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Cisco Ramon is almost certainly going to die.
Shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up , some hysterical, oxygen-deprived part of his brain thinks, because he’s finding it really hard to breathe now, as the glowing red eyes of the Reverse Flash stare at him from across the room, a Tuesday on team Flash without a near death experience? Ridiculous.
Right now, he’d settle for keeping it ‘near’.
They say when you’re going through an intense event, your perception of time doesn’t actually slow down, you just remember more details afterward, so it seems like time slowed down through the event.
He’s pretty sure that’s bullshit.
It’s stupid, because his gauntlets are right there, right across the room, on the other side of the Reverse Flash, where he’d set them down after training with Barry less than a minute ago and oh god this isn’t Harry and he’s right there and he’s too close and he’s -
blue
blue
painpainpain
----
His head is on fire and he can’t tell whether things have gone very bright or it’s just his eyes seeing sparks and lights popping but he can’t hear anything and he’d really like to pass out right now -
His hands are on the floor and it’s cold and rough and his head is on fire and he slumps down until his head touches the floor but it doesn’t make it any better and there’s noise in the room but he still can’t see anything -
Noise is a voice. Voice means person. The sparks in his eyes die down a little to see a yellow blur in his field of vision.
Wells - Thawne, Thawne - is still there, and his breath starts coming harder and faster and he can’t hear what Thawne is saying over the sound of the pounding in his ears and he scrambles to his feet to get away and keeps reaching and reaching until he touches a concrete wall, solid and smooth under his hands, feels it hum under his touch.
As he catches his breath he realizes he knows that hum, knows it almost as well as he knows the hum of his own Earth.
He doesn’t realize he’s started laughing until Eobard is suddenly much, much closer, and his heart’s sudden panicked pounding in his throat makes the laughter bubble and choke.
“-sco, Cisco, you’ve got to - Cisco, what’s wrong, where are we, why -?”
Oh god, he knows, he knows, he knows he might die at any moment, knows precisely what it will feel like but he cannot stop laughing because he knows exactly where they are and he might die but Thawne has no way off this world and if bringing him here means Cisco takes him down with him - however - however indirectly - that’d be - that’d be something at least, and his lungs are burning he can’t breathe he’s laughing -
“ Cisco!”
“You - you shouldn’t - shouldn’t have followed me -” He hiccups, choked huffs of laughter bursting out, and his head is still on fire. “Oh - oh - you shouldn’t -”
“Cisco, where are we? ”
That’s a good question, though not in the way Thawne means it. Cisco tries to force breaths in and out in something resembling an even rhythm, trying to match the hum of the cement as he focuses on the details around the room, tries to think about them, hard - there’s a high window and he focuses on fragment of the skyline he can see through it.
help me j’onn j’onzz you’re my only hope
help me j’onn j’onzz
help me j’onn
help me
help
HELP
“Cisco, where are we?” Thawne has pulled his cowl down, his blonde hair disarrayed from the hasty motion, “Are we in danger?”
“ We? ” Cisco spits out, laughing. “There is no we, Thawne, you fucking kidnapped me and got your ass dragged to another Earth -”
“So this is another Earth.” Thawne huffs, a brief chuckle. “Really, I had no idea your abilities were so advanced. I knew about dimensional breaches, of course, but as a reflexive defense mechanism - I’m impressed,”
“Harry - the Wells from Earth 2, doppleganger of the real Harrison Wells - he says my abilities are triggered by fear. And he’s right.” Cisco says, his fists pressed against the concrete, and he watches Thawne twitch, just a little, looking away from Cisco.
“Well, it’s obvious you’ve learned a great deal, with or without - Mr. Wells. It will make all of this much easier.”
“I’m sorry, make all of what much easier? Kidnapping? Oh, or is this the part where you tell me about your plan and then -” He raises his hand, makes the vertical chopping motion he knows so well “ - again? You know, if you were so desperate for an audience , there are easier ways to get one.”
“No - no, I wouldn’t,” Thawne rubs one hand over the other, running his thumb over the knuckles of his right hand, before tucking both hands behind his back. “I need you, Cisco. I need your help.” He unclasps his hands, lifting them from behind his back to hold them out from his sides, palms open.
Cisco, help me!
He presses a fist to his temple - fuck, when will his head stop burning -
Cisco -
That’s J’onn’s voice, that’s not a memory, that’s J’onn’s voice -
Cisco, I’m coming, you’re safe -
His fist unclenches and he lets out a breath of deep relief that turns into a laugh, fast and a little hysterical even to his own ears.
“Cisco?”
He chokes down his laughter safe safe safe and spits out. “Where in the saga of you killing Barry’s mom , lying to all of us, getting Eddie and Ronnie killed, and, oh yeah, the part where you killed me - do you think I want to help you?”
