Chapter Text
Eobard sat on the floor of his cell, his back against the wall, his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. The lights had been dimmed for hours now, meaning that it was probably well past midnight, but he just couldn’t sleep.
Insomnia was nothing new to Eobard, of course. He’d always had a very active mind, and stopping thinking long enough to get off to sleep was a bit of a challenge. But he’d gotten a handle on it eventually, relying on a strict routine in the evenings that helped him slow down and eventually switch off. Of course, one’s routine tended to be disrupted rather considerably by sudden long term imprisonment.
It hadn’t been too much of a problem before now. The final fight with Barry and the loss of his powers had taken a lot out of him, leaving Eobard much more tired than usual. But nearly two weeks had passed and that initial exhaustion had been replaced by an overwhelming restlessness. Put simply, he was bored. There was so little for him to do in his cell, and running at any speed (his usual cure for restlessness) was off the table for the foreseeable future. He’d briefly considered asking if he could be allowed to run laps of the accelerator ring, but his access to technology was being limited as much as possible. Giving him access to an entire particle accelerator would be breaking that rule in a big way.
No, running wasn’t an option that was available to him. And so he had very few options for burning off his excess energy, and pacing around such a small space could only do so much. But being unable to tire himself out physically was only part of the problem. What Eobard really needed was a way to distract himself from his thoughts. They were not particularly fun thoughts to be having.
Cisco and Caitlin’s visits had been both everything he had hoped for and everything he had feared. On the one hand, at least he now knew that they were both willing to give him a chance, both open to the prospect of rebuilding their friendships now that they knew his true identity. But on the other hand, it was clear that doing so would require a lot of emotional labour on Eobard’s part. If he wanted to regain their friendship, he would have to make amends for the hurt he had caused not just to Cisco and Caitlin themselves, but to other people as well. Make amends, and show remorse.
Genuine remorse had always been complicated for Eobard. Did he regret some of his past actions? Of course. There were certain deaths that had been unnecessary, certain events that had come to pass as a result of his actions that he had never intended, and he regretted those, sometimes deeply. What had happened to Ronnie, for instance, had genuinely upset him because he had never intended for Caitlin to suffer because of his plans. But there was a difference between regretting the consequences of one’s actions, and regretting the actions themselves.
It all came down to his ability to rationalise his actions, to convince himself, logically, that the course of action he was taking was the correct one. Regardless of the consequences, he genuinely believed that every action he had taken since becoming stranded in the 21 st century had been the right one. Or did he?
Eobard sighed, rubbing his face with his hands and then letting them fall into his lap. He closed his eyes and leant his head back against the wall. The seeds of his current thoughts had been planted a long time ago, much longer than he cared to admit, and had only been encouraged by his assorted recent visitors. And now he was second-guessing himself. Thinking back to the decisions he had made, the actions he had taken and wondering... Wondering if there might have been better options.
It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. The idea that he had done what he had to do, no more and no less, had been such a consistent thread in Eobard’s thoughts for so long that he had become dependent on that reassurance when things became emotionally complicated. Yes, he might have started to feel bad about certain things (unbidden, a list of 17 names ran through his mind), but his actions had been necessary. The only course of action available to him. The right thing to do.
He couldn’t fall back on that rationalisation anymore. Every time he thought back to certain actions he had taken, there was a small voice, a niggling thought, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, there might have been an alternative. That that person needn’t have died. That that lie hadn’t been necessary. That there might have been a way to achieve his goals without hurting the people he had become close to.
Eobard made a sound that was half sigh, half snarl, and bumped the back of his head against the wall a few times. In the end, whether he genuinely regretted his actions or not all came down to the messy subject of empathy. The ability to understand and to share the feelings of others. And Eobard had always known that he experienced empathy in an atypical way- it was part and parcel of being autistic, after all. He’d gotten used to the fact that sometimes he would be deeply affected by what happened to another person, and sometimes he’d feel nothing, seemingly at random. It didn’t make the whole situation any less difficult to navigate, but at least he knew that was normal for him, something that was hardwired. Something he couldn’t change, and shouldn’t feel bad about. Different was not inherently wrong.
In fact, Eobard had often been grateful for his own low empathy. It meant he didn’t get caught up in the emotions of people around him, didn’t get his judgement clouded and his objectivity impaired, and that came in handy in high-stress situations. Someone needed to keep a cool head, to focus on finding a solution, and he was happy to play that role.
