[ harry's a stickler for timeline rules. sometimes barry hates him for it, and sometimes he's envious. he wishes he had that type of discipline, letting his curiousity disperse in his hands instead of blossom and grow into this incredibly powerful thing. ]

[ sometimes, though, he thinks that's harrison's biggest downfall. being a stickler to the rules, letting his paranoia run free — barry can see he wants to say something, that there's a slight twitch to his expression and even the way he carries himself, but he doesn't ask. if wells wants something, he'll ask; all barry can do is try and make him feel safe enough to avoid causing a great ripple in time. ]

Fourth.

[ with his hands in front of him, barry circles one wrist with his long fingers. all long limbs and energy he can't quite contain, this is possibly the longest he's stood still without shifting on his feet or fiddling with his hands. but he begins to fidget now; without the loathing inside of him to focus on, barry's a ball of nervous energy and grief that simply wants itself to be known. ]

Iris, Caitlin, and I are all on the fourth floor. We're all kind of next to each other. [ with a lift of his shoulder, his lips quirk upward. and his voice is a hell of a lot lighter than it'd been moments ago when discussing thawne. ] You missed a great dark matter explosion the other day. My room's still cleaning itself up.

I didn't!

[ it's ironic harrison wells is saying this. harrison wells, the man responsible on any earth for creating the flash and the metas. it's also ironic given harrison had been the one to push him hard on consenting to being ripped apart by his allegedly self-contained particle accelerator explosion. ]

[ barry wants to laugh, and sort of does. but instead of revealing that to harrison, he leaves it be. he'd press his hands to his ears and even call him a liar and an idiot for believing he'd do something as irresponsible as that. ]

There's other scientists from different worlds here. They did something that released this energy called the aether onto a few of the floors. It turned most of the things it came into contact with into dark matter.

[ and barry had been afraid of it. from how it would affect him and possibly intertwine with the speed force to how it may affect iris and caitlin and all the other poor suckers on the fourth floor. without harrison here to possibly soothe his own worries, compounding what he'd assume of the aether with what he knew of the speed force, barry had relied on iris to help him out. and that hadn't been so bad at all. ]

Probably a good idea.

[ "probably", he says, when he means "it's the only good idea we've had so far." even though barry thinks him chasing after some mystical mad hatter no one has confirmed even exists in this world is a good idea, he's been scoping the place out and been hitting too many dead walls. ]

We're all rooming on the fourth floor. [ after a moment, as though harrison needs this reminder: ] Iris, Caitlin, and I.

[ he lets that sit for a moment, before the weight of thawne's location presses down upon him heavily. as much as he wants to ignore he's around, as much as he wants to pretend he could be anywhere else — harrison needs to be prepared. ]

[ barry looks pained, more teenager-annoyed than anything else, with his eyes closing and his teeth gritting before his expression smooths out. ]

And Thawne.

[ barry squirms. ]

[ lifting his hand up to scratch the back of his neck, it's almost like he wants to rip the discomfort out of himself. it's the one thing he's wanted to ignore since he's had to acknowledge their stay in wonderland will be a lot longer than any of them intended. he can run as fast as he can, but he can break nothing. there's a wall he hits out on the water, and he ends up skimming and skating and almost drowning in the pool beneath the mansion within a blink of an eye. ]

[ there's a wall he's hit with eobard thawne. he can't kill him and end this once and for all. if not for wonderland's own death policy, it's his, the one that dictates the flash isn't a killer, that stops him. ]

Next to me.

[ how can he? thawne's like a snake, one that mimics anything barry does. he's his mirror, his opposite, but where barry goes, he follows. thawne prides himself on being the reverse of everything that he is, but he doesn't seem intent to run in the opposite direction to where barry's heading. ]

[ he closes his eyes, as if in exasperation at such a question, but it's mostly out of his own sense of helplessness. regardless of what he does, it won't fix things. ]

I thought about it.

[ he deserves some credit for that, doesn't he? ]

But isn't it better I stay near him, too?

[ it's what barry convinces himself of: it's better to keep thawne close than it is to throw distance between them. last time he threw him into a cell, cisco suffered the consequences. it may not be as intricately tied to the timeline as that very moment, but barry knows keeping himself away from thawne will only lead them down a very dangerous and unsatisfying road. ]

[ he lets out a breath, sounding tired. ] He threatened to hurt someone when he first got here.

[ isn't that all harrison needs to understand where barry's coming from? stuck between a rock and a hard place, he feels the only thing he can do is do just that — play into his hands, but hopefully on his own terms. ]

[ he shrugs his shoulders in defeat. ] It's all I could do at the time. It's all I can do.

[ barry sighs. rubbing his face, he feels the exhaustion sit under his eyes and on his shoulders. it's difficult trying to manage thawne. harrison had been the one to guide him through his own anger, talk his irrational desire to lash out instead of think down. if there's anyone he trusts to help him with this, it's harrison wells. ]

[ he has a sort of detachment barry envies. though it's technically his doppelgänger's identity thawne had stolen and compromised the integrity of, there's still some distance between them. and barry wants that distance so much it turns him into an irrational mess. ]

Yeah. [ all he can do is agree. letting his hand slide off his face, barry inhales deeply, and finds it only calms him somewhat. ]

I don't know how we're going to do that. But I'm glad you're here.

[ barry hears it loud and clear, but he makes no comment on it. it's something he has in common with harrison — he doesn't take compliments well, always brushing them under the rug, or trying to run away from them. ]

[ instead of trying to make harrison face it — he is glad he's here — he thinks that's enough. admitting it is enough, all things considered. ]

[ that sombre mood lifts with barry's animated exclamation of: ] These situations find me! The only situation I want to end up in is one that involves tea-time and the Mad Hatter. I literally asked for it when I got here!

[ barry's going to have tea-time with the mad hatter and take a selfie. with that selfie, he may even apply a snapchat filter to it, and then he's going to send it to wells. prepare to eat your words, wells. it's going to happen. ]

[ sometime. just not today. ]

[ barry rolls his neck, looking at wells slightly pathetically. he's so aggravatingly literal and unfunny about everything that barry feels normal in this very moment. harrison wells is like that brick wall you tell your jokes to, and when you think you've got a great set of them on your hands for your stand-up comedy show, he completely and utterly breaks your confidence. ]

Have you been here long to explore the mansion? It's pretty cool.

[ barry takes that as the unenthusiastic invitation it is. he perks right up. ]

You need to see the pool. It's pretty big — and it's inside the mansion. [ barry moves a step, and swings a little to the side, an indication for wells to follow — if he knows his body language. after all, barry may simply be reading into wells' own answer as an "if you jump i jump jack" when he could simply be answering for the sake of being polite. ]

[ but barry doesn't care. he keeps talking — and fast, too. if he has any other reason for it, he won't admit it's to make wells roll his eyes. it's not because barry wants to relax and forget the conversation they've had for as long as he can, even though it's not feasible they can simply forget the subject of thawne. ]

And the checkered hills. Do you have chess on Earth-2? What about human-sized chess? We could play if we had enough players. But I don't know if that's a thing in Wonderland so much as tea-time is. You seriously need to see the tea-rooms. They've got the best muffins I've ever had ... except for Jitters. But they had this one week where their muffins were not really good ...

[ he pulls a face. we don't speak of that week. ]