Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It wasn't Barry's fault he didn't notice for a few hours. Really!

He'd been understandably disoriented, and pleased to just be alive, and he'd let a few things slide while he tried to get himself together after somehow successfully (or so he'd thought) dealing with a world-ending catastrophe. That was all.

Admittedly when he'd realized the year he'd also started dismissing a lot of things as him being unable to remember that time of his life clearly. Those first years as the Flash had been so busy, so full of adjustment to the new metahuman norm. It was perfectly natural that he'd be more preoccupied with avoiding Eobard Thawne still masquerading as Harrison Wells – and hadn't that been a trip and a half, the frantically concerned voice of Dr. Wells joining Cisco and Caitlin in demanding to know if he was all right.

Of course, if Barry was right about being in a different universe, embarrassing as it was not to notice for so long, Dr. Wells might actually be the real Harrison Wells and Barry had run off pretending he wanted to lick his wounds alone over nothing.

Barry was still going to argue that whether Harrison Wells was Eobard Thawne or not his presence at all was the more pressing problem and it was totally understandable that it had overshadowed a lot of things for him. Of course he would think it was just a matter of time travel he had to pay attention to rather than noticing things like...

"You good, Baby Face?" Bellows said, frowning as Barry nearly tripped over his feet trying to hurry to his lab without actually rushing. "You smell a little weird."

Discreetly Barry tried to sniff himself even though speedsters didn't sweat, not from just running – it simply wasn't efficient for them. He used to, when he was very new to his powers, and Doctor Wells had quietly worried over his biological data late one night when he knew Barry would run in to check on him and see and pointed out the danger in losing so much fluid so often for no longer viable reasons, and hypothesized that it was another subconscious mental block of Barry's – that he expected to sweat from running like an ordinary person so he did. Nowhere near as much as he 'should' if it was actually something his body needed to do but far more than was good for him.

Cisco had given him a special antiperspirant soon after and Barry pretended he didn't know which awkward talk was more responsible for his changed hygiene. He used it religiously anyway because it smelled nice. It had been pretty much the second sign that he was back in time, actually, the stash of sticks and aerosols organized as seriously as medication. They smelled a little different, a little weirdly smothering, like they were for more than just sweat, but like a lot of other things Barry chalked that up to being something he misremembered. Cisco and Caitlin had refined the formula over the years, that was all.

Bellows had some nerve saying Barry smelled weird when he'd clearly overdone the cologne himself like that could hope to hide the fact he was obviously smoking again.

"You forget your scent-patches? Don't forget to put 'em on before you get back to work, Cap'll be furious if we have to throw out any cases because of potential contamination."

"Uh. Sure," Barry said.

"And I'm not being mean or anything, kid, but..." Bellows grimaced, looking away as if desperate to find someone else – probably Joe – to step in. "I know it's not your fault, the lightning messed you up—"

Barry froze. Did he know?

"—but the ozone's just a little much, okay?"

"Okay," Barry said faintly. What did that even mean?

"The station's used to it, yeah? But you're not gonna get an alpha with a scent like that. If you want one! Or a beta, or hell, even another O, nobody cares, it's the twenty-first century, right?"

"Right," Barry said, baffled. Bellows had always been a little patronizing to Barry, one of those officers who thought Barry was just a little too obsessed with his weird cases without caring for his reasons, but that sounded more like the kind of 'teasing' he'd give a female recruit before he got another warning from Captain Singh and complained that he was just trying to be nice and helpful, it was tough out there for ladies who wanted to be cops, you know? "Excuse me--"

"Maybe ask your friends at S.T.A.R Labs if they can at least do something for that? You know we all just want you to be happy, right, kid?" Bellows said. "Yeah you're a good CSI, but that ain't all there is to life, you know?"

"I know," Barry said tightly, slipping past him and up the stairs to his lab, which looked just like his except for all the ways it didn't, and it was no use pretending otherwise. There was a box by the door filled with wrapped sterile patches, and he stared at them blankly without actually seeing them. He wasn't in the past. It wasn't even a past, not one of his. He'd put it off as long as he could but it was time to accept that he'd messed up more than he knew, that he was in an entirely different universe and nothing he could do would change that when he didn't know how he'd even got there.

He could try and run anyway, of course, even if his whole body still ached strangely, bone-deep in a way he was pretty sure he hadn't felt since he'd become a speedster – or maybe never? He found it difficult to remember what it had been like before, and usually healed too fast to really be reminded. Even if it was agony in the moment, the moment was soon gone. Pain wouldn't stop him and was no reason not to try... but if he started just running without an idea of when he was even aiming for, never mind what universe, who knew what could happen.

