Chapter Text
Eobard Thawne didn’t have a daemon. He knew he should, but their non-existence had at some point become an unanswered mystery. He couldn’t quite remember the Severance. Maybe his brain wished to spare him the pain. Either way, it was a rare condition: one rare in the past, present, and future.
Harrison Wells had a ermine named Curie, a mischievous, elegant thing whose fur changed with the seasons and whose dark, bright eyes shone with intelligence. When Wells died as he was copied, so did Curie. Except not entirely, in the same way Wells didn’t die entirely. Part of her was now part of Eobard, yes, but the rest?
Eobard had at some point picked up a spirit, Gül: a fellow traveler of unknown origin. They fed off excess energy, magical or related in this universe, even heat loss. They couldn’t easily get power from those with daemons. They had asked if he’d mind a harmless hitchhiker and, after looking up that archaic terminology, he’d allowed it. This spirit became fused with Curie in some ways. Eobard couldn’t tell by how much, precisely, but the influence was there.
Today? He wished for his own daemon for once, some forgotten, ever-changing spirit, just so he didn’t have to watch Curie go insane.
So what if Farooq Gibran had threatened to kill them and had already successfully killed Girder? Eobard wasn’t actually at risk. They both knew Farooq couldn’t kill Eobard.
As he was apologizing for lives lost and offering himself up, he certainly didn’t need Curie to dart from his shoulder and down onto the concrete floor. She landed on her paws, nimble as anything, and then went straight into a weasel war dance. Her back arched, fur bristled, and teeth bared. Farooq’s daemon, a large dark dog that seemed rabid in appearance and behavior, immediately responded.
“Don’t, don’t,” Eobard snapped, trying to get Curie’s attention and obedience.
He had no luck. Chattering turned to a war cry, and she launched herself at the dog, an awful electricity felt even by Eobard as the two touched. It was a dog slowed down by its own bulk but motivated by Farooq’s rage. Behind Eobard, he heard gasps from Team Flash. Allen’s daemon, a free-tailed bat, was free of her safety case and was swooping around in a panic. Meanwhile, Caitlin’s snowy white macaque and Cisco’s tawny kit fox had both stumbled forward, hesitating near the wheelchairs’ wheels.
Barry Allen was frozen as if ice-coated. Eobard could relate. He could barely check for the speedster in his periphery as he kept his focus on the movement ahead and on Curie repeatedly dodging snapping jaws and blunt-clawed paws. It couldn’t last. She was tiny next to the beast, barely as long as its blocky head. Then in an instant, Farooq’s dog (his bitch, something hateful and possessive in Eobard’s head hissed)? Those teeth were in Curie’s wintry fur, tearing, and she was not even Eobard’s daemon, not really, but he had a full body shudder anyway as he imagined ruby red blood and fragile ivory bones. Why risk it, as if she were a wolverine instead of a short-tailed weasel?
Then, in an instant, the game board is overturned. Curie wasn’t Curie; she was not an adorable, harmless tiny thing. She was a wolverine, all bulky muscle and dense brown-black fur. As she twisted, her claws and teeth found the dog’s face, the dog’s throat. The spectral-looking Dust as well as blood coming from the wounds? This seemed to force Allen into action, making him speed ahead and grab Curie away. Then Farooq was attacking the speedster.
As Caitlin will later say, Farooq choked. As Blackout died? Allen was still holding Curie like a stolen car radio, as if she weren’t at all alive or an oddity. Just an awkward object you didn’t expect or want to find in your hands.
Eobard, however, belatedly wondered if speedsters could go into cardiac arrest. Because if Blackout’s dog had sent a feeling of electricity, Allen’s touch was galvanizing. Curie wasn’t even a real daemon! She was only feeding sensory data to help Eobard comprehend the daemon link. If it felt so strong even still? No wonder no one wanted others touching their daemons. It was somewhere between agony and its reverse.
At least Allen’s daemon, the fluttering, often-flustered Esther (a Biblical name to match Bartholomew, Eobard had guessed), finally caught her person’s attention. Eobard couldn’t make out her words, her voice like the tinny squeaks of a bat, but it caught Allen’s attention. Wide-eyed, the scarlet-suited speedster looked down at his hands. There, Curie hung, limp as a wet dish rag, and fur still bristled up in post-battle adrenaline. She was still much, much larger than before, and Eobard had no idea how Allen hadn’t noticed he was holding up a wolverine by its armpits. After all, she was currently far larger than a house cat. She should weigh equal to her animal form, assuming she hadn’t given up on being corporeal to otherwise wreck Eobard’s carefully planned life.