“Ronnie’s dead?” Thawne asks, and seems - almost genuinely surprised.
Cisco laughs. “He died stopping the black hole you started. You - you killed him and - you didn’t even know? Oh, oh that’s -”
“I didn’t. I didn’t know. I thought -” Thawne shakes his head. “I should have known better.”
“Oh boy, that - that covers a great many things.” Cisco says. “How the hell are you alive? How do you - no, you know what, it’s something with the Speed Force and I don’t care, I really don’t -”
“Cisco,” Thawne says, barely keeping the speedster vibration out of his voice, “"None of that was - was necessary - If Barry hadn’t stopped me from going home, none of it would've - I am only trying-" He takes a breath, clearly struggling to constrain his voice. “ - trying to finish what I started. To go home. With your powers -” And he may be wearing a different face, but Cisco can see every echo of ‘remember who gave you that life’ in his expression, “- no one will die. There’s no chance of a singularity. You can find where I’m supposed to be in my home timeline, you just need to -”
He’s too close his arm’s outstretched he’s too close -
“ Don’t -! ” And Cisco flings out his arms and sets off a blast that he can feel through to his bones, through to the floor, far more powerful than what he’d done to Black Siren, he’s pretty sure he can feel something rupture -
The blast fades away and, oh god, there was a reason he didn’t usually do that without his gauntlets, something in his hands is broken and somehow the pain in his head has gotten worse and he doesn’t realize he’s still yelling until the ringing in his ears stops and he can hear himself.
Thawne is saying something he can’t hear over the pounding in his ears -
- and that’s when the Martian Manhunter flies through the wall
----
He hates doing this.
People’s heads are - messy, more often than not unpleasant, to put it mildly. Listening too long - well, substantial quantities of chocolate and silence are required.
There’s also the part where humans aren’t used to telepathic communication. That got him chased out of three (or was it four?) communities back when he started on this planet. That, and the difficulty of keeping track of information he isn’t supposed to know (six communities, mostly with torches) means that he’s trained himself to keep to his own skull except when he’s looking to someone specific, usually a new intake or DEO member.
Right now, he wished he’d practiced extending his mind a bit more in the past decades - painful though it would have been, it would have been worth it now.
He’d told the others - told Cisco - that minds from another Earth stood out slightly, like they had the background static of a badly tuned radio. He’d had experience with the matter when he’d first checked their minds, looking for deceit when they’d first come to his Earth. Right now, that’s the best hope he has to find Cisco.
Barry had called and told them about the Reverse Flash and the Breach, just as DEO technicians had reported a dimensional anomaly. Based on their readings, he’s fairly confident Cisco and the Reverse Flash are in the city, now the only question is where.
staticFEARstaticstaticFEAR FEAR FEARstaticstatic
He drops through the air before he can catch himself and then -
closeTOOCLOSEhandchesttearingdy -
no no no he’s not dying, he’s flying - flying, as he pulls himself out of a nose dive - and the fear is still there, Cisco’s not dead, not dead , that was - he doesn’t know what that was but Cisco’s alive, and he has to find him -
help me j’onn j’onzz you’re my only hopestatichelp me j’onn - FEAR static help me static
There, that’s Cisco, Cisco for sure, no one else would make a Star Wars reference when they were that terrified.
He flies in a circle, trying to pick up where the thoughts are strongest, and images swirl in, a building, a skyline - he sets off southeast, trying to match the buildings he recognizes.
Cisco, I’m coming. You’re safe. He projects towards Cisco’s mind, over and over until he feels something on the other end, some sweeping relief, wordless, and he knows he’s flying in the right direction.
But Cisco is still angry and terrified and in pain, and the pain only gets stronger as he narrows in on the line of warehouses on the shorefront.
He feels the pain before he hears the scream, and he flies through the wall, crashing straight into the Reverse Flash.
The speedster already has blood dripping from his nose, not from J’onn’s hit, but from whatever explosion had caused the cement floor to crack and Cisco to clutch at his own hands.
J’onn decks the Reverse Flash again for good measure.
“Cisco, are you alright?”
“Getting better.” He says, still holding his hands tightly to his chest.
The Reverse Flash takes the opportunity - having recovered more quickly than J’onn would have thought - to vibrate through J’onn - and really, he hopes it doesn’t feel like that when he phases through people, because the experience is unpleasant to say the least.
The Reverse Flash grabs Cisco, looking back at J’onn with glowing red eyes from the holes of his cowl, and runs before J’onn can react.
But he knows this city better than Thawne ever will, and - a trick Barry pointed out to him - a speedster can’t phase while carrying something - or someone. J’onn doesn’t have that limitation. He has Thawne before he hits the end of the line of warehouses.