It could be an even bigger disaster than the one he'd escaped and all he could remember of that now was fragments. He wasn't even sure they were all his – pain, the Speed Force twisting and screaming, an outraged rattling hum he could feel in his bones that he associated with Thawne the moment before he struck, his own lightning feeling like it was trying to tear him apart.

It wasn't worth the risk, he'd learned that much over the years. It really, really wasn't, even if that meant...

"Oh man," he told the empty lab with a despairing kind of incredulity. "I really am just gonna run to him, aren't I."

It wasn't a question and didn't need an answer, but he somehow felt like he was being judged anyway. Hell with that, he decided, squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath. He wanted answers about things connected to his abilities, there had always been really only one place for him to go, hadn't there? It had practically been trained into him –

Oh. Of course. Thawne absolutely would.

He skidded to a stop in the cortex of S.T.A.R. Labs, taking what felt like a long minute just to stare. Dr. Wells sat perfectly still, hand hovering over the controls of his wheelchair, the corner of his mouth just beginning to twitch up into a sardonic smile. Barry shuddered in place, torn between turning right around and running back out, trying to deal with the weirdness outside himself and just –

"I know you can see and hear me right now," he blurted. Cisco's mouth was open, his hand just unfolding at his side, arm about to move in one of his expressive gestures. Caitlin's eyes were caught mid-blink, her annoyed expression turned absurd –

And he was certain he'd just seen Dr. Wells' eyes open as he ran in, the tail-end of a blink that should have been as slow as Caitlin's and was instead just as fast as if Barry was trying to register a reflex blink at what anyone else would consider 'normal' speed.

Cisco's hand started to rise, the movement as slow as a mountain's growth, Caitlin's eyes continued to close with the certainty of the sun going down, and Dr. Wells stayed perfectly frozen, staring straight through Barry like anyone and everyone else when he was moving so fast. How stupid would he feel if the Dr. Wells of this timeline – this universe it seemed safe to say – wasn't even –

"Eobard Thawne," Barry said and the man's eyes opened wide and narrowed just as fast, the approaching smile frozen on his face twisting into something Barry didn't recognize.

"Barry," he said, his voice odd and wary and Barry suddenly realized that he thought Barry had gained the upper hand, had the faintest clue what he was doing, and he had to laugh.

"Don'truneedttalk," he said quickly before Thawne could make up his mind if he should, the words shapeless and merging even in his own ears. "Thnkimwrngunivers? Timeline?"

"One moment," Thawne said and Barry blinked and let the world catch them up.

"-rous – whoa, dude," Cisco said, his excited gesture ruined by the instinctive recoil that overtook him at Barry appearing even more out of nowhere than usual.

"Mr. Allen," Dr. Wells acknowledged, eyes glittering, and Barry had to swallow hard, an uncertain knot of emotions he had no idea how to unravel rising up to choke him. "So good to see you again."

Thawne, Barry reminded himself, trying to shove back the image of long gone happier times, Caitlin and Cisco and Dr. Wells in the cortex, on the comms in his ear, ready to help him. He had to shake off the urge to just sink back into the easy camaraderie, the blissful ignorance –

"Are you really okay?" Caitlin said uncertainly. "Barry? You don't smell quite right, and you forgot the scent mask Cisco made for you –"

Barry felt the wistfulness shatter, forcibly reminded that it might have looked like he'd only gone back in time but there was far more trouble going on that.

"Fine," he managed. Dr. Wells' eyes weren't the only ones to narrow at the obvious lie but Barry couldn't bring himself to look away, paranoid that if he took his eyes off him for a second... "Fine," he repeated, a little steadier, assuring himself that it would be. The more convinced he was that he was telling the truth, the more everybody else relaxed, and holy mother of God, could people in this universe smell lies?

...Did he even have a secret identity here? Not that he had much of one on his own earth, to be honest.

He shook his head for a moment. Not important, he wasn't going to be stuck here for long anyway. (Right? Right.)

"A word, Mr. Allen?" Dr. Wells said, and Barry found himself moving instinctively to follow him because everything was right about doing so: Cisco sing-songing 'someone's in trouble~', Caitlin making shooing motions with her hands – he wondered if he should compliment her on her perfume given it had to be slightly overdone to be wafted towards him by the motion – and his own feet falling naturally into the stride he used to take to keep pace with the wheelchair.

