SNOWBARRY: Sometimes Runs, Sometimes Can't

Chapter 20 - I Have What I Came For

Joe's body hit the floor with a sickening thud. Eobard hadn't hesitated, just a brutal strike, and Joe was out cold, dragged into a smaller holding cell like a trophy.

Cisco fared worse. He'd tried to fight, voice cracking, but Eobard's hand had closed around his throat, and then he'd knocked him unconscious. 

A siphon draining Flash's power hummed to life, red light crawling across the walls of Barry's prison. He slammed his fists against the barrier, but the vibrations swallowed his strength, bouncing the momentum back through his bones until his arms felt heavy and useless.

Wells was a speedster just like Barry. All this time...he'd been...

NO. Not Wells, Eobard Thawne. He'd enlightened Barry moments ago about his origin, his plan, and his vendetta.

He was the man in yellow. The man who'd killed his mother...The same man he'd trusted for the past two years. 

Every second, the Speed Force bled out of Barry Allen, tugged from his veins like threads unraveling. His breath grew shallow, and his knees began to buckle. He wasn't healing. He wasn't fast. He wasn't anything.

Barry blinked, his heart stuttering. Chest tightening in realisation. Like pieces of a puzzle coming together.

Eobard stepped closer, hand flat against the wall he'd built, his eyes gleaming with cruel satisfaction, noticing the expression on Barry's face changing. Catching on.

"Future you calls me The Reverse-Flash, and you've been chasing a ghost since you were a child." He smirked as he circled around. "The man who murdered your mother. The mystery that defined you. Bet you never thought..." He leaned forward, whispering the words like a secret too precious to share. "...what if it was me all along?"

Barry's chest seized. 

Eobard's smile widened. "We go way back. You and I, or should I say we, will? " he turned to Cisco to find his still unconscious body on the floor, certain he would have appreciated the timeline irony. 

 "I killed Nora Allen. I ripped through time itself to find her. To take her from you. To shatter you. Because only in your suffering could I forge what I needed: You. Your speed. All of it... " he said obsessively.

Barry's palms slid down the barrier glass, his strength bleeding out faster and faster. His breath hitched, breaking in sharp gasps.

Barry's voice was hoarse as he screamed. "Why..?"

Eobard Thawne moved. Calm. Precise. Smiling.

"You'll find out soon enough. But now, do you feel that emptiness?" he asked Barry softly. "That gnawing hollow space where your speed once sang? That is me. That is victory. I want you to remember this feeling, Flash."

"You'll never win", Barry let out with desperation.

 Eobard chuckled darkly. "Barry, you poor boy. I already did. Long before this lab, long before you ever became the Flash. After all, your entire life has been mine to shape."

Eobard tilted his head, almost tender. "It was always me, Barry. Do you realise now? You are not a hero. You are simply my creation."

Something inside Barry cracked. The anger, the grief, the fragile hope, all collapsed under the weight of those words. His chest hollowed. His eyes dimmed.

He sank to his knees, forehead pressing against the barrier. Red lightning flickered weakly through his veins before sputtering out.

Numb.

Broken.

Eobard's grin stretched wider, savouring the silence. "Yes. That's the look I wanted. The look of a boy who finally understands he'd lost everything."

Colour drained from Barry's face. His fire was dimming slowly. With Cisco out, Joe helpless. Caitlin gone. His whole life, a lie. Beyond repair.

He knelt in the glow of the siphon draining his power, silent. No words. No denial. Just silence.

And that silence was darker than any scream.

The man who had carried hope for an entire city was fading. He was being buried under the truth of his mother's murder. The betrayal of the person he once trusted. 

Heartache. 

Pain. 

Regret.

Somewhere in The Flash's mind a door cracked open, allowing darkness wrap around his self. And so that ....was all Barry Allen could see.

Eobard's laughter echoed in the distance, venomous. "And so it ends. The Flash, nothing more than a broken boy in a red suit."

***

The moment of Thawne's triumph was replaced with the groan of reinforced steel doors bursting inward. 

Arrows sliced through the air, sparking against the siphon's conduits. A concussive charge rolled across the floor, shorting half the overhead lights.

Oliver Queen strode in, bow drawn, eyes sharp. Felicity scrambled behind him, tablet in hand, already working to override the locks. And between them, cold mist spilled, announcing the arrival of someone neither Oliver nor Felicity fully trusted.

Killer Frost.

Her eyes burned blue as she surveyed the premises, lips curling. "So this is where the fun's been hiding."

"Caitlin," Felicity hissed at Frost, but she didn't even glance her way.

Eobard's smile only widened. "Ah. How fitting. I must say. I'm not surprised."

Before Oliver could fire, Frost raised a hand, a jet of ice exploding across the floor and seizing the siphon's outer cables. Sparks flared, a low whine stuttering from the wall.

Barry stirred, sluggish. As he lifted his head and he finally saw her, Caitlin. 

Caitlin, but not quite. 

The blue-eyed stranger didn't look back at him. She focused on Thawne. Her face cruel but calm.

Oliver let loose an arrow tipped with an EMP. It struck the console, screens sparking, but the siphon kept humming, ravenous. Felicity cursed under her breath. "Barry, just hold on..."

Barry tried to stand, but his strength betrayed him. His voice a rasp. "Don't... waste your time.."

"No," Felicity snapped, her voice cracking as her fingers flew across the tablet. "We're not losing you, too."

Eobard laughed, his body vibrating faintly with new energy. Red lightning crackled along his form, stronger than before. He flexed his hands, savouring the power. "You're too late anyway. I have what I came for."

He blurred forward, slamming Oliver into the wall with inhuman force. Felicity screamed as her tablet skittered across the floor. Too late to hack this thing. 

Frost turned, ice blossoming in her palm, but Eobard was already gone, nothing left but the echo of his laughter.

Barry staggered as the siphon finally powered down, shattering the walls, releasing him. He collapsed, his body trembling with exhaustion.  

He barely managed to say "Cisco. He took..Ci-sco."

Frost's gaze scanned the scorch mark where Eobard had disappeared, her voice like a shard of glass. 

"Gone," she said as her posture tightened. 

Barry looked up at the broken device, the siphon. His expression hollow. "My speed, it's gone, too."

The words hung heavier than the silence that followed, heavier than the cold clinging to the walls.

And the for the first time, The Flash looked less like a hero... and more like a ghost.