J’onn phases through Cisco - with a silent hope that this wasn’t too terribly unpleasant - to hit the Reverse Flash upside the jaw and through a wall into the empty warehouse.
Before Thawne can recover, J’onn wraps an arm around Cisco and takes off into the air- getting Cisco to safety is the priori -
Searing, crackling pain -
Cisco!
Lightning, he’s been hit by lightning, he’s falling -
He can’t phase through the ground because he’s carrying Cisco, so he steels himself to take the brunt of the impact before realizing that his fall is slowing down - Kara?
No, it’s a funnel of wind generated by the speedster on the ground, and he’s able to steady himself to land on his feet before they hit the concrete.
“Holy fuck,” Cisco mutters, mostly to himself, as J’onn sets him down and lets go of him, still careful to put himself between Cisco and the Reverse Flash. Cisco, with blood on his hands and visibly struggling with pain, is clearly in no shape to create a breach.
Thawne holds out his hands as he comes to a stop. “I don’t need Mr. Ramon harmed -”
J’onn throws him through the building.
He’s back at them before J’onn has a chance to breathe or feel how badly his back has been burned.
J’onn leaps in front of Cisco before the Reverse Flash can grab him, takes the hits and feels something crack in his sternum before grabbing Cisco and flying into the nearest warehouse.
When the Reverse Flash enters, Cisco Ramon is already walking towards him, hands raised.
“I’ll come with you. Just - stop hurting J’onn. Please.”
Thawne smiles. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.” He says, taking Cisco Ramon by the shoulder and running along the line of warehouses.
When they reach the furthest one, Thawne stops inside. “Now -”
J’onn shapeshifts back into his original form and grabs the Reverse Flash, yanking him off his feet and reaching to literally pull him apart -
- but the Reverse Flash phases through his grip, landing on his feet.
“J’onn, did you call yourself?” Thawne grins. “So, who do you think will get back to him first?” He says, lightning crackling around him.
He’s right. The line of warehouses back to Cisco is basically a straight shot, and the boy has had hardly enough time to get any further away.
But he still has another trick up his sleeve.
Before Thawne can run, J’onn pushes into his mind, seizing hold to freeze him in place -
----
He’s inside a building, a building he almost recognizes as Star Labs, from the few times he’s visited it, except that things are slightly wrong - the wall where the medical exam room would be in Star Labs has no glass and a metallic door, and the central desk has a strange array of new instruments on it.
Red lightning flashes past -
“So, psychic on top of an ability to phase and fly, as well as being quite sturdy - no human would have landed on their feet after that lightning. I suppose this is what the inside of my head looks like.” Thawne looks around the room, running a hand through his hair - his cowl evidently left down inside his own mind - then looks back at him. “Just what are you, J’onn ?”
He wishes he’d never said his name.
He can feel Thawne push, and while not psychic his mind is powerful. J’onn looks down to see the ground beneath his feet turning to red dust.
Thawne looks too. “Red dust… green skin,” He looks up with a grin that is halfway to a laugh. “Are you a little green man from Mars?”
J’onn shoves him out of his mind, the ground returning to concrete. “What do you want?”
“To go home, of course. Isn’t that what we all want?” Thawne steps closer, walking around J’onn. “How does a Martian end up living on - well, this Earth, I wonder?”
He can feel the ground shifting under his feet as it turns back to sand, and he pushes away intruding mental probes. When he looks up, he finds the room is much more changed from the Star Labs he knew, new and strange features creeping in. “You’re from the future, on your Earth? That’s your home?”
“Yes,”
“Funny, because this looks an awful lot like STAR labs to me.” J’onn says, focusing intently on the STAR labs portions of the room, bringing them into focus and pushing back the encroaching foreign objects in the room. “This is what the inside of your head looks like.”
Thawne laughs, pushing the room back in the opposite direction, letting the more advanced technology crawl across the desks, the walls -
“Why do you need Cisco?” J’onn asks.
The desk jolts back from future tech to the STAR Labs version.
"He has the ability to manipulate interdimensional spacetime, create breaches." Thawne laughs. “If I had known - if I had been certain, I would have trained him first.”
“But instead you kidnapped him. Kidnapped him from this place, this room.” Echoes and shadows of Caitlin and Barry flit through the room, J’onn pulls in shades of their fear from the past, fear that Kara and Alex have felt for the other when one was hurt or missing, fear pulling the walls closer, closing the room around the Reverse Flash, and the futuristic elements slip at the edges.