He couldn’t deny the glee he had to hide, however, as Allen glanced down and Curie glared up. The young speedster dropped her as if she’d become molten magma in his hands.
“Oh!” This gasp was loud as a whip crack. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry!”
Eobard ignored the apology for now. Curie landed on her feet, as usual, and she shook out her fur. Then she rambled over to him, as if nothing was amiss, and then started to wriggle her haunches as if to launch into his lap. That was taking pretending everything was a-okay a bit too far.
“Curie,” Eobard said, slowly, and held up his hands to hold her off, “what did you do?”
The two of them didn’t talk much in public. In many ways, Harrison Wells was always a private, reserved person. It wasn’t so much an interest in being traditionalist or anything of the like, rather that the original Dr. Wells had only cared for Tess Morgan and himself. The original Curie hadn’t been chatty with anyone but Tess’s daemon. Since it was still considered rude to pry into a person’s and their daemon’s privacy, it went mostly unnoticed.
Team Flash, of course, had noticed. Curie rarely spoke around them, more often nodding, shaking her head, or whispering in Dr. Wells’s ear. Then again, she was also usually an ermine.
Curie looked at him with soulful whiskey brown eyes, so different from beady piercing black, and snorted. “Gibran would’ve electrocuted you. I needed to be bigger so I could help.”
Eobard first had to exhale through gritted teeth but kept his voice patient. “Curie, I’m an adult. You shouldn’t be able to change shapes to get bigger. Do you remember that?”
Curie gave him an unimpressed look, familiar despite the change in her face. “Of course, but we have to protect them. They make us stronger.”
Instead of trying to jump up again, she stepped towards Cisco’s Hypatia. The kit fox’s ears flipped back, and she took a step back, tail tucked. That felt like a punch to the solar plexus, and Eobard hated it. It burned like salt rubbed over road rash.
“Curie, don’t,” he snapped.
She looked up at him, confused. “I wasn’t going to touch Hyp. I just wanted to see if she was okay.”
She looked back to the kit fox that she was now bigger than and made a noise akin to a canine’s whine before almost scurrying back to him, ermine-like, and launching up into his lap. She buried a large wet nose up under his shirt, smearing across his stomach, and tucked up close to him. Eobard never exactly got used to that. Not that she was usually this tactile. He hesitantly laid a hand on the ridge of her back and then felt the rise and fall of her ribs under the warm fur.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “Everyone is all right.”
Then he looked to Gibran and reconsidered his words.
***
Joe West was understandably furious. Already, he had been forced to deal with Tockman. Now there were two more dead at STAR Labs, and there was nothing he could do about it. As a cop, Eobard guessed that Joe wasn’t used to that kind of impotence.
Allen likely would’ve fully followed Joe’s lead, but the incident had shaken him. Eobard wasn’t sure what factor had caused the most damage. It could be the death of Tony Woodward, Barry’s childhood bully. Then there was Farooq Gibran’s death, partially caused by Allen. There was the fact that Barry's childhood hero Harrison Wells had (almost uselessly) sacrificed Woodward for a better chance for Team Flash to escape alive. Barry was right, more right than he knew, to snap about Wells using people like pawns. But the younger man’s gaze also kept falling to Curie, still in wolverine form and still curled up against Eobard.
Curie had seemed to have lethal intent towards Gibran, but one could argue self-defense (the same claim Allen had). Gibran had attacked first, had threatened death first, and had killed first. Sometimes in war, daemons acted erratically in an attempt to help their person (and themselves) survive. Joe West couldn’t say Harrison Wells or Curie had broken any laws.
Meanwhile, Barry certainly had, even if Joe didn’t know it yet. Touching another’s daemon wasn’t just simple assault. To many, it had a more intimate, almost sexual component. After all, the feelings that came with it often bordered on sexual pleasure. With Settled daemons in their culture, that sort of touch was usually reserved for close romantic relationships. Platonic bonds were usually represented by people’s daemons sharing platonic touch, cuddling, or playing while their people did the same. What Barry had done was, in many ways, both like sticking his fingers in Eobard’s brain and down his pants.