But it also meant that other people’s feelings were low on his list of priorities when making decisions. Each time he had been faced with a difficult situation, his first and foremost concern had been resolving it as efficiently and tidily as possible. Someone uncovered his sabotage of the particle accelerator? Fire them and ensure that no one would ever believe their claims. A dangerous metahuman was loose in the facility? Release another meta and pit them against each other to buy time until a better solution presented itself. It was simple arithmetic, straightforward logic. Every problem has a solution, and when time is of the essence emotions are messy and unnecessary and best left out of decision making. The fact that the solution caused someone distress was secondary to the fact that the solution had solved the problem.
Or it had been, until now. Eobard didn’t know whether it was spending so much time in the company of highly empathetic people like Barry and Cisco, or some residual fingerprints of Harrison Wells, or something else entirely, but it was like a switch had been thrown in his mind. Well, that was perhaps the wrong metaphor. Flicking that particular switch led to situations like the one with Grodd, where even the smallest amount of suffering the gorilla endured had affected Eobard deeply, to the point where he could not in good conscience allow the experiments to continue. No, this wasn’t hyperempathy. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a dial had been turned, clicking up a few notches until Eobard found it harder to rationalise actions that had led to other people being hurt.
And, if he was being honest, this wasn’t all that recent a development. For the better part of six months, now, Eobard had found himself considering nonlethal solutions. His usual approach had won out, more often than not, but the fact that he’d even stopped to think of alternatives? Well, it seemed that acting as a mentor to a superhero who was incapable of not caring deeply had rubbed off on him somewhat. It was more than a little disconcerting.
Because Eobard had always been more than capable of rationalising murder. And that was down to a concept that had always seemed self-evident to him: the idea that every life was of equal value. Yes, a particular person might be a stranger to you, but they had family and friends of their own who would miss them if they were gone just as much as you would miss someone close to you. And if every single person matters as much as the next, well then. If you can rationalise killing one person, what makes the next one any different? Even if that person was someone who had become important to you, personally. To Eobard’s mind, it was almost selfish to spare the life of someone close to you if you would kill a stranger who posed a similar threat to your plans.
But things had become more complicated recently. The simple logic of ‘if a person gets in my way, killing them is the quickest and most efficient solution’ had started to break down in the face of the deep and complicated grey areas inherent in his relationships with the people he had met in the 21 st century. The simple truth of the matter was that Eobard had never had people he had considered friends in the way that he thought of Cisco and Caitlin, and even Barry. He’d grown to care about them, perhaps more than he had ever cared about anyone else in a life largely devoid of interpersonal connections.
Which meant that his low empathy was now much more of a hindrance than a help. He cared about them, that was undeniable, but actually understanding, empathising with their emotions? That was difficult. Try as he might, he couldn’t put himself in Barry or Cisco or Caitlin’s shoes. All he could work out was how he would react in their situation, how he would feel in their position, and that was no use whatsoever. He’d tried and failed to understand how they would react to a betrayal once before, when he had confessed that Hartley had warned him about the particle accelerator. He’d assumed they would react like Hartley, be angry, want to hurt him in return, but that had been very far from the truth. And it had taken Barry to point that out to him, to set him on the right path to re-earn their trust.
It was fortunate that he once again had someone else’s suggestions to fall back on. Caitlin had told him in no uncertain terms that the way to rebuild was to make amends, to prove to the others that he understood his actions had been wrong and that he was willing to do something to make up for that. But would he ever genuinely regret the things he had done? His means could have been more merciful, yes, but the ends he had been aiming for? Whether that was regaining control over his own destiny or simply returning home, Eobard felt he had been entirely justified. He had as much right as any other person to try and fulfil his own desires, and refused to be demonised for that.
But did Caitlin and Cisco really expect him to apologise for that? Surely they knew that asking him to accept that his goals of the last more than twenty years were inherently wrong was too much to ask. It was much more reasonable to assume that it was his methods they wanted him to make amends for. The lives he had taken, the lives he had changed, the lives he had ruined… Caitlin and Cisco cared, and cared deeply, even for strangers. The idea that Eobard did not, that he formed emotional connections only to people he was close to and was largely incapable of empathising with strangers, that was what they were having trouble accepting. But there had to be some way of meeting them in the middle, of combining their approaches, of coming to a compromise. Did it matter that Eobard would never truly regret his actions if he still made some effort to make up for them? If he let the regret he felt for the unintended consequences guide his decisions going forward, would that be enough?