“I need to go home! ” Thawne shouts, and the shrunken room shifts abruptly and entirely to the futuristic design. “I don’t belong there, I belong here - ” He waves an arm at the room surrounding them - “Not in those - barbaric times. What I’ve lost -” He runs a hand along the edge of the new desk.
“What you’ve lost - ” And the room is suddenly much redder and warmer, and he yanks memories from Thawne’s mind and throws them at him, memories of running through time, of killing Nora Allen, of losing his speed. “You ran away from your home because it wasn’t good enough. You left it behind. Do you want to know what loss feels like?” And now the floor of the room, already starting to glow with heat, licks into flame, but now, in Thawne’s mind, J’onn lets all of his fear and anger and loss pour out, and he is unafraid of the flames. “To lose your home - your world, your family - do you want to know? ”
The flames burn higher and higher, surrounding Thawne, curling around him in a firestorm, and J’onn stands alone, unburnt.
And the flames die down, and in the ashes, STAR labs stands around them.
“Do you understand what the worst part is?” J’onn says, stalking towards Thawne, and out of the corners of his eyes he can see the walls shifting to resemble the interior of the DEO. “You tried to kill your family. They survived in spite of you. They gave you a new home, and you burnt it down. ”
For a moment - just a moment - they’re in a van, and someone is saying “home is where you feel safe, where you feel loved,” - and then they’re back in STAR labs, shadows of Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, and, at the forefront, Caitlin Snow, her arms crossed, ghostlike yet imposing as she looks down in judgement.
Thawne takes hasty steps back, as the walls of STAR labs close in around him.
“You can’t run from this place.” J’onn rumbles. “You can’t run from the people you hurt here.”
Thawne looks up, and his narrowed eyes flash red as he reaches up to pull his cowl back over his face. “I’ve always been good at running.”
Red lightning, and the Reverse Flash is gone.
----
J’onn flies out through the ceiling of STAR labs and out over the city, a strange amalgam of Central City and building designs similar to the futuristic elements that had encroached on STAR Labs. He watches for red lightning as he looks out across the skyline.
Thawne, he realizes as he catches glimpses of red lightning, isn’t running straight out of the city - he’s running out in short bursts, and then immediately turning around and trying to go out another direction - and repeat. And repeat.
J’onn makes an educated guess as to where the next apparent ‘roadblock’ will appear and flies towards it.
He lands in front of a statue of - Barry?
Badly damaged though the statue is, it’s recognizably Barry in his Flash suit - perhaps looking a little older, his chin a little more jutting and rugged, and if the circumstances weren’t so horrifying that would definitely be the subject of a joke the next time he saw Barry. Parts of the stone base and torso have fallen away, and the lightning bolt insignia has been carved off completely, but there behind him on the wall of the building the words FLASH MUSEUM are carved.
“No, no no no no -”
Thawne is behind him, and as J’onn turns around lightning hurls across the space between them - but not at J’onn, at the statue of the Flash.
As the lightning makes contact, there’s a howling scream, as a shadow of Barry Allen - no Flash suit, just a STAR labs sweatshirt - doubles over in pain.
“ Stop it! ” Thawne screams at the shadow of Allen, then, apparently noticing J’onn for the first time, shouts at him, “You! Stop this!”
J’onn’s ready for the lightning bolt this time, and flies over it to grab Thawne and hurl him through the wall into the Flash museum.
He doesn’t entirely know what’s happening here, but if Thawne’s subconscious wants to do some of his work for him, he’s certainly not going to complain.
Following Thawne into the museum, he feels like he’s walking into the set for a horror movie - flickering lights, floor and wall covered with a thick layer of dust and grime, cracked walls, doors boarded up -
“ Hello, Eobard, ” A gentle robotic voice says, and J’onn wills the lights back on to illuminate a blonde child watching the displays on the walls.
The Reverse Flash stares at the child like he’s just seen a ghost - perhaps an apt metaphor, as J’onn realizes they’re watching a much younger Eobard Thawne.
The boy turns to watch a hologram of the Flash - of an older Barry - run across the room. As the hologram runs past, it flickers into a shade of another Flash, not Barry - J’onn looks at Thawne and yes, this Flash is clearly Thawne - before the hologram flickers back to the younger Barry that J’onn recognizes, running to the end of the room before the hologram starts to fizzle out.
“ How was that, Dr. Wells? ” A recorded voice, Barry’s voice, crackles out of speakers on the wall nearest the spot where the hologram vanished, and the floor of the building starts to shake.
“ The Flash museum is experiencing a seismic anomaly,” The gentle robotic voice says, “ Please proceed to designated earthquake shelters.”
The child looks around, frightened, and though he’s clearly only a memory, a shade, J’onn swoops towards him to pick him up from the shaking floor.
The Reverse Flash gets there first.