It was little surprise the so-called hero was having a bit of a crisis over it. Eobard had to wonder if it had felt the same for Allen and if it had, if that might raise suspicions at all. The so-called Man in Yellow had no daemon, though this might not be recognized yet. Curie’s mere existence implied Dr. Wells’s innocence.
Either way? Curie received treatment for the bite, two bodies were dealt with, and the angry, useless grandstanding was out of the way. Now, all of Team Flash was in the Cortex and all in a post-crisis crash. Cisco was managing his flagging energy with sugar mixed with some coffee. In contrast, Eobard’s coffee maintained a dark brown coloration. The caffeine did nothing, but the smell and taste were pleasing enough.
It also helped to have a distraction and a prop, considering how everyone’s eyes were now reliably pointed his way. With his empty hand, he gently shook Curie, fingers sinking into warm fur, and she grumbled. Part of Eobard knew he should at least be concerned at having a snout full of razor teeth pressed near his gut. But Curie, whatever she truly was, had never truly harmed him. She was a frequent annoyance, but usually more interested in watching than she was in fighting. Today was rare, but even still, he was unharmed. He kept that in mind as she slowly roused and shuffled back, sitting up on her hindquarters and yawning widely. Today her teeth were undoubtedly massive, as were the black claws poking from her paws.
“I suppose we need to talk about this,” Eobard said, breaking the awkward silence and gesturing at Curie’s bulk.
“Yeah,” Cisco said, then echoed his awed rambling from early with, “Wow. I mean, you’re an adult! She was Settled. Like, dude, whoa.”
Honestly, the younger man seemed on the edge of a religious experience and sugar crash to add to the adrenaline crash. Eobard almost felt bad. Then again, this wasn’t his choice.
“How abnormal is that?” Joe West asked.
Eobard tried not to look offended at the word. Abnormal. After all, he certainly fit the definition. He’d come to terms with that. He just didn’t like the judgmental look in West’s eyes or the thousand-yard stare of his daemon, Susanna the English mastiff.
Thankfully, Caitlin helped soften the blow. “In the scientific community, it’s nearly undocumented,” she said. “As we all know, there’s the general rule: Children are Unsettled at birth and Settle with age. Of course, there are always outliers. Some people with certain conditions never Settle. Sometimes people return to being Unsettled after serious injuries or due to degenerative conditions.”
Joe West frowned at that, but then nodded slowly. “Brain injuries. Conditions like dementia.” He gestured broadly at Wells. “Is there something the rest of us don’t know, Dr. Snow?”
Eobard ignored the rhyme best he could, visions of Gotham rogues dancing in his head. He covered the ongoing distaste with a sip of coffee. West wasn’t unintelligent, no, and he was a good detective, but he was annoying because of both traits.
Both Caitlin and her macaque Leland shook their heads. “No. Of course, if Dr. Wells would let me, I’d like to run some tests. His injuries didn’t appear to cause any neurological damage, but maybe we missed something.”
Eobard sighed and used his empty hand to scrub at his face. “I had x-rays. I had an MRI. No damage to my skull, no noted issues with my brain. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t appear to have symptoms of stroke or neurodegeneration, correct?”
Caitlin paused, biting her lip, and shoved her hands into her lab coat pockets. “No, but you know how complicated the brain is. I’d feel better if we ruled out the common causes of an adult becoming Unsettled.”
Eobard nodded slowly and frowned down at Curie, who seemed utterly unbothered. Then again, it was hard to judge her expressions at the moment. He was too used to her being in ermine form.
“What if it isn’t bad?” Barry asked, painfully optimistic as always. “Esther can keep up with me. She was already the fastest kind of bat—the fastest mammal—but I could outpace her old speed now. She’s as fast as I am now, too. Just like me, that kind of speed should tear her apart but it doesn’t. So maybe Curie changed because Doctor Wells is changing?”
Eobard once again felt all eyes on him, lingering and seeking out any differences in him. He offered a wan smile in response.
“I haven’t noticed I look any different,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “Maybe a few more gray hairs. I’ve managed to keep up my musculature with thanks to Caitlin’s endless PT pushing, but it’s nothing noticeably better, I’d wager.”
“Not like a cute little ermine turning into a badass wolverine,” Cisco said.