Because Eobard was still not sure if he truly regretted the majority of the actions he had taken. Yes, he might be second guessing his methods, but when it came down to it he had made the decisions that he felt were right in the moment. Hindsight was 20:20, as the expression went. It was easy to second-guess oneself after the fact, forgetting that the initial decision had been made under time pressure and without any knowledge of the outcome that followed. Were he to be placed in the same situation again, Eobard wasn’t sure if he’d do anything differently. Except for the attempt on Barry’s life which had landed him in this mess in the first place, that was, but Eobard tried very hard not to think about that particular decision because it still made him deeply angry with himself.
He should have known something like that would have happened. He’d spent his entire life studying the Speed Force, for crying out loud. He should have realised that an action such as that would have consequences. But no. He wasn’t going to dwell on something he couldn’t change. Trying to kill Barry, killing Nora, framing Henry... It had been a series of decisions he had made while in a very emotional state. He’d been angry, so angry that killing Nora had simply been lashing out, trying to find some way to hurt Barry even if the man himself was now beyond his reach. Yes, part of him had known that a tragedy like that was just as likely to prevent Barry from becoming the Flash, but at the time that had been far from his first thought. But then his mind had caught up with his emotions, and he’d picked up the knife rather than using his hand, ensuring that Henry Allen would be blamed for the death and Barry’s life would be disrupted even further.
Henry Allen... Eobard suddenly sat up, letting his knees straighten until his legs were flat on the floor. Now there was an avenue he hadn’t considered.
Eobard’s mind was racing now, spinning into high gear as it always did when a new piece of information became available. He wanted to make amends, to do something that would be seen as making up for the hurt he had caused, in the hope that he could repair his relationships with the team. But Barry was still the ultimate unknown variable. Cisco and Caitlin were open to rebuilding, yes, but if Barry wasn’t that would make things very complicated. So his future now hinged on winning back Barry’s favour. And what better way to do so than to give him back one of his parents?
Eobard was actually surprised that he hadn’t thought of it before now. A few months ago, after the incident with the Trickster, he had actually met Henry for the first time and been surprised by the twinge of guilt he felt about framing him, robbing him of his career as a doctor and his life with his son. And Eobard hated feeling guilty.
So he’d done something about it. He’d recorded a video for Barry, confessing to Nora’s murder using Harrison Wells’s name. (He might have felt guilty about that as well, had he not shed any guilt about tarnishing the dead man’s reputation a long time ago.) And then, working on the very probable assumption that ‘Harrison Wells’ would be declared dead upon Eobard’s return to his future, Eobard had incorporated that message into Harrison’s will, ensuring that Barry would only come across it in the event of his ‘death’. The message was one of various fallbacks and fail-safes that Eobard had set up, a system that had become irrelevant once he became stranded in this time, hence why he’d largely forgotten about it until now.
But that message was now the base upon which Eobard could build a course of action. The message itself was out of date, of course, as it assumed Eobard himself was no longer in this time period, but the general idea of confessing to Henry’s murder was sound. After all, a confession had worked the last time he had lost the team’s trust. Why not this time?
The best thing was that this plan would work regardless of how Barry currently felt about Eobard. Even if Barry hated him- which, to be honest, was extremely likely- getting his father back was undeniably a good thing. Suddenly, Eobard had the power to influence their relationship again. It was a relief. And the fact that this would make Barry happy and improve Eobard’s standing with the team all in one fell swoop? Well, that was a win all around.
Except, it wouldn’t be a win for Eobard if his confession landed him in Iron Heights. No, that was far from a desirable outcome. He’d resigned himself to incarceration, yes, but an actual prison was far different from remaining in STAR Labs, still in the midst of everything that was going on. So some finesse was required here, some clever manoeuvring. He needed a plan, to work out what he wanted and what he had to negotiate, and then to run enough scenarios in his mind that he could be reasonably certain he’d predicted the reactions he would get.
Eobard clambered to his feet, pacing up and down the small cell and gesturing with his hands as he started to collect his thoughts. He definitely wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight now, but this was good. This was progress. Best of all, it was progress that could be made without too much further analysis of his own emotions and morality. Yes, that was something he was going to have to face eventually, but for the time being he could put such concerns to one side and focus on more practical matters. For the first time since he had been returned unexpectedly to this cell, Eobard felt he had control over his own situation again. Under his own steam, on his own terms, he finally had a way to move forward.