“Don’t you get it? ” He shouts at the boy. “None of this is yours!”
The hologram, unperturbed by the earthquake, starts back at the beginning of its loop across the hall. As it flickers into the second Flash, Thawne’s Flash, the earthquake intensifies and sends part of a ceiling crashing down through the hologram, shattering the holomatrix so the hologram flickers away.
“ None of this will ever be yours!” Thawne shouts at the boy, and J’onn hears “Freak!” and “Alien! ” and “ Monster!” and “ Not your town!” “You never belonged here!” “Not your world!” “Not your people!” spat in dozen different tongues.
He flies across the room and hurls Thawne away from the boy, hurls him with all the force of every cruel insult that had ever been slung at him, forcing those memories on him as he sends him careening through a wall. J’onn tries to will the remaining walls upright enough to hold the ceiling above the child, holding them up against Thawne’s memories about his destiny, the crushing weight of despair and betrayal -
“This could have been his.” J’onn says, holding the child’s shoulders. “ You ran away because you wouldn’t fight for it.”
Thawne laughs, hollow and bitter. “Who can fight destiny?”
“Anyone.” J’onn says. “Anyone who makes a choice. Mine was not to become the monster they said I was. This, ” He says, looking at the collapsing room. “was yours.”
A shadow of Barry flickers into existence between them, staring silently at Thawne. From the back, J’onn can’t tell if it’s the future Barry or the Barry he recognizes.
Thawne snarls, sending lightning careening towards the shadow of Barry. J’onn dodges as the lightning tears through the shadow, crashing into the pillars at the entrance and shattering the last pieces holding the ceiling up.
The Flash Museum collapses.
----
J’onn phases down through the rubble, the weight of the museum’s years slowly crushing him.
Please forgive me. He thinks as he reaches out of Thawne’s mind, reaches out for Cisco’s mind, drawing out memories and emotions like ammunition from the armory.
And suddenly he’s falling in open air.
The room he lands in almost resembles the bowels of the DEO, but looking at the metal structure in the center and the tables covered in computers, J’onn guesses that this must be one of the lower levels of STAR labs.
It hurts to breathe the air in this room - J’onn feels tears leak from his eyes at the sheer suffering that suffuses the space.
Thawne has fallen to the floor of the room as well, his cowl knocked off in the fall, but he gets to his feet quickly, looking around at the walls of the room until his eyes finally alight on the central device and his expression stiffens.
There are other sounds in the room, music that seems like it might be a few decades out of date - a movie score? - and voices - voices that might be Cisco’s and Thawne’s - the words aren’t clear but the sound of Cisco’s laughter is -
“ Oh, I’m not like the Flash at all - ”
The voice cuts off all other sound in the room - the music, Cisco’s laughter - gone - as they both turn to look at the hologram and force field that has flickered to life in the center of the room - a hologram of the Reverse Flash.
The room grows darker around the hologram, shadows creeping in so that the edges of the room are obscured, and the light is increasingly concentrated around the center, the hologram. Thawne doesn’t seem to notice the change, he can’t tear his eyes away from the hologram, and almost doesn’t notice when a shade of Cisco appears, still at the edge, in the dark, but the vaguely translucent, ghostlike face is unmistakable, though his blank stare bears little resemblance to Cisco’s normal energy.
When Thawne does see the shade of Cisco Ramon, he immediately turns to him “Cisco, help me - ”
“ I can help you .” Cisco’s anguished voice rings through the room, not coming from the shade but seemingly echoing from everywhere, and then the shade steps closer to the center, closer to the light, and the gaping hole in Cisco’s chest, right through his heart, becomes visible to them both, and Thawne immediately goes silent as the darkness creeps down from the ceiling.
“I - I did what I had to do -” Thawne stutters after several moments of silence, and it’s the first time J’onn’s heard his voice break. He wonders if the pain and fear in the room is filling Thawne’s lungs like it’s filling J’onn’s. The shade Cisco just walks closer to the center of the room, closer to the hologram - tears are falling out of the shade’s eyes but his face is stoic. “You found out - of course you did, you’re - incredibly clever, of course you found out - but you have to see that I did what I had to do. If you had just -”
The shadow of Cisco opens his mouth, but it’s Wells’ voice that rings through the room.
“ In many ways, you have shown me what it’s like to have a son. ”
The encroaching darkness hits Eobard and he falls to his knees with a cry of pain as though it was a physical force.
The shade of Cisco Ramon grabs Eobard Thawne by the shoulder and drags him into the center of the room until Thawne stands upright. Cisco takes Thawne’s arm, tugs it forward, pulling it in until it neatly fills the hole carved out of Cisco’s chest.