"I don't know why you bother calling me that," Barry muttered as he started forward into the wheelchair's wake. "Just call me Barry. You know you want to."

Thawne loved saying his name, loved to drag the syllables out, seemed to savor the sound as he let them fall from his lips like a bomb, a revelation: Barry. Allen. He'd taken such joy in shaping each part like a dagger Barry was a little startled to remember there had never been a clue how important knowing it was to him until the mask had finally dropped with Hannibal Bates' death.

There was a stifled noise from either Cisco or Caitlin – Barry's money was on Cisco – and Dr. Wells gave him another of those sharp little looks Barry had always wondered at the intensity of.

"That would hardly be appropriate," Dr. Wells said smoothly and Barry snorted.

"'Appropriate'," he mimicked, then remembered they were still within hearing distance of Caitlin and Cisco and added, "I'm not your subordinate."

"That wasn't what I was referring to," Dr. Wells said, and there was a new quality to the way he glanced at Barry then, a puzzled kind of inquiry, as if Barry was missing something obvious. Barry kept his mouth firmly shut in case he was.

He'd forgotten how quiet the wheelchair could be. The silence as they walked – and rolled, Dr. Wells would joke – was uncomfortable, but that discomfort was less than a fraction of what Barry suspected he should have been feeling. He'd walked like this beside Dr. Wells too often, silence or no silence, terrible world-changing revelations or no.

They stopped at the office Dr. Wells had rarely left before the particle accelerator exploded and rarely saw after. It smelled faintly like him, something Barry had never really noticed before – not in a bad way, it was just obviously Dr. Wells' space even if he no longer used it much. Barry shot him a puzzled look, having almost expected the Time Vault, and then remembered that Cisco and Caitlin were no longer in the loop and – (probably) safe in their ignorance – they might need to find 'Dr. Wells' for some reason. It would better for all involved if nobody disappeared from the map.

"Are there cameras in here?" Barry asked, meaning the hidden ones Thawne was so fond of, then remembered he hadn't needed hidden ones in the labs and winced at the idiocy of the question.

"Of course there are," Dr. Wells said, staring at his desk, emptied of all the paperwork that probably hadn't kept him up during the nights before the accelerator went online but had made it look like it. "This was – and remains – a billion dollar facility, Barry. Everywhere is monitored. However –" he didn't blur even to Barry's eyes, but Barry knew he had to have done something because he casually stepped out of the wheelchair, drawing himself up to his full height. "You don't have to worry about Cisco or Caitlin accessing the footage, even if they weren't expecting us to have our little chat in the treadmill room."

Barry sucked in a breath and forced himself very consciously not to react further. "Right," he said tightly and watched Thawne tilt his head, staring at him as if he could take him apart with his eyes.

"Well?" Thawne said at last. "Go on, Barry. You need help?"

"Right," Barry said again. "Yes. I – uh – you know I'm not your – um – your timeline's Barry, right?"

"My timeline's Barry," Thawne echoed, and smiled that thin, grimly amused smile that had been difficult to like for everyone who wasn't Barry, Cisco or Caitlin, apparently. "You think too linearly. You are not and will never be the Barry of 'my' timeline."

Barry shook his head. "I know you know what I meant," he said and preferred to think of his tone as 'irritated' rather than 'plaintive'. From the way Thawne smiled he guessed he was wrong. "I'm not the Barry of this timeline, the timeline that resulted from you –" he stopped and closed his eyes.

"Killing your mother," Thawne said, blunt and matter of fact, and Barry jerked his head up and stared at him, sure the floor had lurched under his feet for a second.

He opened his mouth a couple of times but couldn't get his tongue to work. He stared at the empty chair behind Wells. "Yeah," he croaked at last.

"I suspected baby speedster's first time-travel as the problem," Thawne said lightly. "I had a little speech prepared."

Barry felt his lips twitch into a reluctant smile despite himself and caught Thawne taking note of it, an even briefer grin, only noticeable to another speedster, crossing his face before he smoothly continued: "But you're certain –"

"I've time-traveled before," Barry said indignantly.

"Without attracting time wraiths or altering anything you didn't mean to?"

Barry opened his mouth then paused as he considered his previous experiences and thought better of it. "Technically," he muttered.

"Are you sure?" Dr. Wells said. Barry bristled a little at the condescension he could almost hear, the arrogance the man was famed for but Barry had never had directed at him in any form harsher than mentorship.

"I know things can change when you time travel," Barry said. "But this is – it's pretty obvious this has got to be another earth to mine. I just don't know how I got here or what I did wrong or why I can't just..." he trailed off, frustrated.