Under the dual praise, Curie preened a bit, smoothing down her fur and turning to look towards Cisco and Hypatia.
“Exactly,” Eobard agreed. “I think we’d all have noticed me increasing exponentially in size.”
“Please no Alice in Wonderland antics,” Cisco said, hands coming together around his mug in mock prayer. “It would be cool, but also, like, terrifying. No giant people.”
“I’ll join you in that hope,” Eobard said, offering another weak smile.
Then he had to look back at the combination of suspicious looks from Joe West and Susanna. He studiously ignored it, glancing towards his doctor.
“Caitlin, I don’t think we’d be opposed to getting photographic evidence of Curie’s transformation. Obviously, for now, this needs to be kept between all of us, but I won’t be hypocritical and say we shouldn’t study the phenomenon. Esther has been quite patient, after all.”
Esther, who had been hanging from the ceiling on one of their bat-friendly additions, let out a pleased trill at this. Barry looked up at his tiny daemon with fondness. It was saccharine sweet, and Eobard once again felt both agitation and resentment. He liked Esther. He knew most people didn’t differentiate daemons from their people, but perhaps Esther was made of the least hateful aspects of Barry Allen. It was a shame that any harm to the Flash would be harmful to her. At least Curie was appeased by Eobard’s plan to slingshot them back to the future and leave Allen’s downfall to others.
Because Eobard felt like raw skin and sharp glass shards, he did add, “Of course, I’d prefer if no one touched Curie.”
That made Joe West do a double-take, looking at Eobard’s mostly forced-blank expression once and then twice. Susanna had cocked her head, a picture of canine confusion. Meanwhile Caitlin and Cisco both looked to their daemons, a shared sense of unease. Barry? He went almost as red as his suit and began wringing his cowl in his hands. Esther fluttered down to lie on his hair, a featherweight comfort.
Joe West hadn’t become a detective without an ability to detect. Another look of shock went over his face at Barry’s blush, leaving the older man looking a bit ashen. Susanna’s eye whites were on clear display.
“Barry, tell me you didn’t,” Joe said, even as he started shaking his head.
“I’m sorry!” Barry ignored Joe for the moment, instead looking at Eobard and Curie with a truly pitiable level of panic. “I’m so, so sorry! I promise, I really didn’t mean to. I’ve been so careful, you know, so I always avoided daemons, even little ones!”
Eobard considered the frequent bug splatter on the Flash suit and almost winced. He was grateful not to have to worry. Average humans had so many problems.
“I don’t know what I thought. It’s just, you know, she was always a cute little ermine, like in the painting. Not a wolverine. Not like—she was going for the dog’s throat, she could’ve killed her and Farooq,” Barry continued.
He gestured wildly at Curie with the cowl as his other hand went into his hair next to Esther. The unspoken addition was that Farooq’s daemon could’ve killed Curie and that Farooq clearly felt the pain of the attack. If Barry hadn’t gotten between the two battling daemons, it was likely that Farooq would’ve just lit up Harrison Wells.
Joe West was rubbing at his face with both hands, clearly having an internal conflict. Eobard imagined the detective wanted to yell at his adoptive son as if he were a misbehaving child, telling him he was grounded and would get no dessert. Another part of the detective must know Barry was an adult and his split-second decisions couldn’t be managed by twisting his ear and apologizing to the offended party.
That, and Eobard knew that Joe West surely knew enough to know of the rare cases of daemons battling. Some people were paid money for it, offering up their souls for illegal cage fights. In domestic abuse, it could occur, if rarely enough it could be seen as more akin to a taboo. A violation, always a violation. So, of course, it also happened in war. In the US, even if you were a prisoner on death row, no one was meant to hurt your daemon, by hand or via their own daemon.
Curie’s behavior, while done defensively, was also abnormal.
Eobard stopped leaving Barry to get more and more wound up as a few seconds ticked by. “Mr. Allen, I know it was unintentional. I’m sorry you were placed in a position where you felt it was your only choice.”
Curie gave Eobard a knowing look. He ignored her except to stroke her fur, as if to self-soothe. He scratched behind one of her ears to distract her from his bald-faced lie.
“I’m just a bit on edge, I suppose,” he added, looking into Allen’s eyes and waiting for the lightbulb. “I doubt anyone here would intentionally touch Curie. I know that. It’s just that no one else has in such a long time, but twice tonight there was, uh, unwanted contact. At least in good news, Mr. Allen, you were wearing gloves.”