And then Cisco lifts his own arm and shoves it through Thawne’s chest.
Thawne -
- crumples to the floor, and the shade turns away and walks to the elevator, slowly dissolving just as the room does.
It’s over.
J’onn pulls himself out of Thawne’s mind before it all collapses.
---
“J’onn?”
Cisco’s voice, and as he opens his eyes Cisco, the real Cisco, is there, as are Kara and Alex.
“J’onn?” Kara says, as he notes with relief that DEO agents are cuffing Thawne’s prone body with power suppressors, “Are you alright?”
“I’ll be fine. Cisco -”
“He insisted on coming, even though the team wanted to take him back to Medical.” Alex says.
“Well,” J’onn says, “I certainly don’t know any agents who would insist on something like that.”
Alex looks chagrined, and Cisco leans over her shoulder to cut in. “I’m - it’s nothing. Are you -” Cisco looks over at Thawne, being hauled onto a stretcher in cuffs, “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’ll -” J’onn repeats. “ - be fine. I just - really need some rest.” He looks around at the assorted group, fighting to keep his eyes open. “Does anyone have some Chocos?”
----
They send them to the medical bay when they get back, and J’onn is able to keep himself awake long enough for the doctors to reassure him that Cisco will be okay before he falls asleep.
Alex is waiting for him when he wakes up several hours later.
“Kara took Cisco to go get some food, he’s fine, the medics splinted his hands and gave him some painkillers for the headache, but they scanned everything and there’s absolutely no signs of permanent damage.” She says before he can ask, and he lets his head drop back onto the pillow in relief. There was perhaps no safer, and maybe no better place for Cisco to be right now than with Kara.
“Thawne -”
“Is in a cell with power dampeners downstairs.”
“Is he -”
“I haven’t heard if he’s woken up yet.” She fidgets a little, uncomfortably. “Some of the team was saying he was screaming in his sleep.”
J’onn can’t find any sympathy. “I’d like to talk to him.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? The team has some more tests they want to run.”
“You know they’re mostly guessing about Martian physiology, right?”
“J’onn.” She says. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to talk to him ? When we found you -”
“Yes. I do.”
Alex sighs. “If I take you down there to talk to him, do you promise you’ll come back for the tests?”
“Yes.” J’onn agrees grudgingly.
“Alright,” She says, offering her arm to help him off of the medical cot, and they walk down to the lower levels together.
Eventually, they reach Thawne’s cell, and for a moment J’onn assumes he’s still asleep, as he’s lying flat on the bench inside the cell, but as they approach he sits up.
J’onn turns to Alex, “You can go.”
“Are you sure?”
He nods.
“Alright, I’ll be right outside.” She says, and steps out.
“How are you finding your cell, Mr. Thawne?” J’onn says, “Meals will be provided regularly, but if there’s anything we can do to make this place more like home -”
Thawne laughs, threading his hands together tightly behind his back as he stands up. “The cell is perfectly adequate, thank you.”
“I’ll admit, I half expected you to be yelling and pounding on the walls.”
“I gather you regularly have to deal with much more - irrational prisoners.” Thawne chuckles, but J’onn can see how tightly his knuckles are clenched. “No, I assume if Cisco has worked with you regularly, he’s designed this cell to both suppress my powers and be impenetrable to a speedster. Though,” He adds, “I will admit I - tested it,” He holds up his hand - J’onn is relieved to see it isn’t vibrating - and lowers it until he taps the glass, gently. “Ah, well.”
“So,” J’onn says, “you come back from the dead, have your plan resoundingly foiled, now you’re stuck in this cell without powers for the rest of your life.” Eobard’s face twitches . “You’re taking this awfully well for a man who was shouting at a statue a few hours ago.”
“That’s just it - I came back from the dead.” Thawne steps closer to the glass. “The Speed Force let me come back. If you think its plan is for me just to rot here - no, no.” He waves a hand, his fingers flicking back and forth at his side. “I’ve waited fifteen years for my plans to play out before, I’ve learned well that patience is a virtue.” He says through slightly gritted teeth. “They’ll need my help eventually.”
“Let me make one thing clear,” J’onn says, stepping closer to the cell wall in turn. “No one will enter this room without my approval. And if Cisco Ramon or any of the others decide to come down here, it will be because it was their idea, not yours.”
Thawne smiles, and J’onn feels a shiver of loathing at the look in his eye. “Of course. I’m sure I’ll have other - interesting visitors.” He says. “Where are my manners - was that your daughter, earlier?” Thawne asks, and J’onn scowls. Thawne waves a hand apologetically. “I may have… picked up on a few details while you were in my head. I’m sorry - to someone with your -” Thawne waves his hand next to his head. “ - abilities, coming from a planet where that was - shared, I assume,” he ducks his head, chuckles slightly, “I’m sorry, we must seem a terribly barbaric planet to you.”