Thawne laughed, honest but joyless, and sat back in the wheelchair. "How obvious?"

Barry stared at him helplessly, unsure how to even begin. "Obvious," he said. He thought about the ridiculously strong but weird colognes and perfumes, the interactions between everybody at the station, the nostril-flaring, the remarks about his 'scent', the way one suspect was 'he' and another wasn't, the forms where instead of the M/F option he was expecting he got A and B and Ω Type I/Type II boxes instead.

"Seriously it's – what the hell?" Barry threw up his hands, then the realized that the gesture had more than a little of his own Doctor Wells' occasional moments of theatricality in it and had to suppress a wince.

The Dr. Wells of this strange universe leaned forward in his chair, mouth twitching in a way Barry was familiar with as 'if I were anybody else I wouldn't bother suppressing my laughter here'. He used to like that look. It had made Dr. Wells more... approachable, more human in a way the wheelchair never had. The wheelchair had made him look vulnerable, brought down to earth, Icarus if he had survived his flight, but it hadn't really made him any less distant. For Barry, it had only increased the sense of 'admire, but at a respectable distance' he'd felt around him.

And then of course it had turned out the Dr. Wells Barry had so admired – your nerdy little science crush, Iris used to call it before everything with the particle accelerator – hadn't really been Dr. Wells at all.

Barry grimaced and wondered why the man was bothering now. He knew – they both knew – what was the point any more?

"Because it makes you comfortable," Thawne said and Barry jumped a little. "And less likely to try and punch me in the face in front of company. This may take some time to figure out, Barry."

"Wouldn't want to ruin your nice stolen life," Barry said acidly and the amused twitching at the corner of the man's mouth turned to out and out laughter, the unrestrained sort that he'd never heard from Dr. Wells, although it had apparently been something the real man did easily.

(Like he became a completely different person, Dr. McGee had said. Funny. He bet Thawne had laughed to himself watching that in the time vault.)

"Oh, Barry," Thawne said and the fond amusement in his voice burned.

"Shut up," Barry said. "Don't –" Call me that? What else was he supposed to call him? It was his name! It was just… the way he said it.

(He used to like that too.)

He took a deep breath that didn't really do much to calm him. "I just – I don't know where to start," he said helplessly.

"Mmhm," Wells – Thawne said. It was so hard to look at him in his chair, looking at Barry with such fondness and exasperation and not call him Dr. Wells, not see him as the man who had mentored him, helped and supported... and been the exact opposite of the one who had looked him in the eye and said simply and easily, 'I hate you', as if that was enough reason for – for everything he'd done.

"I don't – this universe, it's crazy, I don't know – I don't understand –"

"What's so hard to understand?"

"Everything!" Barry said, throwing up his hands again. "I can't even fill out basic paperwork, I – what the hell does A/B/O mean? I don't get why 'he' and 'she' are only used sometimes? 'Cause sometimes it's 'he', and then another guy is 'a-he'? Or it's 'she' for someone and than another woman is 'o-she' or… I'm sure I heard something else too but then they said they preferred neutral pronouns?"

"Wait," Thawne said, straightening up. "You don't understand – basic biology? Culture?"

"Yes! No! This isn't right, I don't get it –"

"Barry. May I ask –" Thawne stopped and shook his head a little, looking a little bemused and a lot fascinated at the idea that seemed to have occurred to him. "In your universe, on your world, humanity is... there are no alpha/beta/omega dynamics?"

"No! Unless we're talking outdated bullshit about 'alpha males' I guess, but I don't think we are, so I don't know what you mean? There's – male and female, XX and XY, she, he, his, hers – people like to think it's pretty binary? Most of the time?"

"Binary," Thawne said, staring, looking as if the very idea was a revelation. "Male and female? That's the division of sexes for you?"

"Uh, yeah?" Barry said. "I mean, it's a bit – a lot, actually – more complicated than that, but generally speaking that's what most people tend to think, yeah."

"Barry. There are six basic sexes."

"What."

"If you want to be contentious – and wrong – three sexes and six genders."

"I – no – what?"

"Alpha types one and two, beta types one and two, and omega types one and two," Thawne recited as if imparting basic knowledge, a little rhythm to his words like a teacher in kindergarten. "...Perhaps it would be best to find you a biology textbook?"

"Six," Barry said blankly. "So, like... an alpha male and female? Literally? And there's...” He shook his head at himself and snorted a little at his own idiocy. “Obviously there's physical differences between the sexes, but I mean, there's physical differences between the types too? So a... beta male isn't the same as an alpha male or... whatever?"