Barry nodded slowly, a jerky motion, and yes, the gears seemed to be slowly turning. Like others, he’d probably imagine no human had touched Harrison Wells’s daemon since Tess Morgan. It was an easy thing to imply since it was technically true. The lie was that the gloves had done much of anything to dampen the rush of the Speed Force.
“Like licking a battery,” Curie whispered.
Meanwhile, Joe West had managed to get a hold of his anger and shock, back to the mask of businesslike toughness so many cops wore. “Besides allowing an examination of your daemon’s changes, would you be willing for her to be interviewed? If she’s uncomfortable speaking to others, you could speak for her, or Susanna could ask the questions.”
It was interesting, Eobard thought, the general shared sense of confidentiality that daemons shared. Even as a detective's equal, Susanna wouldn’t share anything she saw as irrelevant that Curie ever said. It was a type of pact far superior to those humans made. It was only so ironic because Curie wasn’t actually a daemon.
Eobard looked down at her because he was expected to. In turn, she brushed her nose and whiskers against his wrist.
“I can speak, if you’re there to listen,” she said softly, so softly.
He was truly becoming terrible at denying the meddlesome creature anything. “Of course. I can always play liaison if you need me to.”
***
Only a moment or so later, everyone had found their new places. It was far too crowded in the med bay for everyone, so instead, Curie was up on one of the consoles, having clambered up there from his lap. Leland sat nearby, not touching with his human-like hands but close enough to seem to give moral support. Team Flash had gotten both recording and sensing devices, any that could feasibly be used for examining a daemon.
Because Curie could also be a prideful creature, she had easily posed for Caitlin. Somehow, Curie already knew how to move her new body gracefully. She extended her claws when asked and showed her teeth when asked. She even rolled onto her back, exposing her fluffy brown belly. Afterward, she had given Eobard a discreet wink, as if they were both just playing a game that the others didn’t know the rules to.
Eventually, Caitlin, Cisco, and even Barry seemed to gather as much data as they could at the present moment. Cisco was muttering about other ideas, some more harebrained than others, but Eobard hardly cared because Hypatia no longer seemed afraid. Her ears were perked forward, her nose twitched, and her tail lazily wagged from side to side.
Eobard did truly care about Cisco Ramon. It was one of the aspects of this time that made him so bitter. The Ramon family should love their bright, clever son. He wasn’t sugary sweet like his favored foods but he was good. Better than Eobard. He imagined Cisco’s love wasn’t a nearly-smothered thing, left to decay under moth-eaten velvet. No, Cisco loved in a burning way, bright as a star, and sometimes it left Eobard sunburnt. Cisco deserved love from people who didn’t hate more fiercely than anything else.
Besides Hypatia, Leland was his usual calm, stoic self, human-like face predictably smoothed into a mask of politeness. Esther had come down from the ceiling to speak with Curie in soft tones, likely Esther apologizing for her person’s indiscretion.
“I guess that’s all we can do for now,” Eobard said, rubbing at his chin’s growing stubble. “Why don’t we all go home and try to get some rest? I doubt we’ll find any answers tonight.”
The others offered their agreement, even though Allen certainly didn’t seem tired. Eobard wasn’t either, of course. He was just better at faking humanity.
Curie clambered back into Eobard’s lap, a hefty warmth, and he hoped tomorrow would dawn with Gideon’s predictions exactly where he needed them.
***
The only time Curie and Eobard had ever truly been at odds was perhaps also the worst in his life. She had realized his intended actions towards a young Barry Allen were both homicidal and suicidal. She’d intervened, fiercely, in words and then in another form, shadowy and sharper than any kitchen knife.
Besides that, she hadn’t interfered much. She told Eobard to not harm young humans, since that upset her instincts, and to not harm animals only for enjoyment. She didn’t care if he ate steak. She also didn’t generally care if he killed those who were a threat to them or if they stood between them and victory. Once when asked, she’d asked him if he thought humans had worried themselves over the deaths of Neanderthals. He’d been reminded of bones cut in ways that implied cannibalism. Once again, he had decided not to ask how exactly Curie’s kind behaved regarding the average human. After all, she didn’t care if he ate steak.