“You are certainly more adept at lying.”
“Ah,” Thawne says, “That must certainly have been an - adjustment. Is it difficult for a Martian to learn to lie?”
“More difficult than it seems to be for you.” J’onn says. “I’ve had a few centuries of practice.”
Thawne huffs out a breath through his nose, looks down. “Of course. That’s how you were able to make all of these people believe you were human.”
“Mars -” J’onn holds up his hands in front of himself, staring down at them, trying to come to the words. “- was - interconnected. Whole. There are no lies in a bond like that.” He says. “You wouldn’t have thrived there.”
“Ah,” Thawne says, with a self-deprecating smile, “You know, I lied about who I was. I lied - many times, when I had to. But I didn’t lie today. I meant Cisco no harm. I do care for him. You should know that.” He adds, tapping the side of his head.
“I have no doubt that you believe that.” At that, Thawne looks up at him. “I’ve been on this planet for centuries. As good at lying as you are, I’ve seen too many people do terrible things to the ones they claimed to love to keep believing that they were all lying. It never changed what they did.”
“Tell me, J’onn, what would you do to get Mars back?”
J’onn thinks of Cisco’s terror and hate and pain , thinks of that for Kara, for Alex - “Not this.”
Thawne chuckles. “You say that now. That pain, that you used as a weapon against me? I know how it felt. That loss? I know you still feel it.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about loss.”
Thawne taps the side of his head. “You’ve been in here. You know as well as anyone: I did only what I had to do.”
“I’m sure you believe that too.” J’onn says. “But I showed you Cisco’s experiences. Tell me, did they seem like someone who felt loved?”
Thawne is silent for a long moment. J’onn turns to go, but pauses at the door.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about humanity,” He says, “You’re always best at lying to yourselves.”
----
When the medical team finally formally releases him from the med bay, Cisco and Kara have returned.
Kara and Alex are deep in conversation outside the med bay, while Cisco is standing on one of the platforms above the central command center, staring across the room.
J’onn walks up to join him.
“So,” J’onn starts, “How was your lunch with Kara?”
Cisco ducks his head and lets out a small snort of laughter, then looks up at J’onn. “Are you alright?”
“I’ll be fine. Psychic combat is just - tiring.” He says, with a small smile. “And you?”
Cisco looks at him for another moment, before looking down over the computer banks. “Winn’s working on a device that will let me use my powers without -” He holds up his hands to show the tightly wrapped white bandages and splints. “So I can go home. But it -” He shakes his head, pauses.
J’onn waits, looks out over the DEO command center with him.
“It feels weird, to go home, when he’s down there. I mean, I know you have him locked up. I built that cell. I know he can’t get out. But -” Cisco falls silent, but J’onn can imagine what he’s thinking.
“If -” J’onn starts, “If you go down there, there’s something you should know.”
He pauses, long enough that Cisco says “Yeah?” to prompt him to continue.
“When I -” J’onn waves his hand next to his head.
“When you were in the Martian mind-meld battle with the Reverse Flash, yeah,” Cisco says.
“You -” J’onn rubs his hand against the back of his head and neck. “I - my abilities, normally, I don’t - try and look in people’s heads. It’s - overwhelming, apart from being an invasion of privacy. But when - you and your team first arrived here, I took a - cursory look, to understand if we could trust you. And - today, I was searching for your mind, trying to track it to a location, and -”
“You went Professor X on my head.” Cisco laughs without humor, “Sorry, dude, that - well, the inside of my head can’t have been a nice place to be right then.”
“It’s more than that.” J’onn says, unable to look at Cisco. “When I was - was fighting Thawne, I - working in the mind, it wasn’t -” He shakes his head a little “- exactly, a - a contest of wills.”
“You used my memories.” Cisco says.
“I - yes.” J’onn says. “On Mars - to share another’s memories like that, especially to an enemy, without consent would be - a grave breach of trust, at the least. There’s no - no comparable legal system on earth, but -”
“You -” Cisco starts, stutters a little, “It’s - you were inside his head, and that was the way to - to beat him. You - you got me out of there, alive, and - well, you already know that I wasn’t - wasn’t exactly expecting that. I don’t -” He shakes his head. “It’s what you had to do. I don’t have to like it, but I understand why you did it.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” J’onn says.
Cisco looks at him, and he looks - frankly, more surprised than he should.
Oh, H’ronmeer, what they’ve done to this boy.
(He lost faith in the Martian gods a long time ago, but some habits die hard. Some names you have to keep alive.)