"Quite different," Thawne said, with that dry undertone that had often confused Barry, made him half-suspect he was the butt of a joke only Dr. Wells seemed to be in on. (And he had been. So there was that, he guessed.)

"How?" Barry blurted out, then spent a generous half-second asking himself if he was really sure he wanted to know before inevitably concluding that of course he did – it was an entirely different world out there. He had to know. "...I think I need that biology textbook. Or maybe 'my first book of the human body' or something."

"I'll find one with nice simple illustrations," Thawne said and had a brightly colored hardcover book in his hand before Barry could finish deciding to be insulted.

"'Key Issues: The A, B, and O of Understanding Puberty'...?"

"You have to start somewhere," Thawne said. "We can discuss genetics and reproductive systems in greater and more accurate detail once you have the basics." He smiled, looking far too anticipatory for Barry's peace of mind. "I suspect your response is going to be fascinating," he said.

Barry shot him a filthy look before turning the same suspicious glare onto the book. Nothing that bright and geometric could be trusted.

"There are worse," Thawne said. "Would you prefer something even simpler? There could be some crossover into cultural issues. Always helpful. 'Daddy has a new Alphafriend' is apparently very good for your average pre-schooler, given that you can still find a copy a century from now. 'My Step-Omega Is An Alien' too."

Barry stared at him. He took the book cautiously and transferred his stare to it. "This is gonna be weirder than I thought, isn't it."

"Yours is the weird perspective here, Barry."

He flipped through the book, then went back and read it again half a second slower. It still didn't help. He glanced at Thawne and found him staring at him, looking fascinated.

"Okay," Barry said slowly. "Omega definitely not the same thing as beta or alpha, then."

He read the book again.

Thawne hummed as he waited, fingers tapping against the chair's controls. He straightened as Barry dropped the book and vibrated in place for a moment as he tried to work out if he wanted to run immediately for more information or not.

"I have so many questions," Barry said, head swimming with new information that suddenly made it very difficult to keep his gaze on Thawne's face. Like being told not to look at something just made you whip your head round to stare, the knowledge that was now in his head – entirely different subsets of genitalia, oh God, was that going to make his job in forensics difficult, and he had a possible example right in front of him – stop it, brain! "So many."

"Such as?"

"How does sex determination work? Why did a trinary sex determination system develop alongside a binary sex determination system –"

"Because it didn't. You're bringing your own cultural and social context to bear on it. Let me guess – you think something like 'alpha male' or 'omega female' or 'beta female' when you try to divide the sexes?"

"Yes?" Barry offered uncertainly.

"There are some cultures that do so, but generally speaking terms such as male or female are applied to animals of dimorphic appearances. They serve no purpose for humans, obviously."

"Obviously," Barry echoed. He found his eyes drifting downwards and forced them up again because no. There was no new biological science completely out of his sphere of reference strange enough to excuse that.

"What would be the point? You are alpha, beta or omega and of those you may be type one or two."

"One or two?"

"For reference, you, according the medical records I have on file, are a type II omega."

Barry wrestled with the ridiculously strong feeling of disorientation and somehow managed to keep himself perfectly still.

"Miss West is a type I alpha, if you were wondering."

"Not really," Barry said faintly. "Give me a moment. Uh. Why that order? I mean... You know what, I don't know what I mean."

"The oldest hominid fossils on record are... female, I think you'd say? It's always been assumed that they were the first type. Ademina in the Bible is generally portrayed as what you would call an alpha 'female' and their omega 'male', for example. 'First the alpha, then the omega, the Lord created them'." Thawne made a face. "I think you can probably guess the kind of bigotry that one line has managed to produce across history."

"Probably," Barry agreed weakly, then gave up on keeping himself upright and sat on the floor to be a little more grounded literally if not figuratively. "That's... cool. Interesting."

Thawne raised his eyebrows, staring at him patiently. He always did know when Barry was working himself up to ask something.

"Uh. Stupid question maybe but... It's not possible to... overwrite another universe's version of yourself like you can when you time travel, is it?"

Thawne's eyes widened and Barry felt him tapping into the Speed Force, stretching his senses out, seeking -

"You had best hope not," he said. "Or we're in a great deal of trouble."

"Okay," Barry said after a moment, nodding to himself as he watched his nemesis lunge out of the wheelchair, afterimages darting back and forth as he ran across the city seeking confirmation for what he already knew. "Yeah. I think we're in a great deal of trouble."