police!"
Eddie jumped as his mother's voice erupted from the living room, sloshing water over his hand. Eddie jumped, sloshing water over his hand. He'd never heard his mother sound scared. She wasn't supposed to sound scared.
His first thought: someone's in the house.
His second: I'm alone in the kitchen.
His third: What if Mom needs help?
The glass trembled in his fingers. He set it down with a soft clink and looked wildly around for anything he could use as a weapon. The fire extinguisher would have to do. He grabbed it by the handle, the object cold and too heavy for his shaking hands. It wasn't until he began creeping towards the living room that he realized the light was all wrong.
It wasn't soft anymore. It flickered red, fast, and frantic, casting sharp shadows that jerked and bled across the walls.
He reached the archway.
Stopped.
The world looked like a nightmare he hadn't woken from yet.
Eddie closed his eyes tightly. "I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming." He all but begged the universe or maybe God, but when he opened his eyes again, Hell was still in his living room.
The living room was a blistering storm of color, everything drowned in the violent strobing of red lightning that surrounded the...man? The intruder. The brightness forced Eddie to squint, tears prickling from the intensity, and every time he blinked the shapes in the room shifted. One moment the man was simply standing there. The next, a knife was in his mother's chest.
The sound she made was small. Not a scream. More like shock leaving her body all at once. She staggered backward, fingers clawing at the intruder's arm, then at the air, then at nothing at all.
The man in yellow tilted his head, examining her the way a surgeon might examine a solved problem. His red eyes cut toward Eddie.
Eddie froze.
The extinguisher slipped from his hands. It hit the carpet with a dull thud he didn't hear.
For an instant that felt eternal, their eyes met. Eddie couldn't help but think of monster movies and sci-fi thrillers and he once again hoped he was just dreaming. That he would wake up tomorrow and everything would be fine.
Eddie blinked and the man was gone though the echoes of the bright lightning still stained his vision. His mother had fallen back on the sofa, clutching her chest, her breathing quiet and painful and terrifying.
"Mom?" Eddie forced the word out, sliding one foot forward. He reached out a trembling hand for the home phone in its cradle on the side table. "Mom…" He repeated more insistently, voice cracking.
Eddie almost missed the numbers as his fingers fumbled over the buttons.
"911, what is the location of your emergency?"
Eddie rattled off his address, stumbling over his words a couple of times.
"My-my mom, my mom- a guy broke in and stabbed my mom!"
"Alright, sweetie, is the intruder still there? Are you with your mom?"
Eddie swallowed, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
"H-he's gone. He-he moved really fast, I didn't see his face, just- he was wearing yellow and the red lightning-"
"Okay. Stay on the line with me, sweetie, I've got help coming."
The dispatcher kept speaking, her voice meant to soothe, but Eddie's ears were ringing too loudly to hear her.
He didn't know that the killer stood in the driveway, watching him through the front window.
He didn't know that the house was already staged - drawers yanked open, jewelry scattered, a broken frame on the floor - carefully arranged to look like chaos committed by an ordinary man. A robbery gone horribly wrong.
He didn't know the police would mishear his shaking voice and translate a man in yellow surrounded by lightning into a man in a yellow hoodie.
He only knew the warmth leaving his mother's fingers and the glow of emergency lights turning the snow outside the same shade of red that had lit the living room.