“Yeah,” Cisco says with a small laugh. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I can’t undo what I’ve done,” J’onn says, seriously. “But I can erase the memories from his mind if that is what you want.”
“You can do that?” Cisco asks.
“Yes.” J’onn says. “My - precision has improved. There was a time when I was - rusty.” He adds ducking his head as his shoulders hunch up towards his ears. “But I would be able to extract your memories from his mind.”
Cisco considers. “What - what did you show him?”
“Your fear. Your pain.” He does not look at Cisco. “What it felt like to die.”
“Oh.” Cisco says.
They stand in silence, for a moment.
“No,” Cisco says, finally. “No. If I have to remember it, it’s - it’s fair that he does too. It’s -” He chokes a little on a laugh. “It’s something.”
J’onn considers. “I could - I could erase the memory from your mind. If you chose.”
Cisco stares at him.
“Only if that’s what you wanted, of course.” J’onn adds.
Cisco looks away, frowning at his feet, one hand rubbing circles into his t-shirt, over his heart. “No,” He says finally. “No, I think I won’t go all Eternal Sunshine on this one. I -” He huffs a snort. “I’ve learned to live with it.”
J’onn nods. “I’ll leave the offer open, should you need it.”
“Does that extend to like, embarrassing dates? Because I could definitely lose some of those.”
J’onn chuckles, and Cisco smiles.
After a moment, Cisco asks, “Did you show him anything - of, of your memories?”
“The destruction of Mars. My earlier years on Earth.” J’onn says. “And - my family.”
“Oh.” Cisco says.
“He seemed to think he had felt the loss of his home. I felt it necessary to - correct him.”
“Seems fair to me.” Cisco says. He looks at J’onn, “You can’t erase your own memories, can you?”
“No. I can’t.”
“Oh,” Cisco says. “I’m sorry.”
“There are a number of - Martian meditative techniques, to help deal with such - psychic stressors.” J’onn says. “I would be happy to have someone to practice them with.”
“I - I might take you up on that.” Cisco says. “You never struck me as a meditation kind of guy,”
“Sometimes I meditate while shooting things.”
“Got it.” Cisco says. “I might skip that part.”
J’onn nods.
“Do you think I should? Go down there.”
“That is - entirely your decision. I would not presume to make it for you.” J’onn says, “I am - as aware as anyone that if there is anyone who deserves - catharsis. Justice. - it is you. I would hope that my - intervention did not prevent -”
“No, dude, backup was absolutely called for there. You came in and saved the day, I - I don’t remember if I said thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Cisco.”
“I don’t - I don’t know what I’d even do if I went down there. I mean, part of me wants to go down and go another round with the gauntlets, but,” Cisco rubs his wrists, over the bandages. “I don’t know what I want to say. I don’t know if there’s anything I want to say. I - I just don’t.”
J’onn sits down. “Mars - my people, my family were burned by the White Martians. I have - I have spent so long, hating them.” He says. “A few months ago, one showed up on Earth, trying to kill the last Green Martian, and I -” He looks down. “I wanted to kill it. More than that, I wanted to make it - suffer. And it didn’t matter what happened to me in - in doing that.” He takes a deep breath. “Kara - reminded me not - not to lose my soul. That if I did that, I would - would lose myself. I would no longer be keeping Mars alive.”
Cisco watches him carefully.
“I will never forgive them and - and I would not ask you to. I - I never, I never knew that White Martian - I never - I never knew, or cared for, a White Martian. I was never - betrayed. So I don’t - I don’t claim to understand what you’re feeling. And I wouldn’t claim that he does not deserve to suffer. But -” J’onn clears his throat. “I - I hope you know he doesn’t deserve any more of your life. Or your soul.”
“I - thanks, J’onn.” Cisco says, then impulsively reaches over to hug him, bandaged hands and all.
J’onn wraps an arm around him and pats his shoulder, wishing he could protect him from the lurking nightmares in his mind, the ones he now knows all too well.
When Cisco lets go, J’onn says, “You don’t - you don’t have to go down there today, either. If you change your mind, you know how to get here.” He raises his eyebrows. “I don’t like to brag, but I do have some pull around here. I have high level, 24-7 access to the cells in this facility.”
Cisco laughs like a dam breaking.
“I also have high level access to the hot cocoa in the mess.” J’onn adds.
Cisco smiles, shoulders still a little hunched, eyes still a little tired, and J’onn knows there are problems hot cocoa won’t fix, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try. “ That , I will take you up on.”
He may not understand much about Eobard Thawne, but he certainly understands the impulse to consider this boy a son.
“Now,” J’onn continues as they walk towards the mess. “Have you ever considered a job with the DEO? We have full and part-time positions available for an engineer of your skill -”