Dr. Wells stood in the Cortex reading Eobard's version of his autobiography, and Caitlin and Cisco stared at him with their mouths hanging open.
"Weird change to be holding your autobiography, especially when you didn't write it," Wells stated, "and it's not about you."
I huffed. "Doctor Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon," I introduced awkwardly, "meet doctor Harrison Wells from Earth-2."
Cisco glared at Wells, "Hi."
Wells replied as suspiciously as Cisco did, "Hi."
"So let me get this straight," Cisco repeated, "You're the doppelgänger of the man who murdered his mon," he pointed to Barry and then me, "kidnapped and shot her, and is responsible for both Ronnie and Eddie's deaths?"
Caitlin suggested, "He's not even the doppelganger of the Dr. Wells that we knew because that Dr. Wells' body had been taken over by the Reverse Flash who was really Eobard Thawne, and Eddie's distant relative from the future."
"Yeah, I didn't follow any of that," he stated bluntly. "I'm my own man. I have nothing to do with the murder of your mother or your friend Ricky."
Caitlin exclaimed, "His name was Ronnie."
"Him either," Wells snapped.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "You told me that you have proof of your identity?"
Wells walked to my desk, explaining, "This almost hit me when I was traveling through the wormhole." He handed Caitlin the cream colored purse that we thought was lost forever. "Your stabilized breech downstairs connects directly to the Star-Labs on my Earth."
"Technically this could be mine, but I still want to run some tests on you," Caitlin stated, hesitantly.
Wells interrupted her, "I'll be genetically indistinguishable from my Earth-1 counterpart. Your tests will reveal nothing."
Caitlin smirked, "Great. Still going to run them."
"Be my guest," Wells smirked.
Cisco approached Barry and I, and he whispered in my ear, "Why are we even listening to him? How do we know he's not evil like the other guy?"
Barry sighed, "He saved my life last night. The question is why? I'm guessing that you didn't travel in between dimensions just to meet the Flash."
"That's exactly what I did," Wells explained. "I came here to help you, Barry. To stop your greatest enemy."
"He already did that," Cisco stated.
Wells snapped, "I'm not talking about Reverse Flash, I'm talking about Zoom." My eyes flickered to the floor, and Wells noticed. "I see that you've already heard of him."
I explained, "Zoom has been sending meta-humans from your Earth through the breeches to fight Barry."
"Well," Wells sighed, "they're the symptoms, Zoom's the plague; one that's infected my world and now he's coming for yours."
I narrowed my eyes and folded my arms across my chest. "What do you know about Zoom?" I questioned.
"Everything," Wells bluntly stated. "I created Zoom. I'm responsible for all the Earth-2 meta-humans, a fact that I've ignored for far too long, but now," he cocked his gun, "I'm doing something about it."
"Yeah, well we're batting a thousand against these breachers," Cisco sighed.
Wells snarled, "You're batting a thousand, Crisco? What's your sample-size? Ten. Less? Zoom is obsessed with speed. He will never allow there to be another speedster in the multiverse, and he's going to keep sending these metas here, one after the next, all with the same goal: to kill the Flash. Unless we stop him together."
Cisco whispered, "Last time we listened to a guy with your face my best friend almost bled to death outside on the sidewalk."
My face went white, and I looked down at my feet. "We lost people we cared about," Catlin stated.
"Everyone loses someone they care about, Snow," Wells snapped. "The real test of character is what you do once they're gone."
Dr. Wells' words hit me like a brick wall. He barely knew who I was, and yet he was describing everything I had been feeling ever since May 19.
Joe suddenly entered the Cortex drawing his gun to point at Wells, and then he fired three shots directly at him.
My heart started pounding in my chest as I heard the first gunshot, my face turned white as a sheet, and my breathing was shaky and slow. One by one, memories of May 19th replaced my vision.
I felt the pain in my stomach all over again.
I felt the blood dripping onto the sidewalk forming a puddle around me.
I felt my shirt become heavy with the blood.
I saw Barry's hands and side of his face covered in my blood. It was everywhere.
Quickly, my hands covered my ears, and I dropped to the floor of the lab with shell-shock written all over my face. I shook like a small dog as the entire world spun on without me.
I kept hearing those two gunshots over and over and over. I smelled the blood and gunpowder in the air. My eyes couldn't bring themselves up from the floor, but everyone could see the look of pure horror in them.
Everything that I heard sounded like it was played in slow motion through water.
"Fiiiinnnnn?" Barry knelt down in front of me to ask, "Areee yooouu allllrriighhtt?"
Caitlin ran to my side, and placed her fingers on my neck to take a pulse. "160 beatttss peerrrrrr minute," she stated, and then placed her hand on my forehead, feeling the cold, clamminess of my skin. "Sssheees iiiiiiin shocckkk," Caitlin explained.
________
I sat in Caitlin's lab with a blanket wrapped around me, and I stared out the window at the city. Barry sat in the chair across from me with a cup of valerian root tea in his hands; I silently took the cup from his hands and took a small sip from it.
"I'm sorry," Barry whispered, placing his hand on my knee.
I asked quietly, "For what? You didn't do anything."
Barry swallowed the lump in his throat. "I didn't save you that day," he stated, "and now you have to live like this."
"Things like this just happen to people like me," I whispered, and then looked back outside. "Hewitt was right," I sighed, "I shouldn't be leading Star-Labs."
Barry narrowed his brow. "What makes you think that?"
I faced him again, but couldn't bring my eyes up to his. "Just look at me, Bar," I explained softly, "I cry every day, any time someone mentions his name I have a mental breakdown, I can't move on . . . There's no way for me to function normally here."
"Finn, all of us were broken by Thawne," Barry swallowed a lump in his throat, "but all of us are different. All of us heal at different rates, but none of us will ever be back to normal."
I weakly smiled, "Thanks, Bar."
He smiled too. "Why don't we go to dinner tomorrow? Afterwards we can go home, and I can watch you get drunk off of champagne and wine."
"I like that idea," I smirked.
Barry too both of my hands into his, and laughed, "It's all a part of the healing process."
~